Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
Wilderdom has a wonderful set of cooperative games and icebreaking games that they share for free. They also have a book of optical illusions that would work well for a challenge during morning community meetings.
Their material is copyleft so as along as you attribute them and use the same licensing terms (and cite their Creative Commons License) . You are free to use their stuff as you like.
Calvin and Hobbes is one of the most deeply interesting and intellectually hilarious comics. It ran from 1985 to 1995 when Bill Watterson decided it was time to stop, so it retained a persistent quality throughout its run. Watterson was very serious about the newspaper comic form and did a lot of experimenting with C&H. His thoughts are nicely documented in the paper collections.
Though I have the books, it’s nice to have archives of the entire series online. Even better, Michael Yingling recently created a Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine that can find key words in the dialogue, so now you can quickly find that more obscure script to brighten up your day.
I really hope that Yingling has finessed the copyright issues because this is a great resource for teachers looking for that little something to spark the imagination. The strips often go into issues at such depth that some of the series make great examples for literature discussions. I find the issues resulting from the transmogrifier/duplicator to have a powerful, though more light hearted, equivalency to the novel Frankenstien. I also am partial to the philosophical world-view of Calvin’s father.
Matt Might, a computer science professor, has a wonderful article posted called The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.. I like how it illustrates the broad base of knowledge you should acquire through high school.
I appreciate how much you more of the weather you can observe using time lapse photography, but its astonishing when you don’t even need the time lapse.
While this storm seems like something out of the movie “Day After Tomorrow”, I wonder how much more freaky weather we’re seeing just because of the new ubiquity of video cameras.
DNA interactive is another great resource for studying the history of genetics and how we manipulate and use it today (recommended by the indispensable Anna Clarke). They have lesson plans and nice pages on the modern techniques used to work with DNA.
I have not done much with genetic sequencing myself and I found the website interesting and informative. I have, however, written programs to get and work with the GenBank database, which is not that hard since they have some easy tools to work with. I would love to figure out how to get a sample sequenced and then run it through GenBank to identify it. It would so nicely integrate the curriculum, using a practical exercise to solve a problem (like what species are on the nature trail), while using the same tools and resources that scientists use, and tie wonderfully into the short stories in Mirable.
One of Larry Sanger‘s new projects is WatchKnow, a website that rates online educational videos. It has a nice age filter that, while not very useful right now, may be very useful as the site develops.
The video above is the currently the top rated video (4 out of 5 stars) in the category on the writing process. Its WatchKnow page is here.
Slate magazine has an interesting interview with a disaffected co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger. I like what he says about how to use Wikipedia, or any other reference resource:
What Wikipedians themselves would say—and I agree with them on this one—is that Wikipedia has finally awakened in people an understanding that even carefully edited resources can frequently be wrong and have to be treated with skepticism and that ultimately we are responsible for what we believe. That means constantly going back and checking what we thought was established or what we thought we knew. Wikipedians often say that you should never trust any one source, including Wikipedia.
That’s not anything new; it’s always been the case that you should check your source against another source. It’s just that the way that the Internet has exposed the editorial process has, for more critical-minded people, made it absolutely plain just how much responsibility we ourselves bear to believe the right thing. – Larry Sanger in Schulz, 2010
I also agree with what he says about how he personally uses internet resources:
Which resources I turn to greatly depend on what sort of information I’m looking for. One of my favorite information resources is Google Maps and Bing Maps. I’ve often used Google Scholar for an essay I’ve been working on lately. When I’m looking for some quick fact, of the sort one finds from an almanac or other reference book, I generally search in Google and then pick a non-Wikipedia source. If there doesn’t seem to be anything as efficient, I’ll fall back on the Wikipedia source. If I’m doing serious research, I don’t spend much time on Wikipedia at all, I’m afraid. I do look in on Citizendium’s offerings from time to time, when I think it might have something on the topic. I also not infrequently grab various books from my bookshelves, the old-fashioned way. – Larry Sanger in Schulz, 2010
We’ll start this year with Wikipedia unblocked, but I’m working on a lesson on how to use it properly.
Another good interactive cell model, similar to the Teach.Genetics‘ Flash app I posted about earlier, can be found at CELLS alive. I first used the CELLS alive website two years ago and I like it because, while it has a much simpler picture than Teach.Genetics’, it has a nicely linked glossary of terms. The glossary is, however, a little technical, but it’s a nice exercise (and not terribly difficult) for students to decipher the basic information that they need.