Jul

1

A great astronomy website

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Summer’s finally here and you have time to take it easy, stay up late, and observe the stars. The problem now, of course, is that it doesn’t get dark until quite late (at least in most of Canada).

But if you’re willing to stay out late to check out the stars, a promising resource is the Budget Astronomer. This promising looking site has a lot of practical information about stargazing. Being based on a Canadian domain name, this site may even be able to point out sites we can see better than others (like the Northern Lights are beyond compare in the winter time in Canada’s North).

It’s a great way to start your summer.

May

28

Twitter from Mars

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I’ve never quite figured out why anyone would want to use Twitter. Twitter is a “microblog” where you post short, very frequent updates Why would you want the whole world to know that you’re just about to go bike riding, or eat supper, or go to bed? It all seems a bit narcissistic to me.

However, someone (presumably at NASA) has adopted the persona of the Mars Phoenix rover currently on the surface of Mars, and is twittering regular updates “from the planet,” as it were. Each post has a snippet of information, or a link to pictures, or something of interest.

Overall it’s a pretty cool way to get the average person involved minute by minute with this latest space mission. Kudos to NASA for their originality.

May

27

Phoenix Mars Lander

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If you’re doing astronomy with your class, could there possibly be a cooler site than NASA’s gallery from the Phoenix Mars Lander? It includes photos, videos, and even a timer to show how long the lander has been on Mars.

May

15

Blobs: Game Day Thursday

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I discovered the oddest game recently.  Blobs is a strangely compelling jumping game where you have a board full of green blobs that you make jump each other. The jumped blob disappears, and you keep going. The object is to end up with only one blob at the end of the level. There are 100 levels to play, with 8 blobs on level 1, and 30 on level 100.

This game is an excellent activity for developing logical reasoning skills in younger kids in much the same way chess would. However, while chess appeals mainly to a certain type of intense thinker, this is likely to have a wider appeal because of its cute green blobs and its sound effects.

The transfer of these skills to school is pretty obvious. The same type of rational, patient thinking that would make a kid successful in a game like Blobs would also be useful in Math or Science. That kind of ability to think clearly ultimately spills over into all subjects and is something that you really want to encourage.

Of course, is your school pretty to encourage logical thinking by playing video games?

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