CK-12 for Science and Math

CK-12 is a website that provides free textbooks that can be fully edited and are copyrighted such that you can republish them.  For me, that means I can distribute them to my Homeschool Connections students.  The copyright laws for online classes are far more strict than they are for face-to-face classes, including specific language about educational institutions needing to be accredited. (Homeschool Connections offers a variety of courses to supplement homeschoolers rather than a comprehensive curriculum so we really have no urgent need for accreditation.)

I've referenced the site for many years since they mostly have math and science content, though they do have English, History, and SAT prep as well.  Years ago I planned to use their ebooks and edit them for my anatomy and physiology courses, but I soon found I was editing more than I was keeping and so I wrote my own material using mostly Wikimedia to find images that I could republish.

I forgot about the site until I recently put together a middle school life science course.  Trying to decide what topics I should cover and how complex I needed to be (or not), I visited CK-12 again.  The site has been completely transformed and made into something far more useful than what it was.  Before it offered only complete books for entire courses, and while those are still available they have now broken everything down into topics.  They have and extensive list of Life Science topics geared towards middle school (the Biology link has topics at the high school level.)

Using the site I could easily identify, assemble, download, and distribute ebooks for my class.  I could edit them as well, though I would not say that is an easy process.  Yes, everything can be edited, from the title to the images to the text itself but you have to do it all online at the site.  Often something will look properly formatted on the site but appears quite different in the pdf--this is especially true if you edit images.  Online they appear before a paragraph while in the pdf they are after and I have yet to figure out what I need to do to adjust it.  Another drawback is that editing is very slow during high-volume times, typically school day mornings.  The third problem is that you supposedly are able to output the final product in 3 formats--pdf, mobi (for Kindle) and ePub (for iPad and Android.)  I have no problem getting the pdf shortly after requesting it (you are emailed a link from which you download the finished product) but I never receive links for the other two versions, ever.

Still, overall it has made putting customized science material together very easy.  When it comes to creating Life Science materials for a Catholic homeschool audience, customization is critical in some areas, and that is what made CK-12 so helpful. Here is an example of the ebook I distributed for the first class.

Diigo web 2.0

Diigo is a web 2.0 (social network) site designed to share bookmarks and lists.  You may have noticed I used to use Delicious and fed my bookmarks to the sidebar of this blog.  I have found Diigo to be much easier to use and much more powerful.  Besides being able to bookmark and tag websites and feed links to the blog, I am able to create list lists for science subjects like Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Science Interactives, and so forth.  I can add notes to websites that others in my network can see when they visit.  I can even highlight and annotate part of a website and send that to others in the network.  I am also able to create groups, like the At Home Science group I made, to which members can contribute and be emailed the latest posts as they are added, or daily, or weekly.

Diigo also has a very hand toolbar for bookmarking, highlighting and annotating websites.  I have buttons that take me to my library website or displays links in a sidebar.  If the toolbar is too much, you can drag the Diigolet to your links toolbar, then click on it whenever you want to save a website to your Diigo.



If you decide to use Diigo, be sure to follow me and join the group to send and receive great science links.  If you don't join, feel free to browse my public library and lists.

Cloud Study Week 2

The second week's activity was for the students to research and create a cloud classification system.  It was meant to be done as a Problem Based Learning exercise, but our kids did not do well with this approach at all.  The difficulty was that none of them were adept at extracting information from their book sources, so that only led to confusion when trying to pull things together as a group.  Ultimately I gave them each books to take home so that next week they could all bring back information they learn.

I have been looking for online resources for the kids to look at, too.  One of the best sites I have found is Windows to the Universe, which has a wealth of information for all fields of science. Their teacher resource section for Atmosphere and Weather has several activities relating to clouds.  It also has this nifty cloud viewer to print and use for classification.  We have decided to continue our co-op until the end of June so I can find some extension activities here if we finish the NASA packet.  The student page about clouds has a lot of great information for the kids to read.

Another site I got from Library of Books, Links and More: Crazy About Clouds was NOAA's JetStream--Online School for Weather section about clouds.  They have two interactive cloud charts (main page and classification page,) a pdf cloud observation log, and a cloud identification wheel to cut out and use.

Finally, I found a neat article about Luke Howard, the man who named the clouds.  It's from The Weather Notebook, a great resource from the Mt. Washington Observatory that is still available though stopped posting new material in 2005.

A site a just recently came across is NASA Virtual Skies.  This has all things aviation, from math, to physics, to weather, to technology.  It includes teacher resources as well.  I found great information on clouds including a chart of cloud map symbols.


Hopefully the kids will do a little better with the group dynamics once they all have some information under their belts.  I am going to read more about PBL from a teaching perspective to find some tips to encourage my students.

Free Smithsonian Online Conference

The Smithsonian Institute is offering Problem Solving with Smithsonian Experts, a series of free online conferences this month, several of which are science related.  Registration is required of just a basic form.

Each day they offer 3 related topics running 50 minutes each starting at 11 am, 12 pm, and 2 pm Eastern Time.  The second two days are science topics with
Unlocking the Secrets of the Universe on 4/28 and Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet on 4/29.

In looking at this site, I discovered Smithsonian Education, a web site dedicated to their educational resources.  It looks like something to check out!

My New Nature Study Blog: A Private Eye Nature

I have been so intrigued by incorporating The Private Eye into a comprehensive nature study that I have created a new blog dedicated to writing about it: A Private Eye Nature.

Admittedly our nature studies have never been much.  For whatever reason I never seemed to be able to make this into something regular and productive.  We love nature walks but never got much beyond that.  Drawing is not a strong suit for Ds#1 or Ds#2; we'll see about Ds#3.  Writing was a struggle for the older two as well until this year when some mystical switch flipped inside them, especially the oldest.  His creative writing has really impressed me!

Using the loupe, writing analogies, drawing, and asking why--the four basic steps--just seemed to make everything else come together.  It gave me a method from which to inspire the art and the writing.  It gave the boys something fascinating and hands-on to do.  I started the blog not just to record our endeavors, but to also write about tips and resources to help others interested in this approach.  Follow along and enjoy!

NASA Educators and DLN

If you haven't been to the NASA Educators web site, it is well worth a visit. This site is loaded with all kinds of helpful information. I just downloaded a 95 page packet on Optics that includes 14 different activities for kids in grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. And there's well over 100 publications available! Scroll down to where it says Find Teaching Materials to search or browse.

Besides the teaching guides, they have feature articles, images, podcasts, eClips (videos), student material, NASA's Kids Club online games, and other educational opportunities. You can register for a free MyNASA account to organize your personal resources on the very extensive site.

During one visit to the site, it had a box that linked to the Digital Learning Network (I have not seen the box again since.) On this site NASA offers free live web casts and, if you have the equipment, classroom video-conferences. It looks like you just click on the link when the webcast begins; right now it brings you to an empty chat room for that webcast. I'm interested to see one, the next one being March 10.

Journey North Update

We completed the first two weeks of data recording. From the beginning until the spring equinox, all you need to do is record sunrise and sunset data, calculate the photoperiod (amount of daylight), and graph the data. Photoperiod reveals the latitude of the mystery classes since it is different for every latitude yet constant along that latitude around the globe. This gives you several weeks to explore related concepts.

Week 1 we investigated globes, maps, and the longitude and latitude lines on them. This information is readily available in most atlases. The National Geographic Xpeditions site has a lot of great information and related activities. I printed a copy of the world map for each student and gave them coordinates to mark to show how longitude and latitude gives you a global location. I assigned the program Globes and Their Uses on Discovery Streaming. We also learned about dividing a circle into 360 degrees as part of this lesson. We used the diagrams from the program to illustrate.

Week 2 we investigated the Reasons for the Seasons, watching the video of the same name on Discovery Streaming, and reading the Let's Read and Find Out book. There's a nice interactive on Teacher's Domain, too. They figured out why classes 3 and 8 (both of which Ds#2 has) have photoperiods of 0 and 24 respectively and near the equator is 12 hours. From that they learned that photoperiod indicated latitude, that north of the equator the photoperiod was increasing, and south of the equator it was decreasing. I even caught two math errors in photoperiod because the trend didn't fit that pattern. And now that we have a line drawn on our graph, the overall pattern makes sense to them.

Journey North Time!

February 1st is when the next Journey North Mystery Class will start! Journey North is a series of seasonal projects by Annenberg Media. Most are related to migrations, and one is for gardening. Mystery Class is science, math, and geography all rolled into one!

Every Monday you look up the sunrise and sunset times for where you live and record the photoperiod (amount of daylight.) On Fridays you go to the website to look up the sunrise and sunset data for the mystery locations of 10 different cities around the world. Your objective is to find the longitude, latitude, city, and country of the 10 locations based on this data. What's really neat is graphing the data before and after the spring equinox.

This year I'll be doing this project as a class with the 5 kids ages 8 to 11 in our small homeschool co-op, and I'm really excited about it. The organizers asked for permission to use my blog graph image from last year, so I'll have to see if they actually were able to used it.

Immune Attack

Immune Attack is a downloadable game with outstanding graphics, detailed information, and engaging game play about the immune system.

The scenario that you will help a child with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID) by sending a nanobot, complete with probes, into her blood stream to teach her immune cells how to function again. This is immunology at the molecular level--pathogens, macrophage receptors, transmigration, and more. The immune system information is presented both in written and spoken form. It can be skipped over but not easily since it is integrated in with each mission.

This is a very large file that will take some time and storage to download and install, but that is because of it's amazing graphics. I am amazed at how much my 8 year old can tell me about immune function.

The game was created by the Federation of American Scientists. Below is the trailer on YouTube. One difficulty is that there are no instructions other than what the characters in the game tell you--and they don't tell you how to save the game. It's very frustrating having to start this complex game over again from the beginning each time!

Try Engineering

I found Try Engineering looking for some fun interactive games for my kids on the web. The site is for people interested in engineering careers and so has a lot of information about careers and schools.

Two tabs are of interest in our house. One is the Lesson Plans tab that has a long list of interesting engineering activities for either homeschool or co-op. You can download an 8 page pdf catalogue of all the available plans. The other is the Play Games tab. They have 4 interactive activities produced by the site--Bionic Arm Design Challenge, Questioneering, Design a Parachute, and PowerUp. They also have a good-sized list of other interesting engineering games. I showed this to Ds#2 just before he went to bed and now he can't wait to get on the computer in the morning!

BioEd Online

The latest great science web resource I found is BioEd Online and its companion site, K8 Science. The sites have news, presentations, slides, lesson plans, and teacher resources for biology. While the sites cover relatively few topics in biology, they still have a decent repository of good quality resource available for free.

The sites have a lot of information about laboratory techniques, including a sheep dissection video, measuring and counting with a light microscope, micropipetting, dilutions, and more. K8 includes some physical science topics as well. Despite their limited subject coverage, they have managed to put out quite a bit regarding embryonic stem cells; unfortunately they have no information regarding other sources of stem cells. They have a presentation on cloning, too.

Overall the sites are a great place to look for ideas or to supplement something you may be doing already.

The Eclipse in China

If you have not visited Jimmie's new web site, Jimmie's Collage, then you should check it out.

She's a homeschooling mom living in China so she got a great view of the eclipse. She has a fabulous blog entry about it here.

Molecularium interactive

I recently came across this interesting interactive, called the Molecularium, that is a great way to introduce kids to molecular structure and chemical notation.

When you follow the link you will want to click on the nanolab, the top button on the right, and then select the Build option.

Using 3 atoms--oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen--kids construct a series of common molecules. Mel, the computer, then gives a few facts about what they have made. Kids work their way through 3 levels plus a bonus round.

The Zoom activity views the earth at different distances, while the Transform activity shows water as a solid, liquid, and gas as the temperature changes, so there's not a lot to them. The home site showcases Digital Dome movies (shown in a planetarium) the project is producing.

Lesson Planning Web Resources

I've started my lesson planning for next year, so I dusted off some of web sites I find most useful for finding educational material. I find all sorts of lesson plans, animations, interactive sites, video clips, and more through these sites.

I list them all in this post from my homeschool blog Science of Relations.

Happy planning!

Bugscope session: Wow!

Today we had our last day of co-op. I taught Hands-on Science to a group of ten 6 to 8 year olds that finished up with our live Bugscope session!

The details to reserve time on the scanning electron microscope are at the website. We collected bug and mailed them out last week. The folks at Bugscope (I believe they are grad students studying various small arthropods) mount them and are then available for live chat during the session. You can have up to 20 computers logged in; we had 4. Below are some of the images we were able to manipulate--center, zoom, focus--from our computers.


While only one computer at a time has control, you can type questions from any of them. The grad students were great! And this fidgety class of rambunctious kids were fascinated for the full hour that we had reserved. They seemed to love it more than the older kids that wandered in late in the session.

This is something our co-op will certainly do again next year!

Windows to the Universe

Windows to the Universe is a wonderfully rich web site put together by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research at the University of Michigan is not only a source for a wealth of astronomy information, but for a lot of general science with some social science and history as well. And content is still being added.

One of the more intriguing features for registered users (free) is the ability to create online journals. I as a teacher create an account and enter in one or more "classroom" names. My kids can then register to create their own journals linked to my "classroom."

Once they create a journal, they of course can type in their own text, plus they can browse the site to add graphics and links with as little as two clicks (the journal is restricted to links and images from that site only.) I can create a "public" journal for my kids to read, or an assignment for them to complete using their journals. You can even print them out to keep.

Living Media: ExploreLearning Gizmos

offers a one year $149 subscription, or $97 if you buy through Homeschool Buyers Co-op of over 400 math and science simulations called Gizmos. For the price you get an extensive offering of really great math and science simulations.

Gizmos are grouped by subject (math or science) and grade (3 to 5, 6 to 8, and 9 to 12.) Within each subject and grade are topics, like Life Science, Physical Science, Earth and Space Science, and so on (or Number & Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, and Data Analysis & Probability for math.) Each topic has subtopics, each of which have half a dozen or so Gizmos. They require either Flash or Shockwave players, both of which are free.

While each Gizmo comes with an Exploration Guide and assessment questions, my kids love to just play with the various simulations, even science ones geared toward high school. When done with the guides and assessments, though, the topics are rigorously covered, especially from 6th grade on, making Gizmos well worth using as a spring board for lesson planning.

Gizmos are colorful but not flashy, make sounds but are not noisy. Many are intuitive to use making them great for both formal lessons or fun exploration. The site offers an anonymous 5 minute free pass or you can register for a free 30 day trial.

By the way, read my Living Media post on Science of Relations, my homeschool blog, if you are curious about the label.

Bugscope

Would you like a chance to look at bugs through a scanning electron microscope? My boys would, and Bugscope gives kids that chance. After signing up ("Home School" is one of the radio button options under "School Information") they will contact you to confirm the 1 hour time slot. Then you send them bugs that you want to view in the SEM.

I signed up our homeschool coop since I am about to teach a Beginner's Microscopy class. I am hoping to schedule the hour for the last Thursday in April, our last day of class. One of the advantages of homeschooling is that we could book the session in the summer if April doesn't work.

I sure hope we thaw here earlier enough to get some interesting bugs to them in time should we get that April date!

Google Earth's New Features

Google Earth 5.0 is now available, and continues to be a free download. One neat new feature is ability to explore the ocean. Other features include historical images and virtual tours. Here is an introduction to the new features.

If exploring the earth is not enough, you can explore the surface of Mars as brought to you by Google with the help of NASA imagery. Here is an explanation of how it works.