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One of my colleagues sent me this link. If you like toys, trivia or Jeopardy, then check it out! It is the back story of how some of our favorite toys were invented. Just like so many inventions, these toys were accidental and hit it big. Lincoln logs, hula-hoop, sea-monkeys, troll dolls and many more to bring you back to your childhood. That is, if you were born in the 50's or 60's. I am sure the X-gen will have no idea what most of these toys are or how to play with them!

Exploring this site a bit more will reveal more useless information such as 10 famous people who were homeschooled, stories behind the Dr. Seuss books, and much much more trivia you never knew that you never knew!

From the site: "The Learning Page is designed to help educators use the American Memory Collections to teach history and culture. It offers tips and tricks, definitions and rationale for using primary sources, activities, discussions, lesson plans and suggestions for using the collections in classroom curriculum."

There are lesson plans, a community center where the focus is on a monthly theme. March of course is dedicated to Women's History. In addition, there are professional deveopment opportunities for all levels.

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I have always wanted to paint a world map on the blacktop at our school. Our students study many places in the world for science, current events and geography, so why not see where they are in relationship to the USA? Many years ago when I was an assistant principal, we found a price of $600 just for a map of the US, but it was too pricey at the time. Now National Geographic has a FREE kit you can download from their site. In addition to the map toolkit, there is a companion CD with lesson plans, templates and many other ideas for teachers. Look for the "Mapping the Americas" title on their page.

Image by Phong Nguyen via Flickr

If you have never seen these artists, you must visit this site. The sidewalk art they create fools your eye and is so realistic you want to jump in to the action. When you visit this site, there are links to other sidewalk artists. I love this art form and hope to see some live someday. The sample on the right is one of hundreds of examples of the sidewalk art phenomenon. Here is a link to some other great street artist work, it includes a video about how the work was created. Photographing this artwork is also challenging because you need to be at the correct angle to make the images look real. Examine images that have people in the image and try to imagine how close or far they are from the camera!

Image by wallyg via Flickr

The Independence Hall Association has produced an online textbook for middle school and high school students. It has interactive activities, collaboration projects, and a has online experts in many areas of history. To go directly to the site, visit here. This review outlines the details of the site contents.

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Today, as I just learned, is Ada Lovelace Day. She was inspired by Babbage to become involved in technology many years ago! In 1842, she was credited with writing a language to use with an analytical machine that Charles Babbage had only written about. Her contributions were so highly regarded in the computer world that the Department of Defense named a computer language, Ada, in her honor. (from Wikipedia)

My tribute to women in technology include some of the podcasts I listen to including: Girls Gone Geek, The Tech Chicks, and Grammar Girl.

I follow a lot of blogs from women I respect in the tech world including: Lee Kolbert, Jen Dorman, Robin Ellis, Lucy Gray, Lisa Parisi, Pat Hensley, and of course all of the Women of the Web.

In addition, there are many women bloggers who are posting to the photo a day or 365 project. Check out Martha Thornburg, Beth Knittle, or Marie Coleman on Flickr, and see the beautiful photographs they are taking.

Other women in tech who inspire me include all of those I have met over the past year as part of the DiscoveryEducation Network (DEN). Thank you all for sharing your ideas, your generous advice and collaboration on education and everything. Of course that includes all the Plurkmammas I have befriended this past year as well!

My Red hat is off to the pioneer women who forged the way for our right to vote, burn bras, Title IX, and be gainfully employed and almost equal pay. The glass ceiling is cracked and broken in many places thanks to many of these pioneers. I sincerely hope that I can contribute in a way that provides another path to success for my daughter and girls of her generation.

I just seems like last week when I went to HyperStudio Fest in SanDiego. What a fun time it was. Hyperstudio was on top of the world and was THE multimedia program to use in schools K-12. We loved it, the kids loved it and it was priced just right for the education environment. A few years later, much to my dismay, it slowly dissolved as it was purchased by another group. Out of the dust, David Wagner, Melinda Kolk and Dallas Jones started another company: tech4Learning and a new era of educational connections began.

This morning I received an email announcing the 10 year anniversary of tech4Learning. Their devotion of educational computing is unmatched. The monthly newsletter/magazine is filled with fantastic ideas for using their products. The pics4learning website is an excellent source of free images and they provide some of the best "at show" product demonstrations at NECC.

My school district has not bought in to their software at site license program, so we do not use their product on a full scale implementation. However, as a DiscoveryEducation STAR, I have received complimentary copies of some of their products. I must say that they are intuitive to use and blend well with other programs. I use their site, pics4learning all the time with my multimedia classes. The photos on the site are taken by ordinary people and freely shared. Anyone can submit photos to this excellent resource.

So send them a note of encouragement for continued success and thank them for their dedication to providing services and products to the educational community. Congratulations tech4Learning, I wish you 10 more years of prosperity.

Image by hpk via Flickr

I wanted to teach science when I was quite young. My parents even gave in and got me a chemistry set when I was in elementary school. I remember doing the experiments in our home and of course we made things from straws, paper and cans from our own creativity. This morning I came across this website that offers teachers a way to have students create little items at very little cost.

Toys From Trash is a collection of simple activities for any age using items you can find in your home or well, in the trash! There is a page of video links to step by step direction, but it is not in English! So if you can follow the on screen directions, you might be able to reproduce some of the projects here. A good lesson in cultural similarities and differences.