Sparklebox has been an excellent site for teacher resources for download. The site is now even better since everything is now free!
If you haven’t been to the site, check out http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/
Lots of resources for all subjects, not just science ones.
Tom Barrett has set up an excellent presentation in Google Docs giving ideas for using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. What’s really fun is that is uses the collaborative nature of Google Docs so that the finished product has been worked on by many different teachers. (read more)
And I say finished product tentatively, because its still being added to. 34 tips so far and counting.
If you are interested in reading more about how teachers are using technology in their classroom then here are some very good blogs that are worth reading.
If you haven’t already, it’s well worth signing up with Google for a google reader account. You can then copy the addresses of the blogs into Google Reader and read them all in one place - no need to trawl through each blog checking if they’ve been updated. (and of course remember to put this blog in there too!)
(well the last word for now) Keep an eye on this website http://mentos.co.uk/fountaincompetition/ This year’s competition is closed but hopefully they’ll run it again.
For now, there are some fun videos in the Gallery section - maybe inspire you to try some displays of your own.
Just a quick post to provide the links to the two tools I used from Classtools.net in the session the other day.
This is a cute little tool that allows you to set the class a time limit for a given task, and then count down the time left with some fun background music. There are 10 tunes included, ranging from a 30 second Countdown theme tune, 57 seconds Hawaii Five-0 or a 7 minute piece of Mozart. If you want you can even upload your own mp3 file to use instead.
There are several different ways you can use the name picker, and they don’t all involve names!
This tool lets you input a list of names/text and then go to either a fruit machine or typewriter view. Names are then picked at random.
I used it to get students to to speak at random, picking the next speaker from the list. Clicking the “remove” button will take the chosen name out of the list so they do not appear twice.
It could be also used with keywords or a topic heading. In typewriter mode one word at a time will appear letter by letter (and they dont get to see the other words). Students could then have to give a definition of the word, or one student with their back to the board has to guess the word from the descriptions given by other students. There’s many ways this tool could be used.
For an explaination of what is going in with the coke and the Mentos, here are three websites that may help
http://www.eepybird.com/science.html
http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/MatlSci_p023.shtml?from=Home
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/consumer/faq/mentos.shtml
These chemists are saying that the primary cause is physical, not chemical. Their explanation: nucleation sites. If you have a liquid that is supersaturated with gas (like soda, which is pumped full of carbon dioxide), a nucleation site is a place where the gas is able to form bubbles. Nucleation sites can be scratches on a surface or specks of dust – anywhere that you have a high surface area in a very small volume. That’s where bubbles can form.
Mentos seem to be loaded with nucleation sites. In other words, there are so many microscopic nooks and crannies on the surface of a Mento that an incredible number of bubbles will form when you drop it in a bottle of soda. Since the Mentos are also heavy enough to sink, they react with the soda all the way to the bottom. The escaping bubbles quickly turn into a raging foam, and the pressure builds dramatically. Before you know it, you’ve got a big geyser happening!
From Eepybird website
Eepybird also has a link to a pdf file which gives a different launch mechanism for the Mentos mints. Worth a look.
The full video in all its glory 
Diet coke and mentos from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.
As streamed live onto the Internet via Qik.com
Another quick post to point you in the direction of a post I made on Whiteboard Blog a few weeks ago about being careful of your online presence once you stop being a student and start being a teacher.
http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2008/05/online-presence.html
It was inspired by this news story from the Washington Post.
Also illustrated by this comedy sketch:
Just a quick post to mention some of the pseudoscience that accompanies talk of Brain Gym in schools, and a request to try and not get sucked into the hype. Brain Gym can be a quick way of breaking up a lesson with a short fun activity, and it is in this way that I have used some little “brain gym” style games in the past. But there is a lot of rubbish spoken about it too.
Brain Gym is being taught with pseudoscientific explanations that undermine science teaching and mislead children about how their bodies work.
Sense About Science have a great leaflet that debunks a lot of it, and also a link to the Newsnight report on the problems with brain gym.
Pass this on to your schools too.
