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

Earth Clock

Found this here:
http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/earthclock/

There are a bunch more free embeddable clocks and applets on the site.  Useful for Science, Social Science, Geography etc.

Cheers

Ruth

New US Dietary Guidelines

A simple map to the land of wholesome, by Jane Brody in the New York Times, discusses the new US Dietary Guidelines.

The article begins:

For the first time since it began issuing dietary guidelines, the government offered new recommendations last month that clearly favor the health and well-being of consumers over hard-lobbying farm interests.


The new science-based Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released Jan. 31 by the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services, are comprehensive, sensible, attainable and, for most people, affordable. They offer a wide variety of dietary options to help you eat better for fewer calories without undue sacrifice of dining pleasure.

Now it’s up to consumers to act on this advice and put the brakes on runaway obesity and the chronic diseases that cost billions of dollars before they kill.

 
The article continues:

Here is a summary of the guidelines, which combine the goals of fewer calories — and especially nutrient-poor calories from sugars, fats and refined grains — with more emphasis on nutrient-dense foods:

• Eat lots more vegetables and fruits, filling half your plate with them.
• Choose lean meats and poultry, and replace some of them with seafood.
• Consume mainly nonfat or low-fat milk and other dairy products.
• Choose low-sodium products and use less salt and salty ingredients in food preparation.
• Eat more fiber-rich foods; replace most refined grains and grain-based foods with whole-grain versions.
• Use vegetable oils like olive and canola oil instead of solid fats like butter and margarine, but remember that all fats have lots of calories.
• Eat out less; cook at home more often.
• Drink water, calorie-free beverages like coffee and tea, and 100 percent fruit juice instead of regular sodas, fruit drinks and energy drinks; limit alcoholic drinks to one a day for women, two for men.
• Eat less and exercise more to achieve a better balance of caloric intake and output.

 Find the full pdf of the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans by clicking here.  Want to compare with the local version?  Find the pdf of the Dietary Guidelines for Australians by clicking here.  A blog entry to share with your Home Economics, PDHPE and science teachers; not just for the basic content, but for the implications about the influence of vested interests on public health initiatives.

Cheers

Ruth

Images: my own, using the Hipstamatic iPhone app (see my blog entry about this for more information) and a few moments at a local supermarket.  From memory, John S. lens and Kodot film.

Extreme weather events of 2010: slideshow

It's always worth mining a site that has tossed up one useful thing as it's likely to have others.  Along with the infographics I told you about a while ago, Good.is has slideshows, such as this one with excellent images and content on extreme weather events of 2010 - snow! drought! volcanoes! - and more.

Another one to share with your Science, Geography and Earth and Environment teachers. You could also suggest that students could do their own versions, sourcing their own images and content in this 12-slide format.

Cheers

Ruth

Image source is Flickr: Volcanic Eruption Eyjafjallajökull.  Click on the image to go to the photographer's photostream.  Creative Commons licensed.

What is the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower?

Fancy you asking that.  I have the answer right here.

and if you toddle on over to the Arounder site by clicking here, you can take a 360 degree tour of the view.  One to share with your languages teachers?

The Arounder site has 360 degree tours of art museums, world cities and more.  Here's a glimpse of the Asia/Pacific/elsewhere selection:

If you'd like to take a squizz at the hometown of this blog, Sydney, there are twenty options, not only the (expected) Sydney Opera House.

If you want something more astronomical, how about Mars or the Moon?

So one for LOTE teachers, art teachers, geography teachers, science teachers and more.  Share it!

Cheers

Ruth

Found via Twitter.  @brainpicker consistently comes up with a whole bunch of great links.  Definitely worth following.

Powering a lightbulb: Infographics

Are you looking for some dandy graphics to explain ideas to your students (or are your teaching colleagues looking to you to do this??)?

Good.is has some useful transparencies, including this one.  Site link.  Image only.
Share this with your Science, Geography, Maths etc teaching colleagues, then investigate what else you can find on the site to share among their infographics (some fairly US-centric, but not all).

Cheers

Ruth

The Joy of Statistics

For all the dross and muck and pointless stuff on YouTube, there are also gems.  Here's one to share with your colleagues in Maths, Science, Social Science, and anyone else teaching students about statistics - a one hour BBC documentary with Dr Hans Rosling.  Free and available on YouTube.  Bargain.

EDITED: Hmmm.  YouTube playing games; this seems to have gone 'private' since I drafted this blog entry.

You can find the video embedded here:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/
and it played when I just checked it.  Other related videos on that page, too.



Original YouTube link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOmqHzkkOo

Remind your teachers to load this ahead of the lesson, so they're not waiting for it to load as they show it.

Found via the Laughing Squid.

Cheers

Ruth

Australian Museum: resources for education

While toddling about the Australian Museum site being gobsmacked by science photography, I thought I'd locate a couple more useful links to pop on the blog.

The Education Services site has a bunch of possibilities to explore, including videoconferencing, teacher previews/talks, competitions and more. http://australianmuseum.net.au/education-services

The Collections section is the gateway to exploring an extensive number of options, including biodiversity, natural science collections, interactive science activities, cultural collections and more. http://australianmuseum.net.au/research-and-collections

Also:
Animals http://australianmuseum.net.au/animals
Minerals and fossils http://australianmuseum.net.au/minerals-and-fossils
Cultures (including Australian Aboriginal  and Ancient Egyptian material) http://australianmuseum.net.au/cultures

Worth sharing with your Science staff, Society and Culture teachers, Aboriginal committee/liaison group/Aboriginal studies teachers, History teachers and others.  You don't have to be in Sydney or NSW to make use of many of the resources on the site.

Cheers

Ruth

Amazing science photography

There are three finalists in this year's Eureka Science Photography prize.  Take a look:

http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Breakfast-on-the-Fly
http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Burn-Out
http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/A-kaleidoscope-of-dust-and-gas-in-Orion

and maybe share them with your Science staff?

You can also search on past Eureka Science prizewinners (there are lots of other categories as well as Science Photography - it's near the end of the list) by clicking here.

There are also Eureka teacher resources, state-specific and all!  Find them here: http://eureka.australianmuseum.net.au/teacher

No blog entry yesterday.  Yup, I know.  Not slackness, just a crazybeans day.  As happens.

Cheers

Ruth

Have you discovered Instructables?

Recently, I needed origami instructions for a dead simple box (a Year 7 class assignment had the class members voting on each other's work, and so each kid needed a box for the raffle ticket 'voting slips').  Googlegooglegoogle and this box from Instructables is perfect - simple, fast, works with any rectangle of paper/cardboard.

Instructables (Make, How-To and DIY), if you haven't come across it, is an almost inexhaustible supply of how-to, from the sublime to the Unusual, and every byway in between.  Here, for example, are some of the links from the home page when I looked at it recently:

• Vertical Garden
• How to make your first real robot
• Iron Man - how to make various kinds of gear from the recent film/s
• Easy origami
• How to make a dog bone shaped cookie cutter
• Mobile veggie garden
• Turn signal biking jacket (with light-up left/right arrows)

And so it goes.  Usually step by step pictures with instructions on the tools and materials you need, sometimes video tutorials as well.  A cornucopia of ideas.

One to share with a whole lot of faculties - Science, Industrial Arts, Design and Technology, Agriculture....

Once again, no pics because Blogger won't play nice.  Sigh, again.

Cheers

Ruth

PS The science teacher who points out the absence of science-y entries on this blog can note that's two science-relevant entries in two days...!!

Better Health Channel - excellent, reliable health info

If your students (or teachers eg. in PE or Science or Home Ec.) are after reliable health/medical information from an Australian source, try the Victorian government's Better Health Channel website.  Fact sheets, patient info, image library, quizzes, medical dictionary, medicines guide, a whole kit and caboodle of stuff that's a safer bet than Wikipedia (where, apart from the issue of veracity, you sometimes run into techno-vocabulary that's beyond the scope of school kids). 

The site will often come up high in Google searches, but why not direct the kids straight to a good site, rather than letting them loose in the wilderness that is health info on the internet?  The language level is accessible and clear for kids to understand, and the fact that it's Australian is important (if you're in Australia) - recipes reflect local ingredients, medicines have their correct local names, further links to support groups etc aren't going to recommend a fabulous organisation in Idaho or Yorkshire...

I was going to include a graphic (the site logo), but Blogger didn't want to play. Again. Sigh.

Cheers

Ruth

The Periodic Table made real

From the wonderful resource that is the SLAV blog, Bright Ideas (over there in my bloglist too, so check them out anytime you are visiting Skerricks to see their latest entry), comes the link to this resource, which not only shows the periodic table:

but also shows you what these elements are used for.  Bismuth, anyone?

It's one of the free resources offered by BP - they have a browsable catalogue of secondary level resources here with a focus on Business, Geography and Science (and aligned to UK curricula).  Maybe one to send on to your teachers in those areas?  If you want a site with more specific technical detail on elements, ChemiCool has some ads, but also comprehensive data.

A Science teacher pal who reads Skerricks and has more than once pointedly pointed out that I'm a bit light on in the Science-y stuff, should be happy as a pig in mud now!  Look!! Authentic real Science-y entry, right here!

Cheers

Ruth

PS.  Couldn't help myself....  ;-)

Image source

Draft National Curriculum

The Draft National Curriculum is being launched today by Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard.  Here are some quick links.

• Federal Department of Education National Curriculum page (just a brief outline, then refers you to ACARA)
• ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, responsible for the documents)
• Want to get involved in the consultation process? Click here.
• Want to read resources, including information sheets from ACARA on each subject? Click here (or if you just want one subject's information sheet: English, Maths, History, Science).

Curriculum drafts:

• Draft Maths curriculum pdf
• Draft Science curriculum pdf
• Draft History pdf
• Draft English pdf

PDF copies of the draft curricula in Maths, Science, History and English are from this Melbourne Herald-Sun article.

(The SMH is apparently very preoccupied today with Spencer Tunick's photography at the Sydney Opera House).

Cheers

Ruth

Learn Genetics

A Science teacher pal of mine has pointed out that Skerricks isn't heavy on science content...

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...so here's one I learned about from the very excellent Bright Ideas:  Learn Genetics, a site from the University of Utah.
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Cheers
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Ruth
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