Education Technology

Gaza 3D is a very cool project that recreates the Great Pyramids in 3D online to view in your web browser.   It is a collaboration between the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Harvard University, and Dassault Systems (who make lots of great products including CATIA CAD systems).

The project is historically accurate and based on scholarly data. Documents from an expedition at the Giza pyramids were digitized and used to create the simulation.



There is a guided interactive tour on the site through 10 different areas on the Giza plateau with photos, object galleries and links to historical documents. You can zoom around the areas and click on object for more information.



This is a great resource for teachers and students studying the Great Pyramids in history or engineering classes to be able to explore them online. There is a tremendous amount of information here and it is a fun way to explore the Giza plateau.

Check it out: http://giza3d.3ds.com/#discover



Technical Note: You have to download a plugin to use it (the site will link you to it) and on Mac you will need to use Firefox in 32-bit mode. A broadband internet connection is also strongly recommended.

WhatWasThere is an excellent resource for geography, history, and fun. It connects historical photos to Google Maps, letting you see what places looked like in the past. You can tour locations, browse photos and even upload your own historical photos.



This is a great way to explore the world historically, or just take a look at what your hometown looked like in the past. Social Studies, History, and Geography classes could use this as learning activities or projects.

Here is a photo of the Frisbee Pie Company from the early 1900's. Their pie plate throwing contest led to the original Frisbee.

PowerPoint Palooza is a site that has over 220 PowerPoint presentations from teachers and students on History and Social Studies topics, that you can download and edit and use in your classroom (just give credit to the original creator).

This is a great resource for teachers and students to find some presentations on different topics in history. While I don't advocate teaches do lots of lecture, they can be used effectively in a classroom.

The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) World Factbook is an incredible resource about the countries of the world. It's free and available online and you can also download a copy for offline viewing and access. Older versions (back to 2000) are also available, which can be good for history teachers looking for older information.

The site has information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. The Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.. It's a great resource to find out information about the countries of the world and the CIA is constantly updating it.

Check it out and share it with your students. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

NationStates is a nation simulation game that allows you to create your own country with your own politics and ideas and then care for its people, "or oppress them".

You can also interact with other countries, participate in a type of united nations, and run your country as you see fit. There is a news and forum section also to share and get ideas and information.

This is a great way for students to really explore politics and government.

Here's a spotlight page on one of the countries.

National Geographic has released new images of the wreckage site of the RMS Titanic. The images are mosaics, made up of thousands of images from sonar and photos, in high res. It shows everything as a whole, versus small individual areas.

The images are available in the print edition of National Geographic, on their website, or in the iPad edition of the magazine.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/titanic/titanic-photography

These images are a great resource for teachers and students studying the tragedy.

At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” R.M.S. Titanicdisappeared beneath the waves, taking with her 1,500 souls. One hundred years later, new technologies have revealed the most complete—and most intimate—images of the famous wreck.

Source: The Verge




Related:

Wind Power interactive - great resource from NatGeo

National Geographic Education - teacher resources

Sea Monsters - Nat Geo - ancient sea creatures

Animal Facts from Nat Geo - great resource

Pearltrees is a great, free site I wrote about in January that lets you organize web content in a visual pattern. There is a Chrome browser extension that makes it easy to add sites to your tree. Trees can be shared and even worked on collaboratively.

Panoramic Views of 7 Wonders of the World is a great resource for sharing these great places with students. The panoramic views are wonderful and very easy to use on your computer. You can change your view just by moving your cursor around.

Each image only takes about 30 sec to load and then you are ready to go.

This is a great way to show students some wonderful things in the world without having to go through airport security (or take out a 2nd mortgage for the trip).