Go to All Recommended Websites

May 2008

Airplane, A Virtual Museum of its Invention
http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/air_main.shtml
This is one of the most comprehensive sites on the web covering aviation history. The 1903 Wright Flyer Simulation is based on the well-known work of F. J. Hooven, published in 1987, but goes far beyond Hooven's simulation in representing the scene from the pilot's point of view. "To Fly is Everything..." contains a digital library that includes numerous books and articles, mostly dating to the turn of the century. A photo gallery contains video clips of early craft in flight, and numerous photographs of early planes. The “Tale of the Aeroplane” provides a brief account of how the airplane was invented. The plane database provides details on several early craft. The Inventor's Gallery contains a description of various personalities who worked in the field.

Frogwatch USA
http://www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA/
Frogwatch USA is a long-term frog and toad monitoring program managed by the National Wildlife Federation in partnership with the United States Geological Survey. Anyone can volunteer! You do not have to be a frog or a toad expert to make a contribution; all you need is an interest in frogs and toads. You can learn all you need to know to volunteer and sign-up on their website.

Oceanic Research Group
www.oceanicresearch.org
Get free on-line ocean related educational resources and watch ocean film clips at this site. Their film SHARKS: Predators With A Purpose won an award from the International Wildlife Film Festival. An annual scholarship for marine study is also available to undergraduate students entering their junior or senior year and to graduate students; downloadable application provided.

Worm Spit
www.wormspit.com
A site about silkworms, silkmoths, and silk providing information about domesticated silkworms, wild silkmoths, silk work & projects (including a few patterns), and connection to a digital library about weaving, basketry, lace and related topics.

April 2008 - Think Green! Earth Day is April 22

Ecological Footprint
http://www.earthday.net/Footprint/index.asp
Calculate your ecological footprint; your impact upon the earth, through a quick survey.
For more information about ecological footprints and their application worldwide visit the Global Footprint Network, www.footprintnetwork.org

Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy - U.S. Dept. of Energy
http://www.eere.energy.gov/
Connects visitors to various DOE research programs that are mandated to provide energy that is clean, abundant, reliable and affordable. Included are links to their work on biofuels, building and geothermal technologies, solar, wind and hydropower. Grants and research awards to cities, companies and universities as well as conferences and events are posted. The quicklink to the kids’ site, www.eere.energy.gov/kids/ provides information, games, a quiz, and resources for parents and teachers.

Energy Hog
http://www.energyhog.org/
With entry portals for adults and kids, this site provides tips to improving home energy efficiency. Includes an energy checklist, energy audit, a link for educators, and fun educational games for children. Kids that master all five games are awarded a printable Energy Hog Buster certificate.

Local Harvest
http://www.localharvest.org/
A guide to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.

Purple Comet! – Online Math Meet on April 14
http://purplecomet.org/
Purple Comet! hosts an annual on-line mathematics meet every April for middle and high school students. This year it is being held Monday, April 14 at 12:00 noon UTC through Friday, April 18, 12:00 noon UTC. The meet is open to teams of students from anywhere in the world enrolled in middle school or high school (or local equivalent), or home-schooled students who are at a comparable level. The website provides previous math meet questions and answers, team registration (free) and rules, and lists of past winners. Site is maintained by the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

March 2008 - Women's History Month

Women in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/
Provided by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, www.sdsc.edu, this compilation of biographical sketches about notable women in science is available on-line and as a downloadable PDF; Rosalind Franklin, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, May Edward Chinn, Annie Jump Cannon, Helen Sawyer Hogg, and Sophie Germain are among them.

Women's History Month - Gale CENGAGE Learning
http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/index.htm
Here you will find free downloads: a March 2008 women’s history calendar and photos for your computer desktop. Also available are activities, a quiz, selected reading, related links, a timeline, and biographies. Abigail Adams leads the list of women’s biographical sketches. They include women from a variety of professions and backgrounds; Clara Barton, Murie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Georgia O’Keefe, Mother Teresa, and Virginia Woolf among them.

Amelia Earhart - Kids Connect
http://www.kidskonnect.com/content/view/215/27/
This site provides a wealth of information about Amelia Earhart through links to other sites. The links include among others: Aeronautics: Amelia Earhart, Amazing Americans: Amelia Earhart, Amelia Earhart: 1897-1937, Amelia Earhart: A Timeline, Amelia Earhart Papers, The Earhart Project, The Flight of Amelia Earhart, and Two Legends of Aviation: Lindbergh and Earhart.

Dr. May Edward Chinn – Changing the Face of Medicine
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_61.html
This site, Changing the Face of Medicine, celebrates America’s women physicians. The page about Dr. Chinn includes a short biographical sketch and gallery of seven photos. This site also provides information about careers in medicine, lesson plans for K-12 teachers, lists of suggested reading, and a collection of biographical sketches about other notable women physicians.

February 2008

BirdSleuth / Cornell Lab of Ornithology
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/birdsleuth
Students become citizen scientists by first learning to identify birds then partnering with scientists to collect meaningful data, engage in the process of science by carefully observing birds, asking and answering their own questions based on observations and data, and publishing their original research. Curriculum modules can be used as stand-alone units, or they can be completed sequentially and may be matched to teaching objectives and student interests.

MIT Open Course Ware
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
Free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1800 courses spanning Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s entire curriculum.

Secret Worlds: The Universe Within / Molecular Expressions
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html
Experience the Powers of Ten. View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons. Site includes student activities, interactive Java tutorials, and teacher resources.

Kids' Health - All About the Heart
http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/body/heart_noSW.html
Kids can learn not only about their heart, but also their bones, brain, eyes, muscles, teeth, hair, and internal organs as well. Available in English and Spanish.

January 2008

This month there is a theme to the websites:
Wonderful Webcams – your online window to the world!
To find out how web cams work check out, http://computer.howstuffworks.com/webcam.htm

Bee Cam
http://www.draperbee.com/webcam/beecam.htm
View the bees of a Pennsylvania bee keeper. Children will also enjoy the online bee games.

Bald Eagle Web Cam - National Wildlife Federation
http://www.nwf.org/eaglecam/webcam.cfm
This site provides a live viewing of a bald eagle nest in Maine. Plan your viewing: March through August are the best months to view nest activities: egg incubation, hatching, fledging. In September the young of the year will begin foraging on their own.

The Elephant Sanctuary - Elecam
http://www.tappedintoelephants.com/asp/index.php
The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, TN, founded in 1995, is the nation's largest natural habitat refuge developed specifically for endangered African and Asian elephants. It operates on 2,700 acres just 85 miles southwest of Nashville. The sanctuary is haven for old, sick or needy elephants who have been retired from zoos and circuses. The webcam is the general public’s only access to the elephants unless they become VIP patrons.

For more elephant viewing:
Asian Elephant Cam - Smithsonian National Zoological Park
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AsianElephants/
Plan your viewing: The elephants stay inside overnight at the Elephant House, and spend part of their day hanging out, eating, and resting inside. Every day at 10:30 a.m. EST, the elephants are bathed by keepers.

Glacier National Park Webcams
http://www.nps.gov/glac/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm
The Apgar Mountain webcam covers most of the northwest corner of Glacier National Park, from Lake McDonald to Rainbow Peak. Large fires have burned through this area over the last decade and created a mosaic of different age forests that aid in creating the tremendous biological diversity that sets Glacier National Park apart from other areas of the Rocky Mountains. The Apgar Mt. cam one of several webcams available at the website.

Pyramid Web Camera
http://www.pyramidcam.com/
Take a virtual trip to the pyramids. This webcam is hosted by the SIAG Pyramids Hotel in Giza, Egypt, approximately 1.5 kilometers ENE of the Pyramids Plateau.

December 2007
Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization
http://www.csiro.au/org/AboutCSIRO.html
CSIRO is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world. Here you will find information about new technologies, www.csiro.au/business/NewTechnologies.html, and their on-going involvement in Sci/Tech: astronomy & space, energy, environment, farming & food, health & well being, information & communication technology, manufacturing, materials, mining & minerals, and transport & infrastructure.

Education with New Technologies
http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/welcome/index.cfm
ENT, developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a networked community designed to help educators develop powerful learning experiences for students through the effective integration of new technologies. You can take a tour of the website, but full access to networking, forum discussions and member curriculum designs are only available through a free registration process.

Winter Weather Safety & Awareness
http://www.weather.gov/os/winter/index.shtml
This site, sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the American Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, provides winter preparedness information along with general information about snow, ice, cold and wind & wind chill. Forecasts, warnings and the weather outlook for the current winter are available through links. A list of the “billion dollar storms” with associated satellite and radar images and narrative about each storm is also provided.

November Websites of the Month
NASA TV
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
View live coverage of the astronauts aboard the shuttle or international space station and the ground crew at mission control. Choose between the public, media, and education channels, or receive audio only. Other links provide information about NASA missions and job opportunities, their latest news, podcasts, and their video and art galleries.

National Science Foundation Digital Library (NSDL)
http://nsdl.org/
NSDL is the Nation's online library for education and research in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics. Browse the site by Science Literacy Maps, a tool for teachers and students to find NSDL resources that relate to specific science and math concepts, by topic, or by the NSDL collections list. The site includes resources for k-12 teachers, college & university faculty, and librarians. The link for First Time Users provides a good overview of the site. Other links include publications, news, and the Blogoshere, a forum for collaborative STEM conversations among content experts, scientists, teachers, and students from key NSDL audience groups: K12 teachers, university faculty, librarians, and library builders.

Wellcome Images
http://medphoto.wellcome.ac.uk/
Browse or search the vast and unique image collection of the Wellcome Library, UK. Themes range from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science and document two thousand years of human culture. They are available on demand in digital form. Collection includes rare books and manuscripts.

October Websites of the Month
Maine Archaeological Society
www.mainearchsociety.org
October is Archaeology Month for the state of Maine*. Programs are being hosted around the state and include: “The Rediscovery of the Popham Colony: History and Archaeology, 1888-2005” at Bowdoin College on Oct. 10; “Maine Native American Stone Tools” at the L.C. Bates Museum on Oct. 11; “The Archeology of N’tolonapemk: An Ancient Native American Village on Meddybemps Lake, Maine” at Acadia National Park on Oct. 22. For more program listings and information visit the Maine Archeological Society website. *For other state Archaeology Months and events go to the Society for American Archaeology website, http://www.saa.org/public/resources/ArchMonth_2005.html

NOAA Marine Debris Program
http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/
This site, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), features educational materials about marine debris including its sources and impacts, a glossary and photo gallery, news from around the world regarding marine debris and updates on projects throughout the U.S., funding opportunities for new programs, and information about how to become involved. Includes maps of post-Katrina marine debris and a link to the Gulf of Mexico Marine Debris project, http://gulfofmexico.marinedebris.noaa.gov/

The Royal Society Guide to Climate Change Controversies
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=6229
The Royal Society has produced this overview of the current state of scientific understanding of climate change to help non-experts better understand some of the debates in this complex area of science. The Society - as the UK's national academy of science - responds here to eight key arguments that are currently in circulation by setting out, in simple terms, where the weight of scientific evidence lies. The Climate Change Controversies guide is available in PDF at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=4085.

September Websites of the Month
Art of Science
http://www.princeton.edu/~artofsci/gallery2006/
The Art of Science site is the internet showcase for the annual Art of Science competition held by Princeton University. It is a celebration of the aesthetics of research and the ways in which science and engineering inform art and vise versa. The artwork includes images, videos, and sounds produced in the course of research in the sciences, engineering and mathematics, as well as creative works incorporating tools or concepts from science. Entries were judged based on aesthetic excellence as well as scientific or technical interest.

RealClimate
http://www.realclimate.org
RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. The site aims to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion is restricted to scientific topics and they will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.

US Army Corps of Engineers Education Center
http://education.usace.army.mil/index.cfm
Designed for students, teachers, librarians and other educators, this site provides access to many educational resources. Included are a list of topics, navigation lessons and games, science experiments, Corps stories, and related links for adults and children.

August Websites of the Month:
Maine Butterfly Survey
http://mbs.umf.maine.edu
Maine is home to over 115 species of butterflies. This site provides species lists, photographs, and distribution maps as well as occurrence, abundance and flight period information. A short list of recommended butterfly guides and related reading is available, as is a PDF file of the Maine Butterfly Survey (MBS) Baseline Report. You can get involved by attending a MBS volunteer training session.

Butterflies & Moths of North America
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/taxonomy
Butterfly and moth occurrence maps, species accounts, checklists, and photographs are available on this site.

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Info/order.htm
Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years. Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken more than 700,000 photographs of the Earth. At this site you can search the photographic collection and purchase copies of the photos. You may also download screensavers for free.

ScienceResearch.com
http://www.scienceresearch.com/search/
This free, publicly available web portal allows access to numerous scientific journals and public science databases. Students, teachers, professors, researchers, and the general public can access pertinent science information quickly and easily.