Letterboxing

LETTERBOXING is an intriguing pastime combining navigational skills (something like Geocaching) and rubber stamp artistry in a charming "treasure hunt" style outdoor quest. A wide variety of adventures can be found to suit all ages and experience levels.

Letterboxing combines hand-carved stamps, treasure hunting and usually a scenic, outdoor place and a hike or walk. Each letterboxer has their own logbook and signature stamp. Each hidden letterbox also has a logbook and a stamp. Clues to the locations of the boxes are posted on the internet, and once you find the box, you stamp its logbook with your stamp and then stamp your logbook the stamp from the box. So you got to see a special location or go on a fun hike, and get a little art at the end of it!

A number of BC Letterboxes have been set up - some may be in your region.

More Video Sources

Digital video sources can be a powerful instructional tool in your classroom. Many teachers use YouTube, Google Video and TeacherTube, and here are a few more that may help.

• Teacher’s Domain focuses primarily on science related topics. The site also offers free online professional development opportunities.
• NASA Video Gallery offers space and astronomy video clips as well as podcasts on a variety of astronomy topics.
• National Geographic Video offers a variety of topics spanning nature, the environment and the people and places of the world.
• Ease History specializes in video and photographs to support the learning and teaching of U.S. history.
• CBC Digital Archive contains nearly 12 000 historical archives from CBC radio and television broadcasts covering topics ranging from Arts & Entertainment to War and Conflict. It also features historical interviews from interesting people of Canadian and International acclaim. It has a special “For Teachers” section with educational materials for activities from grades 6 – 12.

Photoshop Express - online graphic editing tool

There are a number of free online graphic editing tools (Pixenate, FotoFlexer, FlauntR, SnipShot, Picnik to name a few) and Adobe has launched Photoshop Express as their contribution to this collection. The public beta release of Photoshop Express is available for users to test for free as of today.

WorldWide Telescope

I recently watched a TED Talk about a new Microsoft project called the WorldWide Telescope. Just as Google Earth opened up the world to explorers, the WorldWide Telescope will bring other galaxies to our computer monitors. This free download is scheduled to be launched later this spring.
This will be worth following.

Three Free Online Telescopes

Bradford Robotic Telescope: www.Telescope.org
Telescope: 14-inch-diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands
Field of view: From the north celestial pole to 52 degrees south
Pictures back in: Days, sometimes weeks
Results: 1,056 x 1,027-pixel color or black-and-white JPEGs
Cost: Free

Micro-Observatory: mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/MicroObservatory
Telescope: 6-inch-diameter Maksutov
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Amado, Arizona
Field of view: Northern celestial hemisphere to 48 degrees south
Pictures back in; Days, often overnight
Results; 650 x 500-pixel black-and-white GIFs
Cost; Free

Seeing in the Dark: www.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/explore-the-sky
Telescope: 14-inch-diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain
Location: Mayhill, New Mexico
Field of view: Northern celestial hemisphere to about 45 degrees south
Pictures back in: Days to weeks
Results: 512 x 512-pixel black-and-white JPEGs
Cost: Free

from http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/st_telescopes

MIT Physics Faculty: Walter H. G. Lewin

Walter Lewin is a physics professor at MIT and has a reputation of entertaining and delighting his students with displays and explanations of physics. Check out his free video lectures at http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty/walter_lewin.html

MIT Physics Faculty: Walter H. G. Lewin

WebExhibits

Founded in 1999, WebExhibits is an interactive, web-based museum that challenges visitors to think and explore scientific and cultural phenomena in new ways. Using innovative and intuitive data interface designs and multimedia content, WebExhibits helps visitors formulate questions and examine issues from several points of view. The success of WebExhibits has led to collaborations with museums around the globe.

PHYSICS RESOURCES

Physics to Go
A collection of more than 600 websites that you can search or browse to explore physics on your own. It's also a biweekly online magazine, with archives containing more than 55 selected physics images.

Physics Education Technology
Fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena from the Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado.

My Physics Lab
Physics simulations using Java that are animated in real time. You are able to interact with them by dragging objects or changing parameters like gravity

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

http://www.eol.org/
This site is a:

Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world.

...In this first version of the portal, you will find:

• About 25 exemplar species pages. These pages show the kind of rich environment, with extensive information, to which all the species pages will eventually grow. These pages have been authenticated (endorsed) scientists.
• Tens of thousands of additional species pages. These pages are authenticated, but do not contain the rich array of information found on the exemplar pages.
• About 1 million minimal species pages contain the scientific and common names for a species and often have a distribution map, but lack other authenticated information.

FREE VIDEOS FROM TONY BUZAN

Huh? TONY BUZAN?
Buzan is the Inventor of Mind Maps®, a thinking tool described as 'the Swiss army knife of the brain'.
This site features him presenting and discussing both his proprietary software and the process and power of Mind Mapping.

10 FREE ONLINE SURVEY/POLLING TOOLS

Here are 10 free online survey/polling tools (Selected using my sixth sense!), which you might want to explore further:

1. SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating and running web surveys (including visual reporting). The free version provides several limitations (e.g. limited number of questions and respondents), but if you are creative you can do your stuff. Anyway, the commercial version is quite affordable (if needed)!
2. Polldaddy - Create free online surveys (e.g. market research) and polls. Excellent for polls!
3. FreeOnlineSurveys.com - Create online surveys, polls and questionnaires for any number of uses.
4. fo.reca.st - Allows you to design free online surveys, collect responses from the visitors of your blog or website, analyze them and finally present the survey results.
5. SurveyGizmo - Web surveys, Polls, Forms, Quizzes, Landing Pages. Free and commercial version.
6. Quibblo - A free tool that enables you easily to create your own quizzes, fun surveys & tests online.
7. LimeSurvey.org - A good open source survey tool. You need to download and install on a server. It includes +20 different question types, and basic statistical and graphical analysis with an export facility.
8. VTSurvey - Is a web-based tool which enables end users to autonomously create and run online surveys, feedback or registration forms (4 question types). You need to download and Install on a server. Although, it has limited tools, question types and reporting features, it is extremely easy-to-use.
9. BuzzDash - Create and share polls. Built upon individual polling modules called buzzbites™, BuzzDash provides a real-time forum where people can solicit, measure and share opinions on nearly any issue.
10. Zoho Polls - Can create and share polls.
    

If you want a more comprehensive list of survey/polling tools, mashing-up both commercial and free ones, I strongly recommend that you visit Jane Knight's amazing directory of learning tools (including 49 survey/polling tools! Trust me, this list will grow!).