The Big Bang – Briefly

Science can be amazing. There are many inspiring stories and so many ways to tell them. This video story is about The Big Bang – Briefly.

We made this video about the Big Bang because the theory is important and amazing, but often misunderstood.
This video was produced without any funding from any outside sources. It was put together with donated creative time from a group with a desire to further public cognition of science.

There are many comments about the video onYouTube. I am amazed at how animated some people get, especially about this area in science. However this is a nice explanation.

Useful Links (weekly)

• web2storytelling – workshop Great course for storytelling using new technologies. “Web 2.0 storytelling is the practice of using social media to tell and share stories. Explores the growing number of examples in a wide variety of platforms, from blogs to twitter to YouTube and much more. The presenters focus on educational applications and issues, and attendees will have an opportunity to experiment with some of the tools”  

• STOCKXPERT – Royalty free stock photography community Royalty free stock photography community 

• stock.xchng – the leading free stock photography site A free stock photography site offereing a huge range of photos

• NoodleTools : NoodleQuest Figuring out which search engine to use is hard for kids (and adults). This interactive questions/prompts to help users narrow down their search parameters to get the best match for their needs.

• Theresa Breslin – Scottish Author Theresa Breslin is a (Scottish) Carnegie Medal winning writer and librarian who is committed to promoting reading and writing to young people and often discusses this subject. Her work, which is in translation in a number of languages, ranges from young readers to young adult/adult and has been filmed for television and dramatised on radio. She is a respected commentator, and contributor to professional journals, on the subject of children’s literacy and youth librarianship

• ICT Integration Guidebook  Bryn Jones’ excellent support site for ICT PD for teachers. This is a great planning instrument for schoolsThe purpose of this guide is to provide a brief introduction to ICT planning at the school level. Because different schools will bring varying levels of expertise and experience to the planning process, this guide is not intended to be prescriptive but will need to interpreted for individual schools.

• How to Keep Kids Engaged in Class | Edutopia Ten smart ways to increase classroom participation. Article from Edutopia

• Official Google Blog: More books in more places: public domain EPUB downloads on Google Books Starting today, you’ll be able to download these and over one million public domain books from Google Books in an additional format. We’re excited to now offer downloads in EPUB format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It’s supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you’ll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format. That means that people will be able to access public domain works that we’ve digitized from libraries around the world in more ways, including some that haven’t even been built or imagined yet.

• Sony And Google Try To Take On The Kindle With Open Books Sony is trying to fight this advantage by being more open and thereby attracting other large players into its sphere of influence. It’s biggest ally in this fight is Google, whose M.O. is to attack closed industries with open technologies. Today, Google is making available more than one million public domain books in the open ePub format, which also happens to be the linchpin of Sony’s open strategy. Yesterday, at the unveiling of Sony’s latest electronic book reader at the New York Public Library, the head of its ebook division, Steve Haber, emphasized: “”You want a ubiquitous experience: open, open open.” He repeated the mantra in the way that Steve Ballmer says, “Developers, developers, developers,” except he said it a little softer since he was in a library. As I’ve mentioned, the key to its open strategy is Sony’s commitment to adopt the ePub format, which is an open format for electronic books.

• 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom | Smart Teaching Wikis are an exceptionally useful tool for getting students more involved in curriculum. They’re often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. Read on to see how you can put wikis to work in your classroom.

• How to Choose a Search Tool This is a Web site maintained by Laura B. Cohen, a former academic librarian at the University of Albany SUNY. It contains a tutorial a site which includes tables with comparisons of a variety of different search engines and which are best for specific purposes.

• Live Video Learning at eduFire eduFire is a community of people passionate about teaching and learning online. As a student you’ll find outstanding tutors from all around the world, all available at the click of a button. As a teacher you’ll be able to reach new students and teach from anywhere.

• iRead- Using iPods for Literacy at Bionic Teaching Here’s a 10 minute video describing how one of our great elementary school teachers is using iPods to help with elementary literacy and reading fluency.

• The Great Plague 1665 – the Black Death 

• The Great Plague – Fling the Teacher – Interactive game – SchoolHistory.co.uk Interactive game with 30 questions. Most certainly not VCE level but still fun.

• guessthewordle / FrontPage Wiki where Wordle clouds are posted and you can guess what the cloud represents

• Dark Roasted Blend: Unusual and Marvelous Maps ”Hideous monsters devouring ships? Old map symbols, correctly showing storm fronts & dangerous currents I’ve always been fond of maps, from those antique ones showing sea serpents and hideous monsters devouring ships in the vast expanses of the ocean, to those showing what the world looked like in the distant, and not so distant, past.” 

• Robert Capa – photographs Quote: “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Robert Capa was a founder of Magnum Photos and a full Member since 1947.

• Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs: Observatory: Design Observer Article accompanies these amazing photographs aken in Japan in 1945. Linked to a slideshow.

• AudioBooksForFree.com Free audiobooks to download

• Free Classic AudioBooks. Digital narration for the 21st Century Offers a list of classic books available to listen to in MP3 format or allows you to download onto your itunes.

• Writing for teenagers Nicola Morgan’s blog is about writing and getting published – if you deserve it. Writing is hard, budding authors beware!

• PicTreat – Free one-click photo retouching service Free, Automatic Photo Retouching. Web based quick photo retouching and smoothing service. It takes your photo and treats it in one click. The retouched picture can then be downloaded, shared via social networks and bookmarked

• Divine – Convert PSD to WordPress Themes – Free Photoshop Plugin Plugin to convert Photoshop docs/PSD files to WordPress themes for free 

• Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers @ SmashingApps Opensource resources

• Quizzes at Fun Trivia — 90,000 Quizzes Online Good warm up sites for class. It offers a variety of subject areas to test.

• Create a Free Website , Free Flash Website Builder at Wix.com  Create a free website with Wix.com. Make free web design in Flash website builder. Customize free Flash templates or make your own website

• World War II – a set on Flickr This collection belonged to Arthur John Strenge, who documented his experiences while serving in the United States Marine Corps from 1944 through 1946. His service took him from working as a combat engineer with the Second Marines at Betio atoll – Tarawa, through the landings at Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and finally to Nagasaki with the 28th Pioneer Battalion immediately following the atomic bomb drop.

• Infloox A website on influential people’s influential books! Do just beware of the advertsing on the site before you use it with students, as it can be slightly risky

• 16 Apps That Make Sharing Large Files A Snap There are tons of tools out there that can be used to share big files, but it can be difficult recommending the right tools to people because it’s hard to remember all of the details. TechCrunch has an awesome chart to show you how 16 of these tools compare

• Online image editor – Aviary.com’s Phoenix From basic image retouching to complex effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application.

• DeeperWeb Search – The Essential Search Engine Addon and Plugin DeeperWeb.com is an innovative search engine tool and an essential addon for Google users. DeeperWeb is integrated into Google web search results and is available for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers. DeeperWeb boosts searching by employing Tag-Cloud techniques to help users navigate through search results more efficiently and uses Topic-Mapping-Technologies for fast results identification.

• Shareflow: Focused conversations with people that matter | Zenbe how you can use your Intranet to improve communications within your library? Emails can be a disaster when it comes to project management. Shareflow come onto the scene saying the same thing and offering a solution to this problem by allowing you to share your team conversations so everyone involved can clearly see what’s being said/decided.

• Boy on a Wire  Australian story about a younf boy sent to a WA boarding school in the 1960′s. He spends grows ino a young man and overcomes many hings along the way.

• Home – The Enemy Charlie Higson’s new novel – a horror story involving zombies

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.