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If you read this blog at all, you know my fascination with astronomy websites. I love space. I wanted to be an astronaut until the Challenger disaster in 1985. Now I use the web to get my fix on astronomy. Here are some more good ones:

Human Space Flight by NASA

Human Space Flight is a website where you can enter your city to see which space objects will fly by your night sky for you to see.  It gives you the time of the object and how long it will take to pass over your location.  Look up satellites or space shuttles!

Astronomy Picture of the Day

I did not post an example picture of Astronomy Picture of the Day because the NASA photographer does not give rights to copy his pictures without written permission, but these photographs are amazing and would lend themselves to good teaching points in the classroom.

The Exploratorium’s Observatory

The Observatory has great resources for Venus, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, sunspots and auroras.  The interactive format allows you to click on different parts of the image to see more information.  In addition, there are many more interactive sections of the site such as: Your Weight on Other Worlds and Your Age on Other Worlds.

The Solar System Visualizer

At first the Solar System Visualizer looks to be a very primitive site.  There is an image of our solar system with the planets orbiting the sun.  Okay… now what?  The magic comes in by clicking on one of the planets – try Saturn or Uranus for example.  You will see the planet in the middle of the screen with its moons orbiting in animation.  BUT then you need to ZOOM OUT.  Did you know there were so many bodies orbiting our planets?  It was amazing.  Check it out. 

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Visit Mars with Google Mars

Visit Planet Science!

Earth Guide

Welcome Google Sky!

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If you have an interactive whiteboard (Promethean, SMART, or Polyvision), it’s always nice to know where you can find websites that work especially well with your board.  A site that may not be suitable to use with your class in the computer lab could be very valuable once you use it with your interactive whiteboard in a whole group instructional setting.

As I was searching for interactive whiteboard links, I came across this site by ETTC (Educational Technology Training Center).  The site has tons of links suitable for your interactive whiteboard.  But the best part of the site is that the links are broken down by elementary sites, middle school sites, and high school sites.  ETTC also separates the links by subject area: math, language arts, science, social studies, music, PE, art, software, tutorials, and other.

It’s the best list I have seen to date.  I looked at about 70% of the sites under “elementary” and was astonished that the sites were of high quality.   There is nothing worse than a hotlist of sites that suck.

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GAMES FOR THE INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD

Thanks to Vicki Davis’s Cool Cat Teacher blog, I learned about Toshiba/NSTA’s ExploraVision contest for kids K-12. The contest challenges teams of students (working under a mentor) to:

• choose a technology that is present in their lives
• explore how it works, when and why it was invented
• imagine and explore what the technology would be 20 years from now
• write an in-depth report to convey their vision to others

Prizes range from $5,000 – $10,000 savings bonds, a toshiba notebook for the school, and special gifts for the coaches and mentors.  See the website for complete details.

Why should students enter?  Strengthen the following skills:

• higher-order thinking
• communication
• organization
• imagination
• research
• collaboration
• writing skills

Deadline is January 28, 2009.  What are you waiting for?

Image by ILoveButter from Flickr.

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Way Cool Science Sites for Your Class

Visit Planet Science!

Periodic Table 2008 Style

Make a Wild Animal!

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Are you in need of some WAY COOL science sites for your class? Here are a few of my favorites:

Discovery Channel’s Volcano Explorer: Find volcanoes around the world; go inside a volcano, build your own and watch it erupt.

Volcano Maker: Build a volcano and watch it erupt.  After you build your volcano, click the keywords to learn about the parts of a volcano.  Cool sound effects.  Very dramatic.

CNN’s Anatomy of a Volcano: Short, but effective, description of how a volcano erupts.

National Geographic’s Forces of Nature: Tornadoes, Volcanoes, Hurricanes, and Earthquakes, OH MY!  Each section of the website has information and an interactive section.  Facts and fun in one!

Explore Mars Now: Realistic images allow students to simulate what it could be like to explore Mars with robots and vehicles.

The Virtual Body: Interactive tour of the different systems of the human body.  Available in English or Spanish.  There is also a choice for a “narrated tour”.

Fossil Dig: Aimed at elementary school kids, this interactive dig is takes you along as you search for fossils.

Rock Flashcards: This site reads the name of the rock to you as it shows a picture of the rock.

NOVA ScienceNOW: science videos and interactive activities

Explore Butterflies!  Build a butterfly habitat

3D Ant Farm: Need I say more?

EdHeads – Activate your mind: weather, simple machines, virtual knee surgery, hip replacement, etc

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Period Table 2008 Style

Visit Planet Science! So Cool!

Make a Wild Animal!

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Remember the boring Periodic Table from Chemistry class in high school?  Now there is a better way to learn about the elements.

The Periodic Table of Videos

The Periodic Table of Videos has an educational video on every element on the table.  Click your element and a YouTube video will launch telling you all about it.  The nice feature is that if your school system blocks YouTube, you can view the videos on an alternate server.

Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements” 

Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements” is a sing along song created in Flash of all of the elements on the Periodic Table.  It’s oddly addicting.

The Visual Elements Periodic Table

The Visual Elements Periodic Table displays a real photograph depicting each element.  Scrolling over the pictures shows the element name and abbreviation.  If you click the element, a separate window appears with basic information about the element.

Interactives: The Periodic Table

Interactives: The Periodic Table takes a unique approach to the periodic table. First, there are a series of tutorials for the student followed by 5 different interactive games to reinforce knowledge: Name that Atom, Building Elements, Which One of These Elements Doesn’t Belong?, Isotopes Quiz, and Ionic Bonding.

In addition, Interactive’s home page contains many interactive games to support learning in science, history, math, language arts, and the arts that are geared for middle and high school students.

While Google Mars is not as exciting as Google Earth, it is still worth a visit.  You can tour the planet by elevation, infrared, or visible surface.  Zoom in or out of the planet and search by plains, ridges, craters, mountains, canyons, dunes, spacecraft landings, etc.  Once you search for a specific place, often Google Mars will link to an article that you can read for more information.

On the “About Google Mars” page, Google provides this introduction, “This map of Mars, published by Percival Lowell in 1895, was the result of many years spent carefully studying the Red Planet through his telescope. Now you can do the same through your web browser. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we’ve created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made.”

I enjoyed it!  Imagine being able to explore Mars from the comfort of your classroom.  Take a virtual field trip today!

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Planet Science is a site from the UK, which sometimes causes educators in the USA to pass it by.  I don’t know why – many of the interactive, educational sites worth visiting come from the UK.  Ok, so they spell things a little differently and use the metric system (like everywhere else but here)!  Their sites still rock! 

Planet Science has interactive games for K-12 students.  I played a few of them and have enjoyed ALL of them so far.  The first one I tried was the Smoothie maker.  You can choose the ingredients to add to a blender to make your own smoothie.  When you’re done, start the blender!  The site will tell you how nutricious your smoothie is complete with how many grams of sugar and how many carbs you just drank in your smoothie.  The best part is the “Smoothie” song the site plays as it mixes your drink.  So much fun!

Next I tried Planet 10: World Builder (because Earth can’t last forever).  The student creates a new planet by choosing many, many different things such as: size, orbit, atmosphere, shape, moons, terrain, organisms, distance from sun, etc.  After you make all of your choices, you launch your planet into the atmosphere and see if it “survives” in space.  After a lot of careful planning, I managed to burn up all the living organisms, evaporated my atmosphere, and got hit by a comet.  Disaster.  But so much fun!

Planet 10: Solar System is also a nice resource.  Students can zoom into different planets to learn more about them.  Fun!  It has better graphics than Google Sky, but I’m not sure if the information is as detailed as Google Sky.

The site also has a list of science games on the Internet that are worth looking into as well as a parent page to get them involved. I love this site! Thumbs up from me!

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Okay – I know I feature a lot of websites, but maybe it’s because I know how hard it is to get software approved for classroom use in the schools today. I came across this website called “Build Your Wild Self” put out by New York Zoos and Aquariums. The site starts you will a human boy or girl template, and allows you to change different parts of your body to animal parts. Why would you want to do this? Besides being fun for children and adults, teachers can incorporate this into their classroom for creative writing or science. Just think: Let students create themselves as an animal, print it out, and then write about it. Students can explain how their new animal body parts allow them to survive in the chosen habitat. Or how about different writing topics to go along with this such as:

• Explain how your life would be different if you came home from school looking like this.
• What sports or activties would you be good at now that you are part animal?
• Research the different animals that you picked and why you would want to be like that animal.

Another great site is Switch Zoo. This site used to be entirely free, but over the last year or so they started packaging the “game” for sale on CD. I have to admit, this is one of my biggest pet peeves as a teacher. You find a great, free site to use with your class, and as soon as you make it part of your routine, the site becomes a paid site. Anyway, some features of this site are still free (just enough to hook you). I had my class create a new animal, print it out in color, and then build a habitat out of clay to match their new animal. Have your class:

1. Create a name for the new animal
2. Create a habitat
3. Explain how the animal adapts to survive in the habitat
4. Explain what the animal eats, how it gets food, and how it protects itself.
5. Write a creative story about the new animal:
   1. “My New Pet”
   2. “A Strange Day at the Zoo”

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Okay, Okay, I know I have a lot of blogs about science and astronomy.  I think it’s because science lends itself so well to be illustrated with technology.  The Japan Science and Technology Agency has a website called “Earth Guide” that has detailed, interactive pictures that cover such topics as, “Where is the earth located in the Milky Way Galaxy?”, “How different is the earth from the other planets?”, and “How big are the earth’s oceans?”  Even though the site has advanced vocabulary, teachers can still make use of this site for the pictures alone.  Once the picture is projected, the teacher can explain in easier language to communicate the objective.  Visual connections are very powerful when teaching about space, when everything is on a such a large scale that most students may not be able to comprehend.  Older students will most likely be able to use this site for an independent assignment, and younger kids will benefit from the visual appeal. 

Thumbs up for the website!

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMhGpzyFdhE]

The makers of Google Earth have unleashed their latest creation: Google Sky, which is available within the newest version of Google Earth. Basically, it is just like Google Earth, but the camera is pointed to the sky.   Head over to their website to see the latest features.  Google Sky allows you to see planets, starts, the moon, constellations, galaxies, and the atmosphere.  Using this program with an interactive whiteboard will allow students to interact with the program for a hands-on activity.  Google Earth continues to add features that make it a powerful teaching tool to help students visualize the enormous size of our planet and space.  Check it out!