Fusion Finds

My daughter and I are participating in Project BudBurst. First, I downloaded the Project BudBurst Activity Guide. We then used the provided map to select a plant that we hoped to find in the lot across the street. We needed to find a specimen that hadn’t budded yet, or at least not bloomed. After printing a field guide and locating our plant, we determined the latitude and longitude of the plant. We recorded our observation with a photo, a description of the weather, and the phenological stage of the plant (first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal). We will record our observations each day, studying the timing of the life cycle events. The data that we report online will be compared to historical records to document the effects of climate change.

The site for this online collaborative project includes options for classroom participation including Teacher resources and student games (K-6).

Image Credit: Takshi* CC: by-nc-nd
tag: edtech, k12, Project BudBurst, plants, life cycle, phenological stage, science, collaborative project

Children’s Hospital Boston Interactive Features webpage has a series of tutorials to present complex medical and biological concepts in an interactive format including: firing a virtual neuron, how cancer grows and spreads, how tissues form and diseases develop, etc.

tag: k12 edtech science medical biology Children’s Hospital Boston

The other day my 4th grader was pondering the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. The PBS Nature Interactives webpage site had a great interactive diagram that answered her question. The critter guide then explained how some Egyptians worshiped the crocodile. From the video database we watched a short clip from the Supersize Crocs episode of Nature, which airs on PBS on Sunday nights. This same clip is available as a video podcast. We decided to subscribe to the PBS Nature podcasts so she could watch new clips from upcoming NATURE episodes on the iPod.

This is a great resource with beautiful images and videos, interactive activities, teacher’s guides and lesson plans. The site mentions a new resource coming soon, Windows Into Nature, that sounds promising for high school students:

Find teacher-created lesson plans and a rich video bank tying downloadable NATURE video clips into high school curricula in Living Environment/Biology and Earth Science.

tag: PBS Nature video science k12 edtech images podcasts animals biology Earth Science lesson plans