More free art - Google Art Project

It is absolutely amazing what happens when you narrow down your stumble-upon interests - I had no idea this existed until it popped up on a recent stumble.

Imaging street view and Google earth mashed up with Art from around the world from amazing galleries - and you would have the Google Art Project -

Holy cow - you can get really close to some amazing art - and I mean really close.

Go - get going I'll see you in a couple of hours.

Climate Change in Western Australia

It is no secret that climate change is happening - and it is especially noticeable where I live. We have been under water restrictions for about ten years now in one form or another - mostly sprinkler bans and the like, plus lots of TV advertising encouraging us to take shorter showers, install rainwater tanks and save as much water as possible.

For students (an adults) it may be a bit hard for them to understand why this is all taking place, and while the science of climate change is complicated there is no doubt from the weight of evidence that we are to blame for much of it, and compounding other natural forces.

There are two places to get really good visual data on this change in climate and how it effects our water supply and way of life here in Perth.

The WA Water Corporation has a great website that has some great resources for showing what has happened over the last 100years, and what we can do about it. It also runs a water wise school program and incursion program.

The Bureau of Meteorology has one of those websites that looks boring but has a massive amount of information that is really easy to access.

They also have real-time radar and satellite maps so if there is a cold front coming over you can track it as it dumps rain.

The climate maps for rainfall, temperature and vegetation all have archives that allow you to compare year to year changes in colour coded maps.

Free Interactive Maths Problems

I had a teacher in our office today looking at the eBeam system, he already has projectors and was looking for a portable easy to use IWB system and it seems the eBeam fits the bill perfectly.

We were playing with Geogebra, something he uses all the time in his class with his tablet computer - he then asked if I had seen nrich.maths.org -

nRich s a UK site with resources for both interactive whiteboards as well as printables that go along with them. its a bit hard to get to all the interactives so here is a quick link to the 350+ maths interactives.

I'm going to be busy looking for all the good ones to show people.

Free videos - Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations

Sometimes you wish you could do all the science demonstrations to show every concept to your students- but the cost is too much and the space is just not there - luckily there are people who have videoed cool demonstrations and experiments for you that you can show on your interactive whiteboard.

Harvard natural sciences has a range of cool lecture demonstrations for a range of topics in science - it's just a case of finding and playing the video on your IWB or flat screen.

Art History - a Free Interactive Text Book

One of the few classes I really enjoyed at school was art - I was lucky enough to do it all through high school. Didn't mean I was actually good at it but at least I was having a go.

As part of that formal art education we had to study art history and I we had a decent library of Art History at school and even a few good books at home...

Then travelling through Europe and the US for three years I was able to see many of the works in person, from the Louve, Prado, Tate, Metro, to little galleries like the Beaverbrook in Fredricton.


So I was drawn to see the SmartHistory.org website - maybe I just stumbled across it.
It is a fantastic resource. If your like art or even if you don't there is enough in there to en-thrall. Set up like most art history text books it goes through each stage of art and how it influences the way we see the world and how how artists have changed our perceptions of art.

3D from Photos - free

Another stumble that I put into favourites...

Insight 3D turns multiple photos into a 3D image - and it's free. Similar to Microsoft PhotoSynth, it uses point clouds to build up the image. Bur the great thing it is that it is on your computer - not on the cloud. Looks like a lot of fun - something I will have to put on my own computer to try out.

Imagine taking some phots and then being able to show it in 3D.

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.