Eclectic Technology

There are so many great science resources online that it can be hard to keep track of them. This post provides a list of 50 websites, and each one includes an overview of the site. The websites are geared across the sciences and across many age groups.  You will find resources for:

* Astronomy

* Cell Biology

* Subatomic Particles

* Earth Science

* Geology

* Physics

* Chemistry

* Biology

and many more.

Some may be new to you and quickly become a favorite resource, and others may be old friends. If you teach science or just love science have fun exploring this robust list of resources. 

The Big History Project is a free, online social studies course for secondary students. The website states that it is:

* 100% open, online curriculum and content; easy to download, print, share

* Ready-made lesson plans, inline teaching guidance and support

* Custom designed content including videos, texts, comics, and animations

* Easily tailored specific state standards and instructional approaches

* Aligned to Common Core ELA standards for 9/10th grade

The course is split into two time periods:

* Section 1: Formations and early life: Theories and evidence of origins of the Universe, planet formation, elements, and life.

* Section 2: Humans: The development of humans, civilizations, and key milestones in our progress.

To access materials you will need to register for the site. If you want some previews of the site you will find a video that discusses how the first part of the course was designed, a video that provides an overview of the 8 major thresholds in the Big History Project, a sample main talk from one unit, a PowerPoint presentation to show to your school or parents, and a Teaching Guide (which you can download at https://course.bighistoryproject.com/media/homepagemedia/CourseGuide.pdf).

What is the best way to flip a classroom? Perhaps it is not showing videos first, but allowing the student to experiment first and then watch videos or read material. This study shows that students experimented first had substantial improvement in performance.

This study used a specific "new interactive tabletop learning environment, called BrainExplorer, which was developed by Stanford GSE researchers to enhance neuroscience instruction." Based on the use of this environment students did better exploring first. The experiment is described and data is shared in this article and it shows that the group who experimented first had a significant improvement in their final score.

There is an explanation as to why they chose the field of neuroscience as their goal (quoted from post below):

“Part of our goal,” the researchers write, “is to create low-cost, easy-to-scale educational platforms based on open source, free software and off-the-shelf building blocks such as web cameras and infrared pens so that our system can be easily and cheaply deployed in classrooms.”

The article also notes that this 'many educational researchers and cognitive scientists have been asserting for many years: the “exploration first” model is a better way to learn.'

This site organizes many of the free reosurces available through various federal agencies. Subjects covered include Art and Music, Health and Phys Ed., Language Arts, Math, Science, World Studies, U.S. History Topics, and U.S. Time Periods.

Resources include lesson plans, animations, primary documents, photos and videos. 

PBS has great resources, and this post provides links to five math lessons as well as short descriptions and grade levels. Click through to find links to the following lessons:

* Using Recipes for Fractions (Lesson Plan and Video)

* Re-roofing Your Uncle's House Interactive Game

* Cake Designer Video

* Area of Circles with Dive Dog Interactive Game

* Dunk Tank: Area of Squares and Rectangles (Video and Interactive Games)

What could your students create in 6 seconds with Vine? More than you might think. This post by Shelly Terrell shares over 22 ideas to help get your students creating Vines as well as information that is key to being successful. One example...did you know that students must be over 17 to have a Vine account? This means that most teachers would have to create a classroom account (and probably check your Acceptable Use Policy and get parents permission). The good news is that you can create an account that would only allow parents and students from your classroom to view the Vines.

Many additional resources are shared within the post including a recorded webinar by Turrell and also download her slides.

Finding great videos to use in class may be time consuming. This post provides links to 40 sources for education videos, and best of all, this is a curated list. Each source in the list is a hot link and a brief description is included.

Chances are you will find a few new sites in this lengthy list of websites, as well as ones you may have used in the past!

TeachThought asked readers to take a survey and many requested resources for Common Core. This is their first post that provides a wide range of resource for English, Math and Science. Each section is split into three sections: Articles, Journals and Videos...so if you are looking for some resources that have been vetted this might be a good place to begin.                                                          

The folks at Fractus Learning have taken a look at videos available at Open Culture and selected six to share (although many more are available). The choices here include:

* The Rap Guide to Evolution

* The Periodic Table of Chemistry

* A Universe from Nothing

Videos are a great tool to use with students. Although this post specifically deals with science videos across the disciplines are available at Open Culture (http://www.openculture.com/).

Richard Byrne has put together a great list of 10 websites that provide excellent videos for science. Sites include:

* The Spangler Effect from Steve Spangler Science (demonstrations of science experiments)

* Gooru - a website that has been mentioned in this Scoop.it. "Gooru is a service that aims to provide teachers and students with an extensive collection of videos, interactive displays, documents, diagrams, and quizzes for learning about topics in math and science." If you have not taken the opportunity to check out Gooru it is worth your time.

* MIT Tech TV which has thousands of videos.

More information on these sites and seven additional sites is available in the post!