Science in the Classroom

While some of you may already run some version of Celestia on your computer, if you’re not, I encourage you to give it a try. Software download directories are regularly listing Celestia’s newer beta releases as they emerge and this particular program has really improved in recent years. Those of you that are using the software currently are likely checking out these releases already. Regular users should probably stick to the traditional version of Celestia, though you might want to check out Celestia Portable if you’re looking for a bit more flexibility in terms of portability. If Celestia isn’t your thing, you might be interested in some of the other planetarium software available out there as well.

Educreations' Interactive Whiteboard is great for teachers, who can use it to create video tutorials or animated lesson plans. Scientists in a forgotten era always loved to draw out mathematical formula data or vectors on a blackboard. This is a high-tech example of the same thing. It’s not a bad idea for coaches or managers either.

To help educators learn about the various ways to integrate data-collectiontechnology into their laboratory experiments, Vernier Software & Technology is offering free workshops this fall. Led by experienced Vernier trainers, each 4-hour, hands-on workshop provides seasoned educators the opportunity to hone their data-collection skills while teachers new to probeware learn and explore the basics. Each workshop will be conducted using Vernier’s award-winning LabQuest 2 technology.

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Great teaching tool. We spend more than 7.5 hours with technological devices every day, but most us don't know how they work, or how to make our own. For all the interactivity of these devices, we are bound to passive consumption. At littleBits, we believe we need to create scientific thinkers and problem-solvers, and interventions need to occur early. The time is ripe to create the pipe cleaner and the popsicle stick of the 21st century. littleBits consists of tiny circuit-boards with simple, unique functions engineered to snap together with magnets. No soldering, no wiring, no programming, just snap and play.

Discover a learning environment that goes beyond the LMS. Open to everyone. Easy to use. Completely free. OpenClass is a dynamic, scalable, fully cloud-based solution that stimulates social learning and the exchange of content, coursework, and ideas — all from one integrated platform. Of course it has all the LMS functionality needed to manage courses, but that’s just the beginning. OpenClass actually advances education by using social technology to encourage collaboration and communication for students, faculty, institutions, and administrators around the world. OpenClass also features an idea exchange that will make it easy to find and share the latest teaching approaches, educational content, and curriculum.

Total-Impact is a website that makes it quick and easy to view the impact of a wide range of research output. It goes beyond traditional measurements of research output -- citations to papers -- to embrace a much broader evidence of use across a wide range of scholarly output types. The system aggregates impact data from many sources and displays it in a single report, which is given a permaurl for dissemination and can be updated any time.

Printed timelines can only cover so much history, but the new Timeline Eons app for iOS covers literally billions of years worth of history starting with the Big Bang. And it does it in a really cool way. The Today in History option can help users to keep tabs on important events, though individuals can actually program in anniversary reminders if they purchase the full version. Even the free version has plenty of functionality though. Mobile device users can experiment with three trial events, though they’ll probably be more interested in the fact that they can browse all of Earth’s history for ten days.

SoftChalk: Award Winning Content Authoring Software for Educators in K-12, Colleges, Universities and Medical Programs to Create Interactive Lessons.

The Cultural Observatory is preparing to deploy a searchable database of over 740,000 scientific papers. The system, called Bookworm-Arxiv, allows users to search for a handful of keywords, and then returns a graph of the usage of those terms over time, providing insight into the origins and dissemination of certain schools of academic thought. Even better, because the repository itself is free and open, users can drill down into the various papers themselves for instant access.

instaGrok is an interactive learning tool, empowering self-directed learning and exploration on any topic.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) recently released a paper – Recent Developments in Planet Migration Theory (referenced below) that has some interesting implications for extrasolar planetary studies. I thought a brief discussion of this topic might be beneficial to those of you that are interested in learning more about:

• How planets and planetary systems are formed
• Why this is important to our understanding of planet–disc interactions, and the resulting planets’ orbital migration.