Family Fun Friday

If you are a space cadet like I am or have a Jr. Astronomer in your household, for the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope, Google released a new Google Earth tour of imagery captured by Hubble. It's awesome, the tour takes place in Google Earth Sky View. You can download the tour here or watch a preview in the video below.



Have a great weekend and enjoy exploring our beautiful universe together...

Teacher Tuesday

This week, I found a really neat resource for teachers and homeschoolers alike, called "Free Technology For Teachers." One of the features from this blog has to do with the 2010 Census and Google Maps, check it out

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/04/follow-2010-census-in-google-earth.html
 
According to his blog, "This Google Earth layer presents teachers with an opportunity to visually show students how much farther their local areas have to go in order to fully complete the Census. In a Civics class you could show students this data then challenge them to create their own campaigns to get people in their communities to complete the Census. Students could create a video or a multimedia collage (try Glogster) to encourage people to complete the Census form."

Let's get the word out, it's only 10 questions and only takes about 10 minutes to finish and mail back free of charge...

Happy Monday, Feel Free To Laugh Out Loud....

Family Fun Friday

Welcome to the first edition of Family Fun Friday. This is where I will review a website for the whole family to explore and have fun together.

Have you ever wanted to take the kids to a museum, but it's either too far away or closed that day. Never fear, there are a lot of museums that now have virtual tours or activities that you and your kids can do online together.

The National Museum of American History (part of the Smithsonian) is one of those museums. There are a lot of things to discover here. You can make a sod house, invent the light bulb with Edison, and even unlock the door to the "Nation’s Attic" by looking through the Museum’s collections online.

Go check it out and let me know what you think...

Parry Aftab's Blog: Facebook Dangers: Site Upgrades Safety Measures, Rejects Panic Button - ABC News

Parry Aftab's Blog: Facebook Dangers: Site Upgrades Safety Measures, Rejects Panic Button - ABC News

Teacher Tuesday

Welcome to my first edition of Teacher Tuesday. Here, I'm going to feature a website to help teachers and homeschoolers learn easy new ways to include technology within their learning experience.

The first website review is Kids' Vid: Video Production for Students. "Kids' Vid is an instructional web site that gives teachers and students the tools necessary to implement video production in the classroom. Video production can be intimidating to the novice. Not to worry. It is nothing more than a method for recording research and expressing creative ideas. Video production, if properly implemented, is more than a new toy for students. It provides the tools and the means for students to create and display serious work in a new, exciting and engaging way that is appropriate for all age groups and abilities. This is a place for serious fun." 

What I like about it is that it makes video production easy and fun with easy to use tips, advice from other kids, and classroom ideas to get you started. 

I taught video production last year, and the kids had a ball (so did I), but it doesn't have to be a separate class, you can use it in History, Science, Language Arts, Music and more. All it takes is a little know how..

Have fun!!