Science 360

Science teachers are amazing. I have been working closely with six high school teachers in my district as a part of the Florida Digital Educator grant.  We coordinate digital projects as part of their pacing guides and curriculum maps.  Two of my six teachers’ students have just completed incredible original digital works. Most projects tend to be culminating activities to see how much the students understand, but our most recent effort was to introduce a unit on states of matter for Physics and cell structure for IB Biology. The students did the research, created citations downloaded editable clips from Discovery Education, muted the original narration, wrote scripts and then voiced over student understanding while creating an instructional video.  What a great experience.  The students were excited, they learned a lot and were totally engaged for 5 days. This is one of samples that blew me away – Cell Structure.  This “tuesdays” is dedicated to everyone who loves Science teachers.

A creative website

One of my sharing colleagues, Debbie, sent me this great site today and I just knew I had to share it with you.  Science 360 is where science teachers can get breaking science news from around the world and in-depth reports. Science 360 focuses on the latest developments in scientific research on a daily basis and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Each day a new “Chalk Talk” video is featured that could be easy used in the classroom.  They are graphic, easy to understand and engaging.  Today’s was on infrared and even I could understand it through video.  I like the way they literally use the look of “chalk” in the short vignette.  The site is organized into news from journals and magazines, picture of the day, The Discovery Files videos, breaking news, recovery stories and blogs to follow.  It is brilliantly designed and easy to navigate.  If you don’t teach science, please send this great site to your favorite science teachers today!

An image to share

Picture of the Day – Ice Waves

Image credit: U.S. Geological Survey

A proverb

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.” 

Edwin Powell Hubble, The Nature of Science, 1954 

An encouragement

I really see this compilation of science news and resources as an opportunity for science literacy. Students need exposure to real-world studies and real science. They get excited about science in the real world and all of these breaking news articles can be springboard to challenge-based learning. What if one of these hot topics became a class project that the students could actually solve. Not only would they be engaged and interested, they may actually be able to make a difference. Even if the teacher felt they did not have time to address these issues in class, exposing students to this material could possibly open a door of opportunities to countless new scientists. This site could take the place of a weekly reader or other supplemental materials and the best part is that it is FREE!  It’s the perfect place to combine science investigation, reading, writing and curiosity. I would like to encourage you to share this site with your students and put a little carrot out there for extra credit.  In Social Studies, current events have been a natural part of investigating history. Science 360 makes it just as natural for the scientific mind.

How do you do that?

How do you use Science 360?  Keep clicking. I was surprised to click on the Knowledge Network (a very tiny link next to Today’s Videos that is easy to miss). This area of the site is dedicated to the curious who are interested in the latest wonders of science, engineering, technology and math.  It’s the perfect STEM initiative complete with tons of FREE videos that can even be embedded on personal websites, blogs and social networking pages. Science 360 is proud to engage the general public, science junkies and students alike in the cutting-edge discoveries and big science stories of the day. Although most of the resources are public domain the terms of use does state that some multimedia and images may be subject to copyright so please be sure to check on each digital asset separately.  Thanks so much Debbie for sharing.  Please share with your colleagues and, of course, your students!

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

K