Hands On Science in Nevada Schools

From Edutopia - Las Vegas: Environments
Thanks to imaginative teachers and active community support, science learning in Clark County, Nevada, has been enlivened with the establishment of two on-site learning environments -- a rain forest dome and a replica of a silver mine. Watch this short video about these innovative environments. http://www.edutopia.org/las-vegas-environments

To Second Life and Beyond!

If you have never read Edutopia, here is a great article to start with. It particularly focuses on "Whyville, a web-based virtual world that provides inquiry-based education for middle school students." You can read it here: Get a Life: Students Collaborate in Simulated Rolls. You will probably even be able to open it at school! What a concept! Here's to more access.

Here's another article with a video about the further use of virtual reality at all levels of education and training. No Gamer Left Behind: Virtual Learning Goes to the Next Level. The video is fascinating.

Picture credit: Revolutionary Technology:
Students at Suffern Middle School, in Suffern, New York, created these avatars to represent characters from novels they read about the American Revolution. Credit: Courtesy of Suffern Middle School http://www.edutopia.org/second-life-virtual-reality-collaboration

Podcasting - week 9, thing #21

Exploring podcasting has been fun. I checked out the podcast list at Yahoo and it's easy to search. I found a lot of links to podcasts that included book reviews, but none that I particularly want to subscribe to at this time. Some included interviews with authors that could be useful. I did go to EPN, the Education Podcast Network and searched the secondary list of podcasts. There was one series on "The Great Gatsby" and the Twenties that might be fun to use as a resource or an example with junior English classes when they are reading the book next year. I have added David Warlick's podcast, Connect Learning, to my Bloglines feeds. Next, I'm going to try to make my own podcast. Watch this space (or should that be listen to this space?)

ZohoShow - a place to share presentations

I just created a 3 slide PowerPoint presentation to upload to ZohoShow to see how it all works. Here's the result.


All of the slide themes carried over. I didn't add any animations, etc., but it was pretty seamless and easy to do. I will try this at school and tell others about it. I didn't discover the answer to my final question yet, but I'll let you all know what I find out.