Friday, April 29, 2005

A Hawaiian Tradition

The flower lei that everyone associates with visiting the Hawaiian Islands has an annual festival of its own. The City and County of Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation presents the 78th Annual Lei Day Celebration on May 1.

Their website has photo galleries, historical background, links to lei making workshops, and much more.

Although not nearly as nice as winging it to the islands in person, consider making a virtual visit!

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Cool Cosmos

I've never quite understood all the various spectrums of light, including infrared. This latter is especially ironic since I, along with a lot of other folks, use infrared light nearly everyday of our lives. Most frequently, we are pointing handheld little plastic rectangles called "remote controls" at TVs, CD players, DVD players, and all sorts of gadgets and controlling them using infrared light.

It's been also amazing to see the incredible beauty of infrared out in space which the Hubble Telescope has shown us. The Cool Cosmos site has a tutorial about infrared astronomy which is both "educational" but beautiful, too. Take a look! Cool Cosmos is a great site and has much else to offer!

Thursday, April 21, 2005

New York Times Learning Network

Although I've been an online subscriber to the New York Times for years and years, I just stumbled upon an educational resource for students and teachers called: The New York Times Learning Network.

A wealth of news-related and curricular resources are here.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Seminars In Science -- Online Museum

Sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, Seminars In Science won the Museums of the Web 2005 competition in the "Best E-Services" category.

This is an online professional development site for teachers and has a number of courses it offers. The judges said:
The human touch in the interface gives nice feeling that the seminar is tutored ... by real humans and that the learner is interacting with real people.

The course service is well structured and the courses look interesting.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

African Life Through Art -- Online Museum

Indianapolis Museum of Art's Cycles: African Life Through Art site won in the 2005 Museums of the Web 2005 competition for the "Best Online Exhibition" category.

Some of the judges' comments included:
The design of this online exhibit is a piece of art itself. Beautiful and fun to explore.

A highly visually appealing and thought provoking site which provides a rich user experience through interactivity, text and images. A particular highlight is the 'context' link that a user can click on when viewing an object. The graphic elements also nicely enhance the content and navigational options available to the user.

The design is sophisticated and the navigation surprisingly straightforward while being somewhat non-traditional. Good use of music throughout. Excellent use of zooming capabilities on enlarged images for a great amount of detail. More detail than almost any other website that I've seen.

By the way, there was a runner-up in this category: Raid On Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704. Sponsored by Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, the Raid on Deerfield site was acknowledged as a site that....

...raises the bar for historical interpretation online. The site models the value of the whole that derives from a consideration of multiple perspectives. The designers have cast a magical spell that draws the user into another place, another time, another world where one finds truth painted in many shades of grey.

While innovative in many way, the navigation for the site can be confusing with up to 4 different menu areas available, and very little site context given to the visitor. It gets easy to lose where you are in the site.

In case you, like me, are unsure what the story is about Deerfield and the year 1704, the following from the website may whet your interest:

In the pre-dawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of about 300 French and Native allies launched a daring raid on the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, situated in the Pocumtuck homeland. 112 Deerfield men, women, and children were captured and taken on a 300-mile forced march to Canada in harsh winter conditions. Some of the captives were later redeemed and returned to Deerfield, but one-third chose to remain among their French and Native captors.

Was this dramatic pre-dawn assault in contested lands an unprovoked, brutal attack on an innocent village of English settlers? Was it a justified military action against a stockaded settlement in a Native homeland? Or was it something else?


Monday, April 18, 2005

Making The Modern World -- Online Museum

One of the winners in the 2005 Museums of the Web contest was Making the Modern World. This site won in the "best educational use " category. Their "about us" descriptive paragraph follows:
Making the Modern World brings you powerful stories about science and invention from the eighteenth century to today. It explains the development and the global spread of modern industrial society and its effects on all our lives. The site expands upon the permanent landmark gallery at the Science Museum, using the Web and dynamic multimedia techniques to go far beyond what a static exhibition can do.
As will be true for the majority of these "best" online museums, I will have only barely scratched the surface of what each collection offers. Even in my brief peek at Making the Modern World, I can see why it was judged as one of the best. The way the site is organized, designed, and the richness of the resources it offers is amazing.

Based in the UK, this site shows many of the changes and developments in industry, science, and technology that made tremendous changes in the world, particularly in what is often referred to as "western" culture and life. Absolutely worth exploring!

Friday, April 15, 2005

Top Notch Online Museum Sites

The site, Museums of the Web, has an annual contest to single out and acknowledge online museums of particular excellence.

I'm going to post some information and links to winners in the 2005 competition which were announced today.

Monday, April 11, 2005

You Know Someone Interested In Chemistry?

Well, if they're a kid -- or a kid at heart -- you might point them in the direction of an enlightening and well-presented site called Chem4Kids. Put together by Andrew Rader, this is definitely kid-oriented but the presentation and content is there and not put across in a talking-down or condescending way. You, too, can learn a lot!

Friday, April 08, 2005

A Class Divided

During a two-day workshop I attended, the presenters showed a video that was extremely interesting and memorable. Called "A Class Divided", it chronicled the story of a 3rd grade teacher, Jane Elliott at the Riceville, Iowa, Community Elementary School and what Ms. Elliott chose to do with her class of 3rd graders.

A day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Elliott felt it important to teach her students what it meant to experience discrimination. She prepared a lesson that gave and denied privileges to the kids in her class based on their eye color. One day the children with blue eyes were always at the front of the line, were able to use playground equipment, and were called on in class and reminded how smart they were. The following day roles reversed and the kids with brown eyes were the ones given a leg up.

A documentary was filmed about Ms. Elliott's experiment and that is the program we saw in our training. It was mesmerizing to watch the transformation in these kids as they gained or lost privileges, as those in the "down" position were made to wear collars that identified them as a member of the disenfranchised group.

A follow-up program was filmed some years later to track how this experience affected the children who lived it at the time and in the years that followed.

PBS's Frontline series has a website -- A Class Divided -- that shows this program and has other background materials about it. I strongly encourage you to watch it. It's probably a good idea for all of us to watch this powerful program every once in a while so as not to lose sight of the power of discouragement and disenfranchisement.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Got Any Issues With Your "Best Friend"

As many of you are, I'm the owner of the animal that is occasionally referred to as "man's best friend." That would be, of course, the dog.

In my case, it's a pure-bred chocolate lab -- Chip......get it...chocolate chip? Anyway, he's mostly a great dog but, whether due to his "pure" genes or just the luck of the draw in terms of the personality of the dog you adopt, he is quite excitable. Though 6 years old or so, he shows few signs of slowing down. Meeting new people (or canines, for that matter) puts him into quite a state of happiness, energy, and less than -- shall we say -- much self-discipline. He is trainable and is fine in the house and on casual walks, but visitors are always greeted with his terrifically energetic greeting.

For advice on some of the more challenging bits, I'm going to check out a site that might offer some help.....DogProblems. Looks like a winner!

Friday, April 01, 2005

April Fool's Day

Naturally, there is a website (well, not just one but about a gazillion) devoted to our hallowed tradition of April Fool's Day.

Check out Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Of All Time. What a blast to read!