I was browsing Patricia Donaghy’s blog and came across another great resource. Photo8 is a public domain free high resolution photo website. What a great resource for student presentations!

Here is a little excerpt from Photo8:

Photos8 is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers. Large collection of High Resolution photos and wallpapers, Thousands of high quality public domain pictures, easy to search, You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial. As the owner I have explicitly placed it in the public domain. If you do use any photo, please consider linking back to this site or giving credit to this site. Just something like, “Photo courtesy Photos8“, This is not required, but its a very good way to support the site efforts here.

admin General photo, presentation, students, technology

If you teach Social Studies or Geography, why not go on a mass scavenger hunt. If you have a few GPS devices handy, that is.

Geocaching is a worldwide scavenger hunt done using a global positioning system receiver. You can look up cordinates online and then plug them into your GPS and go hiking. It would be neat to have your class split into groups, each group hiding a cache for others to seek.

Usually, caches consist of a tiny waterproof container and often a logbook. The “treasure” inside might be a dollar store item or similar small toy of no real value.

So grab that GPS from your vehicle dashboard and go for some physical activity in the nearby park!

admin General geocaching, Geography, GPS, Social Studies, technology

This past Wednesday I delivered an enrichment workshop to students from our area of schools. Here is a brief summary:

I opened the presentation with some technology “wows” (NES PC, Wiimote Mouse, Sega Genesis Controller Hard Drive) then went into some explanation writing.

I discussed the concept of how CDs and DVDs work with repect to the pits on the disc surface that are converted to 1s and 0s by a laser. We discussed these 1s and 0s as binary machine language and converted them back to decimal.

To end the day I had a scenario for the students. Triyums (3 fingered aliens) have landed on earth. Your task is to communicate with them numerically, using your knowledge of decimal (base 10) and binary (base 2). How many numerals will you use? What are they? How would Triyums write the number 3? 6? 16? (I actually found this activity online somewhere and thought it fit perfectly.)

Overall the day was a success. Next time, I would have a more practical hands-on activity instead of a scenario worksheet. Under the circumstances of our “Tecnhology Mystery” (which is what our workshop was called) I found it difficult to come up with something hands on technology wise that was cheap and readily accessible.

admin General binary, CD, DVD, NES PC, Sega Genesis, technology, Wiimote