Solar System Exploration by NASA

Explore the planets, dwarf planets and moons of our solar system with NASA's Solar System Exploration.  Interactive displays take students, and teachers, on a trip to each celestial body in our solar system to learn specific features of each.  A great resource for a project, test prep, or just fun exploration.  This will help students studying Earth Science and Space in the upper elementary and middle school grades.

You can find a link to NASA's Solar System Exploration on the Staff Resources Padlet.

Jungle Jeopardy: An Ecosystem Game

Jungle Jeopardy, a PBS Kids site, is geared for students in kindergarten thru fourth grade.  In this interactive game students are to create a balance in a rain forest ecosystem, keeping alive each animal over a period of 12 days.   Students learn about different species of plants and animals in a rain forest and how they depend on each other.  Experiment with changing one resource at a time (variables) and how the affect the whole system.


You can find a link on our Staff Resource Padlet as well.

Animated Maps: A History / Social Studies Resource

Analyzing and interpreting maps is part of the Social Studies learning standards for most elementary and middle school grades.  Mapping History, produced by the University of Oregon, features lots of animated maps illustrating problems, patterns, and events throughout history. Mapping History is essentially a digital atlas of American, European, Latin American, and African history. Each section is divided into modules based on historical themes and eras.

Applications for Education
Mapping History is a resource to bookmark for the next time that you need a thematic map to illustrate a pattern in history. I found that some of the maps will also be useful as question prompts. For example, this map prompts students to evaluate the extent to which the expansion of slavery in the U.S. was connected to the demand for cotton.

Extreme Planet Makeover

Extreme Planet Makeover

Extreme Planet Makeover is an interactive activity produced by NASA as a part of the Exoplanet Exploration website. Extreme Planet Makeover lets students choose the size of a planet, position relative to the largest and nearest star, and planet age. Students instantly get feedback on the characteristics of the planets they create. For example, if it is too small and too far from a star students will see that they created an iceball planet.

Extreme Planet Makeover is one of four Exoplanet Exploration interactive activities. The other three are Interstellar Trip Planner, Alien Safari (I previously featured these here), and Five Ways to Find a Planet (review coming next week).

Applications for Education

Extreme Planet Makeover is a simple interactive that students could use for a few minutes to see how the relative size and position of planets contribute to their characteristics.

(I found this on the following site.  The author has many more posts and links for teachers who use technology on a regular basis, or for those who want to implement more technology in the classroom.  Please make sure you bookmark his page and use as a constant resource.  There is a lot of useful information.)