Escape the room for Education - in a box. An awesome open source project for STE(A)M.

Recently my friends and I went to an "Escape the Room" venue. We had a blast and it got me thinking - this would be awesome in a classroom.

"Escape the Room" games are a preset number puzzles that a group of people have to solve to ta da! Escape the room.

Think "Myst" or any of the Text based adventure games (eaten by a gru!!!), and there are plenty of mobile and web based ones out there as well - Except this is real. with real locks, puzzles that you have to manipulate, tools that you find in one part of the game have to be used for another.

These venues are all themed to each escape scenario - in the one I went to it was themed as a lab, with a desk, filing cabinet, xray viewer, secure sample box, then the next room that you got into (after solving certain puzzles- a magnetic lock opened a secret door) was like a industrial basement with pipes and grating. and more puzzles to solve to finally get out. Lots of micro controller usage with magnetic locks, LED displays, relays to turn on a black light when you completed a puzzle to reveal another clue, hall effect switches as well as physical locks.

It was really challenging, but we all had to work together and solve each puzzle, so it was collaborative and fun. It taught perseverance and the timer on the wall gave the whole thing a sense of urgency. Yes we got out with 7 mins to spare.

My thinking was there must be a way to integrate this into classroom teaching without the expense or effort to set up a themed room or two for each game...

I wasn't alone. Someone has already done the hard work... and it is open source (free)

http://www.breakoutedu.com/

It's a real world puzzle platform you can use to run free pre-made games for your students, plus a template to make your own. It can integrate both real world and ICT puzzles via website, QR codes or images.

You either buy the "box" of locks or make your own according to the specifications. There is also a low cost Lock app that you can use to create virtual locks.

There is a big element of STE(A)M with this and you could extend the puzzles with arduino or probably more beneficial - get the students to create their own scenarios and puzzles.

Anyway - if you were looking to do something cool with your middle schoolers at the end of the year - this is not a bad option.

Google Apps - free apps for education

Google Apps looks like it might be one of the winners from the google lab.

With an easy to use interface and a great range of "apps" this could be the new way I get things done. It's like the app store or google play.

What is it? - Google apps uses the chrome web browser as a base and apps are downloaded into it the browser. These apps are sometimes online websites but can also be stand alone of line applications using Chrome as their base.

What is on it? For educators and students... Quite a lot, from on and off line note taking, to classroom management tools to on line IWB software that allows you to collaborate in the cloud. A couple on my starting list include - Biodigital, realtime board, gynzy and Google Drive. There are few that have been ported over from android but most are specifically for full computers. To honest there is more than enough for education, looks like I have a lot of material to review - and most will work with IWB's and Touchscreens.

How do you get it? First download and install google chrome, then once you are up and running go to the far right hand side near the top and click on the 3 bar icon, head down to settings, then click on extensions and scroll down to "get more extensions" - to make it easy to get to your apps you can also install the Chrome App Launcher which makes it easy to get to your apps on your has a shortcut to all the downloadable apps.

Or just go to: https://chrome.google.com/webstore

Middle School Science Resources

It is amazing what a dedicated teacher can do.

My Science Box - is a fantastic resource for middle school science teachers. Developed by a Californian teacher, these lessons and resources are gold standard, and getting bigger.

With lesson plans, learning programs and guides this is a great help to any teacher who wants to make science that much more interesting.

Aligned to Californian state standards (referenced) it shouldn't be too hard to match them to either Australian or other science curricular. Resources are mainly in word format so that you can adapt them to your classroom requirements.

I also have to applaud the website design - simple, clear and easy to use - many commercial sites should have a look at this.

All resources are creative commons - non commercial so you are authorised to copy and reuse.

Scale of the universe

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html

Sorry I've copy and pasted as it from the website at it explains this really well. This is a great interactive resource.


What does the universe look like on small scales? On large scales? Humanity is discovering that the universe is a very different place on every proportion that has been explored. For example, so far as we know, every tiny proton is exactly the same, but every huge galaxy is different. On more familiar scales, a small glass table top to a human is a vast plane of strange smoothness to a dust mite -- possibly speckled with cell boulders. Not all scale lengths are well explored -- what happens to the smallest mist droplets you sneeze, for example, is a topic of active research -- and possibly useful to know to help stop the spread of disease. The above interactive flash animation, a modern version of the classic video Powers of Ten, is a new window to many of the known scales of our universe. By moving the scroll bar across the bottom, you can explore a diversity of sizes, while clicking on different items will bring up descriptive information.

CONASTA - Canberra 2012

Once again I'm heading over to CONASTA- (Australian Science Teachers Association). This year I will be facilitating two workshops "1:1 Computers in the Science Classroom" and "Free science Software and How to Use it in the Classroom" (workshop sessions A and C).

CONASTA is being held in Canberra this year so it will be cold

As always I will be drawing on my archive of blog entries to find those gems of applications and websites that make teaching with technology fun and engaging.

If you can think of a website, program or app that you think would be great to showcase please leave a comment below. Particularly if it is not on my blog at the moment.

My colleagues will also be presenting - Peter Niass is also doing 2 sessions on Monday and Matthew Burley is presenting with Jeff Stanger at the final sessions on Wednesday.

If you are coming to CONASTA I will be at Stands 1 & 2 in the exhibition hall and floating around during sessions so please come and say hi.

Amazing website and resource

One of those stumbleupon gems...

Water Life - Produced by the national film board of Canada it is the story of the great lakes. But it is the creative design of the website and atmosphere of the site that is absolutely amazing. Sometimes I just have the music going in the background. Brilliant user interface that is both original and fun to explore without being so esoteric that you cant get back to the beginning.

If you want to see how a multimedia site should be done - this is a great example of some super Flash animations and interactions.

Learning areas - Science, SoSE, Maths, and as a great example of digital media.

600 science questions with researched distractors

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has just completed a 10 year study with 150 000 students. They developed a range of 600 science questions that test the fundamental understanding of key science topics. Each question has been researched with each distractor designed to identify misconceptions, and also includes statistics collected through their study.

Put these questions into TurningPoint2008 you can quickly and effortlessly diagnose your class misconceptions and helping you to differentiate your instruction.

You will need to register but for the effort you get a great reward.

AAAS Science Assessment

Primary Science Conference

For the last two days I have been at the primary science conference organised by STAWA (Science Teachers Association of Western Australia).

I really look forward to the science conferences - these conferences are really hands on stuff and they pull out all the stops to make it fun and engaging.

I was lucky enough to be asked to present a workshop about integrating IT into the primary science classroom. I brought along Visualisers, microscope cameras, data loggers and and IWB to show how these pieces of hardware could be used to extend primary science.

I wish I had of seen this before going in...

Makeuseof.com - one of my favourite websites has this great article listing/linking a bunch of environmental science games and activities on the web... I could have based my whole talk on that.

Khan Acadamy - upgraded

A couple of years ago I talked about the Khan Acadamy and how this Salman Khan had put together a huge amount of instructional videos just using his brain and a wacom tablet and made them free for the world via YouTube...

Well you should see his organisation now. With a new TED talk where he explains how it all started and what you can do now with classes and as a teacher - this has to be one of the revolutions of education.

His tracking software and the re imagining of school classrooms one of the great synergies of technology in eduction. This is what technology is for.

To have a look, set yourself up and to get a little brain food - head over to http://www.khanacademy.org/

Epson DC11 review

We just got our demonstration Epson DC11 document camera at the office. I must say I wasn't sure about this one and I was definitely worried about the size of the beast.

First off its not as large as I thought - it's about twice the size of a dc06, about about 3 times as heavy. The box it comes in though is about 6 times the size of the DC06 simply because the unit does not fold up like its predecessor.

I'll get through some of the downsides of this unit. First it is not as portable, being heavier and bigger is one thing but it also requires a power brick to run it (unlike the DC06). So this is not something you can move easily from classroom to classroom. But keep in mind it is not a fixed camera and can be moved around a school - it's certainly not a installed piece of equipment.

The only other downside is the extra piece of software and driver you have to load onto your machine, but it's not too bad and is only an issue if you are working with locked down machines in a school or if you are moving it between computers.

The benefits of the dc11 far outweigh the lack of portability. The DC11 is a lot more connectible than the DC06, with USB, VGA and composite outputs so you can hook it up to just about any display device and/or computer. This means that you can bypass your computer and go straight to a TV or projector or even a VCR/DVD recorder. You can also do a pass through with your computer - this allows for a funky split screen or switch between your computer and the live camera. Epson also do a range of projectors that will take the usb input from the camera directly.

The DC11 also has 1 gigabyte of on board memory as well as a memory card slot to store images and video without hooking up to your computer. When you do hook it up via the USB interface and run the included Arcsoft software you have great control over your image output.

The thing that really caught my eye about this unit though is something that a couple of my customers have been waiting for out of an inexpensive visualiser - a microscope adapter. this allows you to project and capture what you would see through the microscope. This is so much better than the cheap usb microscope that really only enlarge pixels. Unfortunately if you have a microscope where the eyepeice moves rather than the stage you will have to focus the scope first and then attatch the camera. This is not easy or quick.


The new Arcsoft software that comes with the DC11 is fantastic and a great upgrade if you had the previous version that came with the DC06. Arcsoft have added two very cool features - Time lapse recording and annotation over live video. Both of these feature are great in the classroom, especially science classrooms. The times lapse can be adjusted and saved as a video or series of stills. The drawing over live video require a bit of oomph from your computer and graphics card but it does is quite well on my 3 year old machine. This works great on an interactive whiteboard.

The pricing on the DC11 is the same as what the DC06 was a couple of months ago ($599 ex), the DC06 has taken a huge price hit and dropped it's price by $200 (yeah that much).

So out of the two visualisers which one is right for you?
If you move from classroom to classroom, you work mainly with documents and books rather than objects and use your computer in almost every class then the DC06 is your best bet.

If you stay in the one classroom most of the time, you use a variety of display technologies or your are a science teacher then the DC11 would be your visualiser.

I hope this helps, feel free to leave comments or questions.

High-School Science Teacher Takes Fun And Excitement Out Of Science

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Have a read of this satire from the Onion and see how many people you have in your school that are just like this. The Onion is a great place to get kids to think about a topic outside of the box - from that skewed angle that makes them question why things are the way thay are. Unfortunately most kids would see the above article as fact not satire.



For a PodCast of a radio interview of how some science teachers are changing the way the teach (scientifically of course) have a listen to this.

More PowerPoint resources - Science

NASA has a huge range of free PowerPoint resources for science - Here are a few I have picked up recently.

http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2006/promotional/powerpoint.php

http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-view.cfm?Doc_ID=236

http://www.mainsgate.com/spacebio/modules/lu_teare.html

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/topics.htm

Obviously these work great on their own but if you team them up with TurningPoint Questions peppered through the presentation you can get an idea of your student's understanding on these topics.

Space - The Final Frontier

Image by ted.sali via Flickr

OK, I'm super happy today. My year long wait has finally finished and I have my Star Trek original tricorder from entertainment earth. Whoo hoo - Yes I am a Trekkie, this will go into my current collection of phasors and communicators.

So in the spirit of space exploration here are a few online "space" resources to use on your Interactive Whiteboard.

http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/index.shtml

http://www.gunn.co.nz/astrotour/?data=tours/retrograde.xml

And if you feel like helping out

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/


Live long and prosper!

ConSTAWA

This week has be very hectic with stuff flying at us from all directions.

I have been preparing for ConSTAWA which is the Science teachers of Western Australia conference. I will be demoing all the usual stuff as well as the new Epson Visualiser which I think will be the next big thing in schools - if we get the price right.

I will be presenting a workshop on new technology and how close we are to Star Trek Technology. I get to bring my toys as well so it should be a lot of fun.

virtual storyboarding 2

So after finding the website last week I was looking at something completely unrelated...
And found this.

Moviestorm
More power, more features, more fun and it's a downloadable. This allows your student to make animations and dramas with virtual actors and includes the important camera angles and scenes.

I can't wait to try this out.

On another note I will be at the primary science conference at the Vines over the weekend. I will presenting with Dr Jennifer Lane from ECU. Which will be interesting because she is still making up her presentation with only 10 hours to go.... ah well it's a workshop.

I've made up a CD of some cool open source applications for a range of uses so I will be giving away copies of that as well.

Cassiopeia Project

The cassiopeia project

This is a great collection of free high quality videos to be used in science classrooms. It goes from general science to quantum mechanics. You can easily download them and keep them on your hard drive or server with no restrictions.

It's biology man!

I have been asked several times for biology interactive software... I'm still looking. In the mean time I have found a couple of lists of interactive webpages.

edinformatics - lists of good biology and chem interactive animations and tutorials.

The University of Arizona - the Biology Project.

Biology in Motion - a small range of applets for lower secondary biology.

Lone Star College - a veritable motherload of interactive biology bits.

There you go - as always there is room for more so if you find something good send me a line.

Chem 08

I have a confession to make. I know nothing about chemistry - I bypassed it during my high school education and just did biology. Now it has become a problem because I will be presenting at the ChemED08 Conference in Perth...

So I am going to have to figure out a little crash course between now and late November and try and find some cool software to demonstrate with the eBeam. Life is full of crunchy bits.

I have found at least one program that is pretty spectacular - Avogadro. It almost feels like playing god, editing molecules and animating them. If that doesn't engage students I don't know what will.

If anyone has any more software on this topic please let me know and I'll put it up on the blog.