A History of the World in objects
‘A History of the World in 100 Objects‘ is a site created by the BBC in conjunction with the British Museum that uses pictures of objects from the Museum to illuminate the story of humankind.
The format of the site takes you through history by drawing the images towards you. On the right hand side is a timeline, with a slider to take you to a specific period of time. There are also up and down arrows to click at the bottom centre of the screen to navigate through the time periods.
Clicking on any of these images highlights that object in a window. You can then click for additional information.
Down the left hand site you can use the categories to identify objects. The categories are:
- Location
- Theme
- Culture
- Size
- Colour
- Material
You can also use the Basic Explorer view to investiage the site.
Chemistry for Kids
This page has a great set of links to chemistry related online resources for kids.
It includes The Periodic Table Videos from the University of Nottingham that I’ve previously written about.
One item from the list I’ve had more of a play with (and shown my rusty knowledge with) is The Periodic Table Game.
MP for a week
The Education Service of the UK Parliament, which has the tagline “Working with schools to support young people’s understanding of Parliament and democracy”, has just launched an online game to help school children understand the role of an MP. It’s called “MP for a Week”.
Here’s the YouTube hosted 1.5min promotional video to explain it a little bit more:
Here’s a link to the game guide.
And here’s the game.
Additional information:
Maths Dictionary
Jenny Eather has created a rather useful site for kids to learn and understand about different basic terms in maths. It’s called A Maths Dictionary for Kids.
Such a colourful, visually engaging site, with a clickable alphabet on the left leading to the different maths terms beginning with that letter. Upon choosing a term from the dictionary you’ll see a definition and some sums to do allowing you to test and develop your understanding.
MathTV
The site MathTV.com is brilliant on a number of levels. Firstly, if you’re a student and you want some area of maths explained via a simple, understandable video instruction then look no further. Areas covered are broken down into the topics Calculus, Trig, Algebra and Basic Maths, and then broken down further into multiple sub-topics. With many of the problems there are videos available by different presenters, come in languages other than English, including Spanish. To access these videos you don’t even need to register and log in. What could be simpler?
Additional to all that, if you are a maths tutor and you are wanting to set up a programme of maths to help with your students’ studies, you can create what is called a ‘Playlist’. You do need to register to access this facility, but the registration and login processes are simple and quick; as is the setting up of a playlist. Once your playlist is created, you are provided with a URL to access it, which you can pass on to your students.
Daniel Kopsas has created a screencast tutorial explaining how to set up a MathTV playlist.
Physics explained by cartoons
Marvin and Milo are a couple of cartoon characters on the physics.org website that explain how to do some experiments to display physics principles. The cartoons will engage the kids and draw them into the science. The instructions below are clear and simple to follow. There is a dropdown menu to access all the other experiments in the set.
I really like the look of this site and I’ll be returning to other parts of the physics.org website in the future.
Numbernuts – maths site
Rader’s Numbernut has such a visual draw to it that it makes the learning of maths fun and appealing. Just look at how striking it is.
Now for me you can’t beat simple and these icons are so nice, and they indicate exactly what area of maths they link to. And they link to some great activities that quickly engage children, along with explanations of what the maths terms mean. The activities are set up in such a simple format; but that’s not to say the maths is simple. I’d suggest giving this one a try.
Create Comicstrips online
I came across a video today that got me interested in creating comics online, and how it can be used to interest children in literacy.
I’ll mention a couple of sites that provide the facility, though there are several others.
I’ve picked on Bitstrips
and Pixton (click below to view video)
because they have on open version, but also a (pay for) secure school version that can be used within classrooms; Bitstrips for Schools
and Pixton fo Schools.
Both are quite intuitive to get started with, if after a bit of playing around. There’s lots of control over the characters, both body and facial expressions, and you can design your own.
In addition there’s a collaborative element to many of these services, where for example you are able to mix and remix the comics.
Pixton has a very nice Safety Tips section, helping to ensure that the site is safe for children’s uses, with parent supervision.
And here is the video of how Bitstrips is used in class and what children think about its use:
Evidence: how do we know what we know?
I’ve mentioned the Exploratorium (R) before, but not the full site in detail. I’ll be returning to it again in the future. And tying in with my Evolution of Life post, I came across Evidence: How do we know what we know?
This site uses the origins of humans as a case study to demonstrate scientific process and investigation. There are several high quality videos supplementing the content, section being:
- Observing behaviour
- Collecting clues
- Investigating relationships
- Finding patterns
- considering possibilities
- How science works
- Can you believe it?
- Map your knowledge
In the Podcasts and more section there is a little template that you can print out and cut/fold into a useful booklet about fundamentals of scientific process.
Then there is a section called myEvidence, where you can see evidence on a range of subjects other people have ‘mapped’ and you can login and map your own evidence.
The site is Flash driven, so you’ll need to have a Flash player installed and reasonable bandwidth, although there is a low-bandwidth printer friendly version of the site available.
This is a site well worth spending plenty of time investigating.
