Education Technology

Discovery Education has a lot of great resources for educators, many free (over 30). They also have fee-based services such as DE Streaming with thousands of videos, audio files, images, lesson plans, and much more.

The Discovery Education Science Techbook is more than a digital textbook. "It’s a different way of thinking. Thinking outside the box, perhaps. Or more appropriately, thinking outside the book." "The Techbook not only provides awesome content aligned to each state’s standards (there are currently Science Techbooks available for most grades K-8 in 30 states across the U.S.), but includes a model lesson for teachers to use with every concept, assessment questions for each standard, a teacher’s guide, and DVDs for when the Internet is not available. Resources such as the virtual labs, reading passages, video segments, science sleuths, explorations, and interactive glossary, etc., are packaged together to follow the five E model of instruction. Teachers have found an easier and creative way to build lessons using technology resources and content, as well as differentiating their classroom."

Physion is free Physics simulation software that can be used by educators to create physics simulations for their class or by students to create physics simulations to explore concepts or as part of a project. The teacher can even create experiments for the students to use in class (virtual labs).

You use the included tools to create physical objects, including gears, and joints (springs and pulleys) that obey the laws of the Physics. It is similar to software I used as an engineer.

Below is a video that shows how it works. It's easy to use and fun. Students can use it to explore all kinds of concepts on their own, as well as using teacher created simulations. It can be used on Windows and Linux OS's. A Mac OS version is in development.





Here is a video showing some of the complex simulations you can create using it:



This is a great resource for physics teachers to create virtual labs and investigations, as well as a tool for students to explore physics concepts and create their own labs. There are also scenes that others have created that you can download and use.

The site has a Wiki and Forums to find help and ideas.

Physion: http://physion.net/


Related:

PhET - excellent, free, virtual labs and simulations for science

Wonderville is a great, free site I just learned about from an article in Tech & Learning magazine. Wonderville is an award winning site that has interactive science activities that are fun and educational. There are over 30 games on Wonderville that help students learn about science while having fun. There are also puzzles, activity sheets and crosswords, videos exploring real-life applications of science and behind the scenes looks at science careers. The site even has some fun comics that entertain while teaching science facts.

The materials are very good, available for a wide range of grade and ability levels and cover many areas of science. There are also pages for students, families, and teachers to help you use the site and materials.



Related:

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Resources 

Virtual Labs is a collection of 4 virtual labs from South Dakota State University (SDSU) and New Mexico State University (NMSU). The 4 virtual labs are: Testing for Corn Mold, Disposable Lab Equipment, Gram Staining and Using the Microscope.


These labs are a great way to teach high school and college students some basic lab techniques before actually doing the lab. They are also a good substitute if your school does not have the ability to actually do these labs. The labs start with a scenario (why they are doing this) in a realistic setting, and then proceed to teach the lab step-by-step. They are well designed and a great resource.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has some great, free, educational games that teachers can use with their students.

There are over 25 different games and interactive activities that cover topics about water, air, the oceans, environmental issues and ocean life. Many of the games and activities are hosted on other sites, but gathered here for easy access



WaterLife: Where Rivers Meet the Sea is a game based on the ecosystem of a United States west coast estuary. It helps students learn about estuaries, food webs, and why estuaries are essential to ocean life and to humans.

This is a great way to have students learn about the oceans, air, and the environment while having fun playing a game.

NASA PlanetQuest is a very interesting site from NASA that has links and resources about NASA's search for new planets outside of our solar system. There are multimedia resources, links, videos, photos, news, blogs from scientists, and much more.


The site also has six very cool interactives that would be great in the classroom: Extreme Planet Makeover (create your own planet), PlanetQuest timeline (history of exoplanet speculation and exploration), Alien Safari (learn about bizarre and extreme organisms found on Earth), Interstellar Trip Planner (plan a trip to outer space), Alien Fact or Fiction quiz, and 3D Guide to the Galaxy, which lets you explore our galaxy in 3D. These are fun and educational and can be used in a variety of classrooms as projects.



There is also a page on Education that includes more resources and links to learn more about space exploration and the search for planets.

This is another excellent resource from NASA.



Check it out: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/



Related:

NASA Speakers Bureau

NASA - Find lots of great educational resources from NASA here

EngineerGuy is a very cool site by Bill Hammack. He explores and explains technology and the human side of technology, in videos and radio pieces, along with some books.

He teaches at the University of Illinois, was a US Diplomat (Senior Science Adviser at the Department of State), and has received awards for his work.

The videos and radio shows have explored nanotechnology, smart phones, mood rings, new inventions, light bulbs, smoke detectors, the accelerometer in a smart phone and much more. The videos are well done, explain the technology in an easy to understand way, and are very interesting.



The videos are a great way to learn about technology and different topics, as well as to share with your students. The videos can be viewed on his site (they are hosted on YouTube) and you can also listen to his radio shows and read different white papers he has written.

I will be using some of the videos as introductions to topics or to get my students engaged and excited about some topics.


Check it out: http://www.engineerguy.com/


More great STEM Resources.

As a science teacher, NASA is an incredible resource for me. NASA has tons of great, free, educational resources that are also good for any subject.


NASA also has a speakers bureau that will provide engineers, scientists, and other professionals to speak to audiences around the country. You can also request an astronaut to come and speak to your class. It is free, but there are some conditions. It is an easy process.

Have some exciting, knowledgeable speakers come to your school, for free, and educate and motivate your students.



NASA Speakers Bureau

NASA - Find lots of great educational resources

Discovery Education Science Techbook is an incredible resource for educators. It's more than a digital textbook. "It’s a different way of thinking. Thinking outside the box, perhaps. Or more appropriately, thinking outside the book." "The Techbook not only provides awesome content aligned to each state’s standards (there are currently Science Techbooks available for most grades K-8 in 30 states across the U.S.), but includes a model lesson for teachers to use with every concept, assessment questions for each standard, a teacher’s guide, and DVDs for when the Internet is not available. Resources such as the virtual labs, reading passages, video segments, science sleuths, explorations, and interactive glossary, etc., are packaged together to follow the five E model of instruction. Teachers have found an easier and creative way to build lessons using technology resources and content, as well as differentiating their classroom."

It is not just a PDF or other media file with links. It is an entire ecosystem of lesson resources for educators to use in their classroom. It's not free, but neither are print textbooks or iBooks, and the DE Science TechBooks are ready, aligned to standards, and in use in thousands of classrooms around the country.

It has been available for Middle School for quite some time and is now debuting for High School. There is a webinar on May 29th that will debut the high school version. Check out the details below.

Discovery Education is ready to go to High School with the introduction of the Discovery Education Science Techbook for Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Earth & Space Sciences. Join us to learn more about each course as we take a quick dive in to the resources and instructional strategies used to develop this amazing textbook replacement.

Ready for High School?.... We Are!
Join us for the debut of Discovery Education Science Techbook for High School Educators Webinar
May 29th, 2012
6:00PM EDT
To Register or join the webinar please visit:
https://discoveryed.webex.com/discoveryed/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=630360655

Nature Works Everywhere is a great, free site from The Nature Conservancy and Discovery Education. The site has resources to help learn about how nature works and the fact that nature is a factory, making many of the things we need.



There is an interactive online game that helps students discover the connections between everyday items and nature's resources, interactive lesson plans about topics like pollinators, forestry, coastal erosion and more, videos about how nature works to benefit us and how we can preserve nature, and a section about scientists working to preserve nature and keep it productive. There are even some virtual field trips.

Check it out and share it with your colleagues: http://www.natureworkseverywhere.org/



Related:

Tons of Great Resources from Discovery Education

Great Resources from Discovery Education 

Turfmutt - environmental lessons and resources

ScienceFix is a great resource for science teachers, or anyone interested in science. It is targeted towards middle school, but can be used at different levels. It is run by a science teacher.

It has science lessons, links, video demonstrations and web projects on science. There are a lot of great resources here. The video demonstrations alone are great to use as an engagement tool, or as part of a lesson. You can browse or search for lessons and resources. The site also encourages comments and discussions about the resources.



Check it out: http://www.sciencefix.com/

The OSA Foundation (Optical Society of America foundation) has some excellent, free resources for educators on the topics of light, optics, lasers, and waves. 

Science Friday is a great site and radio show that explores different science topics. The site has news, articles, links, resources, videos, and even lesson plans for teachers (created by the New York Hall of Science).

Topics include all areas of science, politics and science, health, environment, physics, biology and much more. You can even call into the radio show on Friday's.

It's a great resource for teachers and students to learn more about science and see some of the current events and news relating to science.

Wired has an article that includes some great, easy, simple Physics demos, with descriptions and videos, that can be used by any teacher to demonstrate some Physics concepts. While the demo's are simple, they really show the concept well and can get students more engaged in the topic.



Demo topics include inertia and momentum, light and color, center of mass and friction, acceleration, fluids, circular motion and more. Each demo has a description, the concept behind it, and how to do it.



Wired is also a great site to follow, with technology, science, gadgets, and more among the topics it covers.




Related:

Great Physics Resources for Students and Teachers
Awesome Livebinder of Physics Resources

Little Shop of Physics is a great resource on Physics. It's an outreach program from Colorado State University that won a Google RISE Award. The program teams is a group of science educators and science students based at Colorado State University that help students do science in creative ways.

The site has some great links, experiment and activity ideas and more, including some webinars.

It's great for any science teacher to get some great, creative ideas for teaching science.





Related:

Great Physics Resources for Students and Educators

Viscosity Explorer is a simple site that allows you to explore the concept of viscosity. It consists of two containers and two steel balls. You select the liquid you want in the container, then drop the ball and observe what happens. You can also change the temperature of the liquid. Students can easily compare the viscosity of two different substances side by side.

It's a great site for science classes, and much faster, cheaper, and less messy than doing this for real. I would, however, want to at least demo the real liquids and pour them from container to container to show how the flow of the fluids is different based on the viscosity.




Related:

PhET - excellent, free, virtual labs and simulations for science

Jamie and Adam TESTED is a site from Mythbusters Jaime and Adam. The site explores new breakthroughs and topics in science and engineering, exploration, nature, emerging technologies and new products. They explore these topics in depth, including the hows and whys about them.

There are articles, links, videos and much more about all these topics. It's a great resource for STEM classes to get topic ideas, research, news, and to learn some cool things. There are even some pretty cool how-to videos and articles to do some pretty interesting things.



I've found some great things to use with my Physics classes and gotten some great ideas for projects.

Check it out and share it with your students and colleagues. http://www.tested.com



Related:

STEM Resources for Educators

Head Rush - fun science show from Discovery with great website

The NASA Space Shuttle is retired and the fleet is being sent to museums for display. National Geographic is releasing some very cool, detailed, panoramic images of Discovery.  You can see a few of them below. These are a great way to explore the space shuttles and learn more about them.

To provide an unprecedented look at Discovery and the other retired space shuttles, both inside and out, photographers with National Geographic recently captured more than two dozen ultrahigh-resolution, 360-degree pictures of each orbiter.

Related:

NASA Resources for Educators

National Geographic Resources for Educators 

The Science Muse is a great site for finding science resources to use in class. The resources are organized by grade (K-5 and 6-8), topic (Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science), searchable, lesson of the day, and much more.

There are lesson ideas and resources, lesson plans from other teachers, and much more.

This is a great resource if you teach science in any way in your classroom.

My GCSE Science is a site that has video lessons and resources on Biology, Chemistry and Physics. They were developed for a specific curriculum and program, but can be used by anyone for these topics.

The videos are good and there are notes pages that go with them. The notes pages have images from the video along with space to write your own notes. The video listing has the length of the video also.

They are organized by subject and topic and the videos are hosted on YouTube.

This is good for students to use for review, missed work, and help, and for teachers to use in class or for absent students.

Here's some of the Chemistry and Physics videos. Click on the video or "Learn" to get to the video. "Notes" brings you to the PDF notes for the video.