Sunday, February 14, 2010
Evolutionary Science Websites
I really wanted to also embed the video for "My Brother The Ape" (also by They Might Be Giants, from the album "Here Comes Science", but I was unable to find a link to something already online. So, only one video, and a ton of websites, this time! Can you tell that I think that evolution, genetics and biology are pretty darn interesting?
Ray Troll's Planet Ocean. Ray Troll is one of my favorite artists, and is a hands-down inveterate Northwestern fish lovin' paleontologically interested kind of guy. This website has tons and tons of drawings and scientific explanations of ocean creatures from different epochs, and explicit evolutionary linking from fish to modern human. There are lots of interactive things to click on, and the whole site is both fun to explore and very informative about evolutionary processes, stops along the way, and weird dead end off-branches. Don't forget to go see the "EVOLV-O-VISION" animation. I would use this website with students between the grades of 3 and 6.
Tree of Life Interactive. This website is an incredible resource. The website is set up as a three-dimensional interactive relationship chart beginning with the first living organisms and touching on most basic species groups. Connections between species can be seen visibly down the tree chart, and if the branch of phylum or class has a name where the species similarity diverges, it is named. When selecting a species to look at, many have either external sites that are linked that have extensive information about subspecies and other relatives, some have three dimensional models that can be explored on-site, and some have downloadable material. I would use this website with middle school students, as it is a fairly sophisticated site, and covers fairly sophisticated material.
Who Wants to Live a Million Years? This is an interactive game that demonstrates the processes of natural selection, survival of the fittest, and the bottlenecking influences of external forces like temperature, predation, and ability to reach food. It's a pretty short, game, each million years lasts through three rounds of bottleneck events. If your species does not survive, you are invited to try again. This website would be great to use with children in grades 2 and up.
PBS Kids Dog Breeding Game. This game gives kids an experiential example of Gregor Mendel's pea experiment that we all eventually learn about. By combining different parent dogs, the goal is to develop a dog with the desired traits based on the parent dogs' traits. Genes are referred to, but not alleles, so if you are working with older children, you may want to do some vocabulary building. The success rate in the game is variable, so students may not experience immediate success; they will have to try again more than once if they play the game all the way through. This website would also be great to use with children in grades 2 and up.
Evolving Planet Tour Through Time. This website has an interactive timeline with a selection of plant and animal species that can be clicked on for more information in each epoch. The timeline discusses major extinction events, and what probably caused them, ending with the current epoch and the mass extinctions that are currently being caused by the influence of homo sapiens. I would use this website with children in 4th grade and up, as some of the words and concepts are a little bit hard. Students who are particularly interested in the history of life on earth may do well with this page at any age.
Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals. This website used up a lot of my time this week, because it is so rich in information I literally had to tear myself away from searching through it. This site goes very in depth into what makes an animal a mammal, with interactive pictures, small matching games, and a TON of great information. I would love to use this site with 3rd grade and up, possibly doing reports on different kinds of mammals.
Devolve Me! This is kind of a fun website, pictures of faces can be uploaded and given traits of evolutionary ancestors of humans. Not 100% educational, but definitely amusing. I would use this website with older students, 5th-6th grade and up, because older children are more likely to be able to understand that the computer manipulation of their photograph does not necessarily represent what their ancestors REALLY looked like, only a fun suggestion, a toy, really.
Becoming Human This website is a pretty comprehensive overview of what we know of human evolution to date. This site, like the mammals site listed above, is chock full of incredibly good information, games, and videos. I'd use this website with older students, 5th grade and up, because a lot of the language is pretty sophisticated, and one of the games, (DNA matching) would probably need a good deal of explanation to someone who has not sequenced genes in the past; I think it would be easier to explain a concept like that to students who were a little older and more ready to think about the small parts of organisms that cause species differentiation.
Monday, February 8, 2010
HIV and health of all sorts websites
Kids' Health website (Nemours Children's Hospital sponsored site.) This was the only site that I found to be friendly to children, not teens, to be surfing through by themselves. It is aimed at children between grades 2-6 with relatively sophisticated literacy skills. Younger children could access this site with assistance. Children who speak Spanish can access the site en Español.
There are many links to high quality medical information that is in kid-friendly language, about health issues experienced by kids and by grown ups (separate links), Q & A about bodies, a glossary of ailments and body parts, games and quizzes, and other very well written health information for children to access. I found the site easy to navigate, and learned some neat things about skin and hair.
As wonderfully comprehensive as the rest of the site was, I could not find any information about HIV/AIDS or any other sexually/bodily fluid- transmitted diseases and infections. I did find some comprehensive information for children about drugs and what they are, including tobacco, alcohol, and over the counter drugs. There was also a section about supporting a parent who wants to stop smoking tobacco. I'm still looking to see if I can find a kid-friendly website that addresses HIV and other STIs.
AVERT website with HIV/AIDS information. The main site (www.avert.org) is run by an AIDS awareness charity based in the UK. This website is aimed at teenagers and older, though may be helpful for educating children in middle school. There is very plain writing on this website, and the site itself has internal links that address sexuality both in terms of youth who are questioning their orientation and for those who already know. There are vast stores of information that appears to be quite up-to-date about AIDS in different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, as well as very clear information for anyone who wishes to know how to prevent the spread of the disease through both personal actions (i.e. safer sex) or through education and activism. The information is pretty clearly aimed at young people, but is also presented in such a way as to be useful for a teacher struggling with how and how much to teach students about the kinds of safer sex to engage in to be most protected against contracting the disease; there is the assumption that it is healthy for young people to want to engage in sex, but that they must be educated about the relative merits and drawbacks to doing so. The language used is clear and nonjudgmental. There are links specifically for youth who are gay or who have friends who are gay.
I Wanna Know: Sexual Health Information for Teens from The American Social Health Association. This website is also aimed primarily at teenagers, though it could be used with a class of middle schoolers with the proper scaffolding. There are links to specific STIs that can be clicked, these links provide clear and accurate information about causes, infectiousness, and how/if those STIs can be treated. There are links to commonly asked questions or common issues, like condom use and feelings of rejection and danger among queer youth, as well as links to “sex ed 101” and ways to best prevent contracting/spreading STIs. Clear language, comprehensive information.
Planned Parenthood's website specifically for teens, “Teen Talk”. This website is also available en Español. The site has articles and answers to frequently asked questions, as well as resources for teens who want to be tested for STIs, pregnancy, or who simply want to be proactive about their sexual health before anything like that happens. There are some mildly silly but very informative flash videos about things like HPV, how to use a condom, and the shapes of peoples' genitalia that can be watched from the site, as well as a significant amount of nonjudgmental information for teens who are queer or questioning. Planned Parenthood is kind of a standby for a reason, and appears to be going out of their collective way to remain up to date on ways to communicate important information about sexual and other body health to young people.
Scarleteen, "sex ed for the real world". This website is also aimed at teens, and is a website I was familiar with before I went looking for sites that addressed HIV and sexual health. It is, as far as I know, mostly volunteer run by young people who are sex-positive and willing to answer questions pretty much round the clock. From the "about us" section of the site is Scarleteen's statement about what they think responsible and comprehensive sex education should look like:
“We feel that the best model for lifelong sexual education is as follows:
Providing information which educates in ALL aspects of sexuality, for all sexes, economic classes, genders and orientations, including birth control, safer sex and sexually transmitted diseases, masturbation, anatomy, diverse sexual orientation and identification, gender roles, pleasure, self-esteem, body image, sexual and romantic relationship and communication tools, and care and compassion in sexual enactment.
A nonjudgmental and unbiased attitude of tolerance and understanding for teens, whether they choose to be sexually active or not.
Tools to encourage celibacy from ANY sexual activities until reasonable readiness for them, such as information on masturbation, support for delaying activity, and to do so from a standpoint of embracing safe, positive sexuality and having sex only when it is fully wanted and something young people truly feel able to handle, rather than anti-sex approaches, misinformation, scare tactics, religious edicts or shaming.
Encouragement to know as much as possible, and from an educated standpoint, to make sound choices based on personal ethics and values gleaned from family, role models, life experience and oneself.
Open, ongoing and moderated conversation about sex and sexuality in a safe, supportive and inclusive environment.”
The whole site is dedicated to providing this type of sex education, specifically feminist, inclusive sex education; the founder and the volunteers who run the site make an active attempt to provide honest and clear, nonjudgmental information to all kinds of young people.
I wish I could see clear to using this website with younger children, but I worry that the site's content could be called into question by parents as inappropriate for use with their children. With older, teenaged people, I could see fit to argue that there is information there that is immediately relevant to their lives and making certain that they conduct themselves sexually in a safe and responsible manner. I realize this argument may not work out with some parents no matter the age of their child.
I'll leave you all with this pointed argument against abstinence only sex education: I Guess You Just Have To Be Prepared To Die
There are many links to high quality medical information that is in kid-friendly language, about health issues experienced by kids and by grown ups (separate links), Q & A about bodies, a glossary of ailments and body parts, games and quizzes, and other very well written health information for children to access. I found the site easy to navigate, and learned some neat things about skin and hair.
As wonderfully comprehensive as the rest of the site was, I could not find any information about HIV/AIDS or any other sexually/bodily fluid- transmitted diseases and infections. I did find some comprehensive information for children about drugs and what they are, including tobacco, alcohol, and over the counter drugs. There was also a section about supporting a parent who wants to stop smoking tobacco. I'm still looking to see if I can find a kid-friendly website that addresses HIV and other STIs.
AVERT website with HIV/AIDS information. The main site (www.avert.org) is run by an AIDS awareness charity based in the UK. This website is aimed at teenagers and older, though may be helpful for educating children in middle school. There is very plain writing on this website, and the site itself has internal links that address sexuality both in terms of youth who are questioning their orientation and for those who already know. There are vast stores of information that appears to be quite up-to-date about AIDS in different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, as well as very clear information for anyone who wishes to know how to prevent the spread of the disease through both personal actions (i.e. safer sex) or through education and activism. The information is pretty clearly aimed at young people, but is also presented in such a way as to be useful for a teacher struggling with how and how much to teach students about the kinds of safer sex to engage in to be most protected against contracting the disease; there is the assumption that it is healthy for young people to want to engage in sex, but that they must be educated about the relative merits and drawbacks to doing so. The language used is clear and nonjudgmental. There are links specifically for youth who are gay or who have friends who are gay.
I Wanna Know: Sexual Health Information for Teens from The American Social Health Association. This website is also aimed primarily at teenagers, though it could be used with a class of middle schoolers with the proper scaffolding. There are links to specific STIs that can be clicked, these links provide clear and accurate information about causes, infectiousness, and how/if those STIs can be treated. There are links to commonly asked questions or common issues, like condom use and feelings of rejection and danger among queer youth, as well as links to “sex ed 101” and ways to best prevent contracting/spreading STIs. Clear language, comprehensive information.
Planned Parenthood's website specifically for teens, “Teen Talk”. This website is also available en Español. The site has articles and answers to frequently asked questions, as well as resources for teens who want to be tested for STIs, pregnancy, or who simply want to be proactive about their sexual health before anything like that happens. There are some mildly silly but very informative flash videos about things like HPV, how to use a condom, and the shapes of peoples' genitalia that can be watched from the site, as well as a significant amount of nonjudgmental information for teens who are queer or questioning. Planned Parenthood is kind of a standby for a reason, and appears to be going out of their collective way to remain up to date on ways to communicate important information about sexual and other body health to young people.
Scarleteen, "sex ed for the real world". This website is also aimed at teens, and is a website I was familiar with before I went looking for sites that addressed HIV and sexual health. It is, as far as I know, mostly volunteer run by young people who are sex-positive and willing to answer questions pretty much round the clock. From the "about us" section of the site is Scarleteen's statement about what they think responsible and comprehensive sex education should look like:
“We feel that the best model for lifelong sexual education is as follows:
Providing information which educates in ALL aspects of sexuality, for all sexes, economic classes, genders and orientations, including birth control, safer sex and sexually transmitted diseases, masturbation, anatomy, diverse sexual orientation and identification, gender roles, pleasure, self-esteem, body image, sexual and romantic relationship and communication tools, and care and compassion in sexual enactment.
A nonjudgmental and unbiased attitude of tolerance and understanding for teens, whether they choose to be sexually active or not.
Tools to encourage celibacy from ANY sexual activities until reasonable readiness for them, such as information on masturbation, support for delaying activity, and to do so from a standpoint of embracing safe, positive sexuality and having sex only when it is fully wanted and something young people truly feel able to handle, rather than anti-sex approaches, misinformation, scare tactics, religious edicts or shaming.
Encouragement to know as much as possible, and from an educated standpoint, to make sound choices based on personal ethics and values gleaned from family, role models, life experience and oneself.
Open, ongoing and moderated conversation about sex and sexuality in a safe, supportive and inclusive environment.”
The whole site is dedicated to providing this type of sex education, specifically feminist, inclusive sex education; the founder and the volunteers who run the site make an active attempt to provide honest and clear, nonjudgmental information to all kinds of young people.
I wish I could see clear to using this website with younger children, but I worry that the site's content could be called into question by parents as inappropriate for use with their children. With older, teenaged people, I could see fit to argue that there is information there that is immediately relevant to their lives and making certain that they conduct themselves sexually in a safe and responsible manner. I realize this argument may not work out with some parents no matter the age of their child.
I'll leave you all with this pointed argument against abstinence only sex education: I Guess You Just Have To Be Prepared To Die
Monday, February 1, 2010
Space Science websites
There are certainly websites on tap today, but first, a musical interlude from my favorite kids' album "HERE COMES SCIENCE" by They Might Be Giants:
Isaac Asimov online. This is mostly a resource for looking at the body of work that Asimov completed, and as such should be used with older students and students interested in the life of Asimov and in tracking down certain bits of information that he wrote.
WORLDTIME. This shows a model of the earth and how and where sunlight is hitting it at the time of day that it is viewed. The “globe” can be manipulated and turned in all directions, so it is possible to see where it is daylight and where it is dark, and a child using the page could do some interesting extrapolation about what time means, why we have time zones, why calling a grandparent who lives in a different time zone at certain times of day might not be a great idea, etc.
StarChild, a Learning Center for Young Astronomers. Aside from the fact that the title of the website makes me think about George Clinton, this website was pretty helpful*. There are two “levels” to choose from, both of which have categories of Solar System, Universe, Space Stuff and Glossary. The “Level 1” links are aimed at grades 2-3 and have the added benefit of the option to have the website read to you (great for ELLs of those grades and higher!) The “Level 2” links are aimed at grades 4-6, with generally similar though more complex information compared to the “Level 1” links.
American Museum of Natural History “OLOGY” website: astronomy section. The OLOGY website in general is a great science resource, containing both online interactive games and quizzes, but also activities that are intended to be done offline, such as keeping a sky journal and how to do that, and creating a big dipper mobile. I would love to poke around more on this site when I have the chance. The age range seems pretty middle elementary-aimed to me, like in the range of 3rd to 4th grade.
Astronomy.com Astronomy for Kids. The content on this site is very similar to the content on the OLOGY website, with a few different activities and resources. It's also aimed at a slightly older age group, I'd say 4th – 5th. There is a list of interactive or do-it-yourself activities for learning about different parts of the solar system, constellations, position of earth and sun to determine cardinal points, etc. Pretty neat stuff.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Yeah, I know that the links each week are supposed to be limited to 5, but I could not in good conscience leave off this truly excellent resource. You may have heard of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in reference to the Mars Rovers (that are still more or less functional, which is amazing of itself,) they really do rather a lot more than that. On this website, you can find earth imaging, information about the Cassini probe (along with other missions to Saturn and simply gorgeous pictures,) and tons and tons and TONS more. This is not a website I would send a student to alone unless they had either a very specific idea about what they wanted to study, or no idea at all. There is so much information available! This is also not a site that younger children could navigate very well on their own, but would probably keep older children busy for quite a long time. There is a subsite that is specifically aimed at children, but I would suggest not limiting your students if they find the rest of the information available to be interesting.
*No, no, I love Parliament...It's just that now I want to turn up the funk instead of doing my homework. I've compromised, and am listening to them whilst doing said homework. It's very nearly a win-win.
Isaac Asimov online. This is mostly a resource for looking at the body of work that Asimov completed, and as such should be used with older students and students interested in the life of Asimov and in tracking down certain bits of information that he wrote.
WORLDTIME. This shows a model of the earth and how and where sunlight is hitting it at the time of day that it is viewed. The “globe” can be manipulated and turned in all directions, so it is possible to see where it is daylight and where it is dark, and a child using the page could do some interesting extrapolation about what time means, why we have time zones, why calling a grandparent who lives in a different time zone at certain times of day might not be a great idea, etc.
StarChild, a Learning Center for Young Astronomers. Aside from the fact that the title of the website makes me think about George Clinton, this website was pretty helpful*. There are two “levels” to choose from, both of which have categories of Solar System, Universe, Space Stuff and Glossary. The “Level 1” links are aimed at grades 2-3 and have the added benefit of the option to have the website read to you (great for ELLs of those grades and higher!) The “Level 2” links are aimed at grades 4-6, with generally similar though more complex information compared to the “Level 1” links.
American Museum of Natural History “OLOGY” website: astronomy section. The OLOGY website in general is a great science resource, containing both online interactive games and quizzes, but also activities that are intended to be done offline, such as keeping a sky journal and how to do that, and creating a big dipper mobile. I would love to poke around more on this site when I have the chance. The age range seems pretty middle elementary-aimed to me, like in the range of 3rd to 4th grade.
Astronomy.com Astronomy for Kids. The content on this site is very similar to the content on the OLOGY website, with a few different activities and resources. It's also aimed at a slightly older age group, I'd say 4th – 5th. There is a list of interactive or do-it-yourself activities for learning about different parts of the solar system, constellations, position of earth and sun to determine cardinal points, etc. Pretty neat stuff.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Yeah, I know that the links each week are supposed to be limited to 5, but I could not in good conscience leave off this truly excellent resource. You may have heard of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in reference to the Mars Rovers (that are still more or less functional, which is amazing of itself,) they really do rather a lot more than that. On this website, you can find earth imaging, information about the Cassini probe (along with other missions to Saturn and simply gorgeous pictures,) and tons and tons and TONS more. This is not a website I would send a student to alone unless they had either a very specific idea about what they wanted to study, or no idea at all. There is so much information available! This is also not a site that younger children could navigate very well on their own, but would probably keep older children busy for quite a long time. There is a subsite that is specifically aimed at children, but I would suggest not limiting your students if they find the rest of the information available to be interesting.
*No, no, I love Parliament...It's just that now I want to turn up the funk instead of doing my homework. I've compromised, and am listening to them whilst doing said homework. It's very nearly a win-win.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)