Trove: researching Australia

Have you discovered Trove yet?

It's a project from the National Library of Australia.

Trove is a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. It supplements what search engines provide. If you are researching in the fields of the social sciences, literature, local or family history, or need inspiration for your school assignment, then this is the tool for you.


For example if researching images relating to Edmund Barton, our first Prime Minister, results will include descriptions such as people, book, manuscript, map and newspaper articles. A researcher searching for information on Nellie Melba will be presented with a range of results including biographies, pictures, music, newspapers, books etc.

Find out more on the Trove Australia site here.  You can follow them on Twitter: @TroveAustralia

One to pass on to your history teachers and others doing work involving Australian history (like maybe that science assignment that focuses on Australian scientists?)

Cheers

Ruth

President Obama's speech on the death of Osama Bin Laden

It's likely to become a Famous Speech; it's a carefully-structured piece of rhetoric worth considering in the English classroom (I'm thinking of how Earl Spencer's speech at his sister Diana's funeral was part of an English HSC paper a few years ago).  News reports say that Obama wrote it himself.



The above YouTube link from the whitehouse channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYmK19-d0U

A transcript of the speech can be found here.

Another one to share with your English teachers.

Added later: I had been talking with our English teachers about this, and one came back to me today (4 May) with this article by Pamela Gerloff of the Huffington Post: The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death.  Said it generated excellent discussion in her classroom.

Further information/opinion is from respected human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, on the ABC website: Bin Laden's killing 'a perversion of justice'.

Cheers

Ruth

How to link/embed YouTube videos into PowerPoint 2007

Our DER laptops for Year 9 will be distributed at the end of the week, so I'm busy putting together the PowerPoint for the first period, on school rules/policy reminders.  The laptops will then be issued, period by period, and in the last period of the day, I've been asked to address the whole year group (200+ kids...)again, on 'stuff like copyright and things they need to know'.  So that's another PowerPoint, with the slightly more formal title of "Digital Citizenship".  (Rumpestilskin, where are you??? - two major PowerPoints to prepare in under a week...).

However endlessly entrancing I may find my own voice, and however utterly brilll-y-unt I may be at holding an audience of 200+ year nine students for nearly an hour... (twice in one day!) I know that there must be some great things out there on digital citizenship, cybersafety, copyright and so forth to add different voices/change the pace/keep their interest.  And there are.  I'll share some of them this week on the blog.

Having found some useful YouTube videos, my next challenge was working out how to put a YouTube video into a PowerPoint, because I haven't done that before.  Google google google and here's the most useful set of instructions I found.  It's from Clay's Blog, and specifically refers to PowerPoint 2007.    The Captivate animation to show you how has a broken link on the above page (it's his new site) but works on his old site - click here to see how-to, step by step.

My one variation is that I paste the original URL into the Note section of the PowerPoint slide for future reference, then paste it again to edit it as the instructions outline (I can delete this second one once it's in the Properties - the Properties Movie window where it has to go is teenytiny).  If this makes NO sense, read his instructions/watch the Captivate demo and then it will.

You still need to have the computer showing the PowerPoint being connected to the internet during the presentation - this links rather than embeds.  It still means that you don't have to clunk out of the Presentation and over to a browser, but just instead click on a Play button.

Hey! Something new I've learned how to do, and something to share with colleagues and the kids.

Cheers

Ruth

Climate change games

Looking for some climate change games for a colleague doing climate change/greenhouse effect etc with Year 8, I came across a few likely looking prospects.  I haven't entirely played all these, but they looked promising.

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Electrocity

http://www.electrocity.co.nz/

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From New Zealand, this game of 150 turns (but you can take them FAST to grow your city) offers development options and choices - stay green? get big? and the players need to keep their choices supplied with electricity. Games can be saved, and there are viewable examples of other people's cities to see various possibilities. Lots of scope in this one - let kids loose, or maybe set some to grow a metropolis, others to set up an ecologically sustainable place (that is also still economically viable).  Students should pay attention to the hints tab...  I used this one with a class group, and it's now VERY popular at lunchtimes too - engaging/challenging enough for students to want to play it more to increase their scores and skill.

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Let's learn why the earth's climate is changing

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http://www.eschooltoday.com/climate_change_class.html

Although this one looks more aimed at primary school level audiences than secondary, it covers a bunch of issues visually and engagingly, and could be useful with younger/lower secondary classes.

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Stablization Wedges

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http://www.princeton.edu/wedges/Stabilization_Wedges_Game_w8_Oct07.pdf

This one is a board game rather than online, with a 16-page pdf giving you the playing pieces etc.  Having outlined a variety of strategies to level off global warming (eg. wind farms), players then need to select their choice of wedges.

There is a slideshow about the options here:

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/resources/CMI_Resources_new_files/CMI_Stab_Wedges_Movie.swf

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Climate Challenge

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/

From the BBC, this requires players over several turns to balance out politics and choices to see the impact of these on climate (and voters).  I'd recommend the tutorial on this one, so students understand what is required and how the game works.

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Among the sources from which I found these are a links page here and one here and the Wikipedia article on global warming games.  All of these offer a bunch more links and ideas on the greenhouse effect, climate change, global warming and so forth and so on.

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Cheers

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Ruth

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PS If you have any other recommendations along similar lines, do please add them in a comment, with the URL, so others can benefit.

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Catchment Detox

Catchment Detox from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.):

It’s an online game where the player manages a virtual river catchment. It’s not a pristine catchment, there is agriculture, industry and tourism already in place. There are also environmental problems that need to be fixed. The game goes for 50 turns and you make as many changes to the landscape as you like (you can also do none!) before taking your next turn. The aim is to create an environmentally happy catchment with a sustainable and thriving economy.


Home page is here.

Teacher info page is here (thanks, ABC!)

There's a competition running right now that finishes in two weeks (early Sept 2008) but I haven't yet found any indication of whether they'll leave the game after that (hope they do).

Google's challenge to Wikipedia

...is knol.  Authors are identified, but articles aren't screened.  There's a comment section, but not the same editing of articles as is possible with Wikipedia. 

Oh, and did you wonder about ads?  Yup.  Ads can appear on the page, and the author and Google share the revenue.  Which seems likely to influence the articles written - wouldn't you likely get more hits on an article about, say, breast augmentation than the battle of Thermopylae? 

Sydney Morning Herald article here.

From a teaching point of view, another resource which we need to discuss with our students for its benefits and limitations - not just let 'em use it blindly.

NationStates: online simulation game

To quote from the website:

NationStates is a free nation simulation game. Build a nation and run it according to your own warped political ideals. Create a Utopian paradise for society's less fortunate or a totalitarian corporate police state. Care for your people or deliberately oppress them. Join the World Assembly or remain a rogue state. It's up to you.

Haven't yet created my own nation with it, but it has potential for History/Society and Culture/Geography (so I've pointed those teachers at it so they can see if it's useful). It was devised as a ploy to draw attention to a novel (Jennifer Government by Max Barry).

Check it out by clicking here.