Nothin’ Fancy: Science with Everyday Items

You don’t always have to buy a kit or make a trip to the hardware store to do cool science experiments at home; if you’ve got vinegar, baking soda, pennies and plastic bottles, you’ve probably already got what you need to do a Mad Science Experiment from Reeko Science.

Projects are labeled easy, medium or hard and are sorted by a dozen different science topics- from electricity and chemical reactions to light and sound. The site is well organized, very informative, and written with a sense of humor (though the jokes can get a little tiresome). Although older kids can probably understand and do most of the easy experiments on their own, the site is designed to have adults and kids work together; most experiments include Advanced Notes for parents and teachers that explain more details about the science involved.

The Reeko Science site is filled with science facts, statistics and hidden messages to decode. The Fun Stuff section is a little confusing (I didn’t understand some of the instructions), but Resources has some good links and a great glossary.

What are we preparing our kids for?

I happen to be among some very fortunate people whose kids are in one of the best public school systems in the country. I also happen to work in education and love and respect many teachers who truly know how to help children discover the world around them. So, I have no reason to be down on education in general, except that I suspect that the vast majority of families are not so fortunate. In fact, there are lots of signs that there is a huge disconnect between the goals of public education system as a whole and the actual needs of individuals, businesses, countries, and perhaps the whole human race.

There is an enlightening (and funny) video of Sir Ken Robinson at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. "“It’s education that’s meant to take us into this future that we can’t grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue … what the world will look like in five years’ time, and yet we’re meant to be educating them for it.” - he says. So what are we preparing our kids for?

Free Games, Free Learning, Free Rice

Do you know what lorgnette means? Can you identify Belgium on a map? For every right answer you’ll donate 10 grains of rice to feed hungry people across the world- and it doesn’t cost you anything. In a partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, FreeRice is a non-profit website whose sponsors donate money to the United Nations World Food Program to buy rice for the hungry. Every time you get a right answer, you earn ten grains of rice. It might not sound like much, but it adds up pretty quick- in just 2 minutes playing the grammar quiz, I earned 210 grains.

English vocabulary is the default game, but other subjects are available including art, chemistry, geography, math, and several foreign languages. Questions get harder as you play, and any questions you get wrong will come up again later to give you another chance. The rice bowl next to the playing screen fills as you play and keeps track of how much rice you’ve earned.

So test your knowledge of the periodic tables or brush up on your Italian while supporting a good cause. And did I mention it’s free?

Go Go Google Educators!

Although designed for teachers and formal educators (and to promote their own web tools, of course), Google For Educators is a great resource for parents, babysitters, and anyone else who has time to create fun learning projects with kids. Computers and technology applications provide wonderful opportunities not only to connect with children through tools that are almost second-nature to them, but also give us opportunities to help kids see beyond the everyday ordinary and social uses of technology tools to discover how these same tools can help them expand their perception and understanding of the larger world- and in doing so, we also learn new things.

I particularly like the section on Geo Education, which gives suggestions on how to use Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp to enhance learning. In Google Earth you can look at detailed photos of an area and compare those images to descriptions in a book to see how a region has developed and changed over time, you can use Google Sky to track the movement of stars in the sky or explore the solar system, and one physics teacher even used Google Maps to help his 9^th grade class learn about speed and velocity by creating maps of bus routes.

Google For Educators gave me some new ideas on how to enhance teaching with free internet tools, but it also reminded me of how I can use these resources for my own learning, and how much more I can deepen my own experiences with literature, science, geography, and history. I will certainly be exploring these tools more- both for students and for myself!

Have you or your child used Google tools or other free online resources to enhance learning experiences? Leave comments and share your ideas!

Can you pivot?

Watch out, Pixar, there is a new star on the horizon: YOU!

Well, maybe Pixar animators don't all have to run home to post their resumes online yet, but animation doesn't get any easier than with the free Pivot stickfugure animation tool. With a tool like this - who knows, YouTube fame might be just around the corner.
Pivot is an animation tool that works ony with sticks and circles, but you might be sirprised at just how much can be created just with those basics - one of the kids in icamp (disclosure: commercial interest) created a 60-second movie about the Battle of Agincourt.
The basic skill involves starting with a default stickfigure, and moving the red anchor points to position the limbs for the next frame, and clicking "next frame." And again. And again.


If your animation is set at 10 frames per second (fps), a setting which you can change, and you want your movie to be 30 seconds, well, do the math: you have to click through 300 frames. It definitely makes one appreciate the work that goes into a WALL-E or Cars.
After you create your first masterpiece, you will likely end up with a fairly large file in AVI format. It will be fine for a CD or a thumb drive, but if you want to email it you wil need to use a compression utility to reduce its file size. But that's a topic for another post.
Once you learn the basics, here are some ideas to explore:

• Try to get fine control over the speed of movement - the distance you move your anchor points in between frames affects the speed of movement in the movie;
• Explore additional pre-loaded shapes (File / Load Figure Type);
• Give your movie a more interesting setting by using a scenic photo or a picture of your best friend's house;
• Explore more shapes, movies, tips, and tricks at http://www.droidz.org/

Enjoy.

Television, computer, paintbrush...

In a 2007 MIT course handout, Dr. Mitchell Resnick asks which one of these three things is not like the other. The answer, he says, should be "Television," though too often it is "Paintbrush." The point is that computers are often seen as a detriment for kids, or at best something that needs to be minimized. That's strange.

I get it to some extent. Kids' stores are full of games and toys that tend to kill imaginative play because they tell the story for you: all the words, sound effects, movements, shapes, and personalities, and even play buddies are built in at the moment of purchase. It's scary for parents too: bestselling video games are full of violence, Internet is full of scams and pitfals, home computers crash and burn, annihilating your latest photo collection. And yet, since their advent, computer technologies have spurred some of the most intensely creative, imaginative environments ever. The catch is that this play has been reserved for adults, and usually those adults professionally involved in the feild of technology.

Sure, we all (well, most of us) have made snazzy Powerpoint slides and swanky spreadsheets. We may have even done some cruel Photoshop voodoo to our friends. But when was the last time you actually created something from scratch? How do we let the kids into this world of invention? How do the rest of us get into this club?

I think there are tons of ways to let the computer be more like a paintbrush for the uninitiated. This blog is about finding answers to these questions, one little byte at a time.