April 2006

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Here’s a few neat sites that have some free science videos:

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As we see more media available online, it is nice to see some freebies once in a while. Here’s a few of my favorites (I realize that some of these have a science bias):

  • The George Lucas Educational Foundation offers a free subscription to Edutopia, which seeks to discover new teaching methods and to make use of technology in education.
  • Want streaming music for free? Try The Music Genome Project at www.pandora.com. You can login and enter a style of music or your favorite band, and the site will find similar music.
  • Subscirbe for free to Harper’s Magazine Weekly Review email newsletter, written by Paul Ford. “It’s a sentence-by-sentence snapshot of the awe-inspiring, humbling, infuriating, and funny events that happened in the preceding seven-day period” (from Boing Boing)
  • The National Center for Biotechnology (ncbi.nih.gov) offers online science texts for free.
  • NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) has a Science Teachers’ Grab Bag, where you can find free/inexpensive teaching resources including lesson plans, interactive websites, videos, activities and much more!
  • The Howard Hughes Medical Institute Biointeractive website offers free materials for educators including their holiday lecture series videos/DVS, and even some interactive software!
  • The National Institute of General Medical Sciences offers free copies of its publications, ranging from chemistry to biotechnology and all of the medical advances in between.
  • Wisconline (The Wisconsin Online Resource Center) offers multimedia (videos, flash animations, etc) on a variety of subjects to registered users – not just science!

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Last night, Oprah visited with Bill and Melinda Gates to discuss what she called a “silent epidemic” – graduation rates and educational structure in the US. Some frightening statistics about student dropout rates and preparedness were quite shocking, whereby the Gates called for educational efforts that should be focused on teaching students the skills they’ll need to be competitive in the world ecomony of today and into the future. Check out the what Oprah has to say on “American Schools in Crisis.”

This sentiment was also shared in Edutopia, a magazine distributed (free for educators!) by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) – founded in 1991 as a nonprofit operating foundation to celebrate and encourage innovation in schools.

Check out “Risky Business” (the edutopia article) by James Daly. It raises some provocative questions about the state of public education, and what needs to be done to allow for a successful future for out children.

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