Art in the twenty-first century from PBS

Lesson plans and videos for season 6 from Art21 on PBS follow.

Their website says the following":

"Art in the Twenty-First Century" Season Six includes 13 profiles of artists from five continents gathered into four, one-hour thematic episodes: Change, Balance, History and Boundaries. Spanning the globe from Nigeria to New York City, from Beijing to Brazil, the programs reveal the artists at work and speaking in their own words as they demonstrate the power of art to alter perception, challenge convention, and change how we see the world around us.

Major underwriting for "Art in the Twenty-First Century" Season Six provided by: The National Endowment for the Arts; Agnes Gund; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; The Broad Art Foundation; The Japan Foundation; Toby Devan Lewis.

The following link will bring you the teachers guide for this:  http://www.pbs.org/art21/files/uploads/pdf/art21-season-six-guide.pdf

The 36 season 6 videos from Art21 on PBS can be found here:
http://www.art21.org/films/art-in-the-twenty-first-century-season-6-2012/videos

Videos from previous seasons can be found here:
http://www.pbs.org/art21/films

History of Conflict

As quoted from Seth Dixon, 

"This database of global wars and conflicts is searchable through space and time.  You can drag and click the both the map and timeline to locate particular battles and wars, and then read more information about that conflict.  This resource would be a great one to show students and let them explore to find what they see as interesting."

To see this website click here.

Persuasive Techniques in Advertising

From

They have a 7 part lesson plan for teachers on Persuasive Techniques used in Advertising.  Along with the lesson plans there is the following video clip.




The Instructional Plan can be found by clicking here.  Make sure you look at the other tabs labelled "Preview" and "Resources and Preparation" .

Virtual Heart

Virtual Heart is a free Ipad  app from The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

From the Itunes store we have the following:

Virtual Heart lets you explore multiple real-time views of the human heart, using the same highly realistic visual elements as the iconic Giant Heart at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. This vibrant 13-foot-tall animated heart from MSI's YOU! The Experience is now also available in convenient iPad size.

Take a visual and educational touchscreen journey through the beating heart, developed in collaboration with XVIVO Scientific Animation. Choose from an external view or three internal views showing the heart's valves, blood flow or electrical system at work inside the beating heart. Controls let you adjust the heart rate anywhere from 30 to 180 beats per minute, or to enable key labels identifying different areas of the heart’s structure. Learn more about the heart and circulatory system with additional information presented on the display.

Virtual Heart is not a static picture, but realistically animated and constantly beating like a live heart you can explore at multiple levels. It's the most amazing view of the heart you can get without rib spreaders.

If you would like to get this app you can click here.

Tweaked

Thanks to Mr. Nurse and his Speak Up grant we have Tweaked by Katherine Holubitsky.

 If you would like to read a bit about the book then click here.

Uplifting 3 Point Story

From ESPN


Owen Groesser enjoyed a night to remember, and took Twitter by storm in the process.

Groesser, a junior high student with Down syndrome, made a pair of 3-pointers in his school's basketball game Wednesday, prompting a Twitter campaign that resulted in a highlight on "SportsCenter."

According to ABC affiliate WXYZ in Detroit, Groesser had not played this season for Van Hoosen Junior High School, which was playing its season finale Wednesday.

But after entering late in the game, Groesser received a pass beyond the arc and sank a 3-pointer, sparking a wild celebration in the stands. Groesser also made another 3-pointer, finishing with six points in approximately two minutes of playing time.

After the game, Groesser's friends and teammates launched a Twitter campaign called #GetOwenOnSportsCenter, which trended as highlights of the game spread on the Internet.

The campaign was a success, as Groesser's exploits were featured on "SportsCenter's" Top-10 highlights Wednesday night.

Creativity in Education

From Adobe TV, this is a series of videos on Creativity in Education. Five short conversations with Sir Ken Robinson. Each video is around 2 minutes.

Ebook Graphic Novels online at the library

I want to let you know that there has been a central purchase of 20 ebooks.  All elementary and secondary school libraries have access to these books.  They are hosted through Abdo Digital, and we own the books outright and have unlimited access to them. Access to them is through Destiny Basic Search.

These ebooks can be viewed with any device that has Internet access. They are not downloadable so they cannot be loaded onto an ereader.  However, if the ereader is Internet enabled, then the books can be read with them.  These books work on all tablets, Smartboards and smartphones provided the devices have access to the Internet.

These books are password protected.  All English classes at KCI have a poster with the Username and Password.  If a teacher or student needs help accessing these books they can see Mr. Hnidei in the library for help.

Here is a list of the ebook graphic novels:

1) Iron Man: Northern Lights

2) Iron Man: Web of Lies

3) X-Men: Seeing Red

4) X-Men: X-Men 101

5)Wolverine: The Buddy System

6) Wolverine: Citadel

7) Avengers: Don't Follow the Leader

8) Avengers:Which Wish

9) Spider Girl Battles the Deadly Dragon

10) Spider Girl Legacy...In Black and White

11) Spider Man: Playing Hero

12) Spider Man: Everything You Read

13) Spider Man Team Up Thor: Out of Time

14) Spider Man Team Up: Fantastic Four

15) Hulk: Is he man or monster or is he both

16) Hulk: Radioactive

17) Fantastic Four: Law of the Jungle

18) Fantastic Four: The Master of Sound

19) Mary Jane: The Loyalty Thing

20) Mary Jane: The Trust Thing

Protecting your online reputation

I received a graphic novel from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently and it reminded me of the truly  disturbing story of Amanda Todd who committed suicide after being a victim of cyber-bullying.  If you do not remember this you can click here or you can look at yesterdays post about CBC News in Review by clicking here.

From the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, "My Office has created a graphic  novel, Social Smarts: Privacy, the Internet and You, to help young Canadians better understand and navigate privacy issues in the online world.    I hope you can make use of it to generate discussion in your classroom about the impact that some online technologies may have on privacy, and how young people can build a secure online identity while keeping their personal information safe."

If you would like to see the graphic novel I have a copy in the library or you can download a pdf copy by clicking here.  You can also get a limited number of hard copies by requesting them by sending an email to youth-jeunes@priv.gc.ca 

"The graphic novel illustrates the fluid nature of the Internet, and how content posted online can be forwarded, copied, pasted, manipulated, printed out or saved, available forever."

They also have a video

CBC News in Review

IN THIS ISSUE.........

LEARNING FROM THE DEATH OF AMANDA TODD (Length: 14:47)
B.C. teenager Amanda Todd was bullied relentlessly for years before choosing to take her own life. What can we learn from this tragedy, and what must change to stop bullying?

U.S. ELECTION: OBAMA RE-ELECTED (Length: 16:34)
Barack Obama is the President of the United States for another four years after defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney. We review the campaign and look at both men’s successes and failures.

CANADA'S SPY STORY (Length: 14:51)
Royal Canadian Navy Sub-Lieutenant Jeffery Paul Delisle has confessed to being a spy for Russia. We show what he did, how he managed to get away with it for so long, and what motivated him to betray his country.

TRUTH, LIES AND CONFESSIONS (Length: 18:42)
A popular police interrogation method is seen as a success for all the confessions it helps elicit from suspects. Detractors acknowledge its success but also claim it can pressure people into confessing to crimes they did not commit.

CBC is offering the online guide in Word format.  This allows teachers to customize and tailor the exercises to their classes.  On the Website, click the desired story and a PDF or Word option will appear.  To go to their website click here.

Shakespeare for the Iphone

If you would like all of Shakespeare's works  for free for the Iphone or Ipad then this app is for you.

From the Itunes website we have the following:

Shakespeare™ is a free app with the complete works of Shakespeare (41 plays, 154 sonnets and 6 poems, including doubtful works) and a searchable concordance to find the exact word or phrase you’re looking for (with “relaxed” searching to find words close to your search term).

Even though it’s free, Shakespeare for the iPad/iPhone/iPod is packed with these impressive features:

• CUSTOMIZE YOUR READING EXPERIENCE by choosing from a variety of color combinations, change the font family and size, and jump around to different scenes.

• QUALITY TEXTS are a top priority and our team spent over two years compiling and editing the best references available.

• DETAILED SCENE BREAKDOWNS give you an overview of the scenes within each play, their locations, and the characters present in each.

• THE SHAKESPEARE PASSPORT is your virtual ticket to events and exhibitions all over the world. Just show the passport on your device for great benefits at participating venues. More information at ShakespearePassport.com.

If you’re looking for line numbers, the integrated Shakespeare’s Words glossary, a gallery of Shakespeare portraits, random quote generator, Shakespeare facts, auto-and scrolling, check out Shakespeare Pro for these and other great features. If you’re a student, professor, actor, or just plain love the Bard, this must-have app ensures you have the complete works at your fingertips.

Works contained: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Double Falsehood, Edward III, Hamlet, Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), Henry V, Henry VI (Parts 1-3), Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Love’s Labours Lost, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Pericles, King Richard II, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Sir Thomas More, Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Two Noble Kinsmen, The Winter’s Tale, Sonnets, Venus & Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, A Lover’s Complaint, Passionate Pilgrim, Phoenix & Turtle, To the Queen

You can see this app in the Itunes store by clicking here.

icell

Icell is a free app for the ipad from Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology.

The app lets you zoom in or out of the cell.  It also lets you rotate the cell.  It lets you look at animal, plant or bacteria cells.  The intermediate and advance options will be appropriate for high school students.

Mind Maps

If you would like to make some nice mind maps or flow charts you can try the following two sites.
First is

click here to link 

When you go to their site, you will see an example that looks like the following:

Text2Mindmaps converts text into mindmaps which are great for the visual learner.  You just edit the text in the left text box.  You can grab any of the text boxes and rotate or move their location.  When you are done just click on the "Draw Mind Map" button.  Then you can then "save" them in pdf form.  Here is an example I did for the analysis of Intersections of three 3 dimensional planes .

Another site one can use for mind maps is Lucidchart

click here to go to their site

See the following videos

Their software is not free unless you are a teacher or student :)

Time Magazine #1 fiction in the house

From the Title Peek, " The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it's also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness."

This is another great one by John Green, voted #1 fiction book by Time and #1 young adult fiction by YALSA.  For a Title Peek please click here.

More than supplemental Infographic

From Shannon Lattin at 

Click to go to her website

She has created an infographic showing 13 essential vitamins your body needs.  This would be great to make a poster of an hang in your nutrition or health class.

BBC's predictions for the next 150 years

Here is what the BBC thinks might happen.  You might think of having your students predict what they think might happen and make their own Infographic using the information I blogged about on December 19.
The link to the original article can be found by clicking here.

Crash Course - The Great Gatsby

John Green is at it again.  This time he introduces you to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby".

Here is part II

New York Times Best Sellers in

We had a few anonymous donations recently, all of which were NY Times best sellers.


We also received a donated copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to replace our lost copy.

How much sugar is in a pop?

How much sugar is in a bottle of pop?  This could be used in math or science or maybe even a foods class.
See Dan Meyer's lesson by clicking here.

Couch is in

Well we finally have a couch in the library for silent reading.  The funds for the couch came from a government grant that the library received just recently.

An alternative to Power Point

Click for link to Itunes App Store

Haiku Deck is an Ipad app that allows you or your students to make great slide shows.  The problem with many slide shows with Power Point is that people write out way too much and then just read their slides.  Haiku intentionally eliminates this by limiting the amount of text you can type per slide.  Due to this brevity users will have clean concise slides.  To use this app you enter a few key words and Haiku Deck will search its huge database for Creative Commons images.  Once this is done your text will be displayed large enough to fill the screen so it can easily be read.  There are five free theme templates and eleven more for a $2 fee.

From an interview on Fastcodesign.com, "Our approach was to make a presentation tool that people would love to use and to obliterate the dreaded 'death by PowerPoint,' phenomenon that so many experience on a regular basis, whether in the workplace, in the classroom, on a committee, or at a conference," founder AdamTratt said. "To do this, we tried to productize best practices espoused by the presentation design gurus like Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte. They say things like, 'use one idea per slide,' 'have a consistent look and feel,' and 'use an impactful image.'"

These are principles that Haiku Deck’s limited feature set essentially forces you to follow. It’s similar to some of the thinking behind Apple’s iOS, just on a much narrower scale: The user doesn’t always know best, and if you give him the option to customize everything, don’t be surprised if you end up with a dreadful result.

Dear 16 year old me

This video is about skin cancer and is made for teens and is very powerful.  If you have teens have them look at it.  This could be used in heath class or science class.  It comes from the website http://www.dcmf.ca/

New Books

Two new ones are in.  The first is An Abundance of Katherines which was a Michael Printz Honor Book.

Click here for a Title Peek

The second one is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky that became a major motion picture.

Click here for a Title Peek

Mt Everest & the Khumbu Glacier in HD

A couple of summers ago I read many books about Mt Everest and the deadly climbing season of 1996.  David Breashears was the  leader of one of those expeditions and  was filming for the Imax movie EVEREST.   He went back this spring and filmed the icefields in HD.  Go to the following website by clicking here and click on the image there to enter the gigapixel navigation.  You can then use the controls to move left and right and to zoom in.  You can REALLY zoom in.  You can see the base camps, individual tents etc.  The gigapixel pic looks like the one below except with a ton more resolution.

If you are interested in the 1996 summitting of Everest, I read the following and enjoyed them:
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest by Beck Weathers and Stephen Michaud
and finally from the son of the Sherpa who climbed Everest first
Touching My Father's Soul: A Sherpa's Journey  to the Top of Everest by Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Broughton Coburn and Jon Krakauer

January Scholastic Book Orders

If  you would like to order any scholastic books please print out the appropriate order form and bring the cheque or money to the library.


Elf PreK-K -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/elf/january/E5A13_N.pdf
SeeSaw K-1 -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/seesaw/january/S5A13_N.pdf
Lucky Gr 2 - 3 -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/lucky/january/L5A13_N.pdf
Arrow Gr 4-6 -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/arrow/january/I5A13_N.pdf
Teen Gr 7 & up -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/teenrc/january/T5A13_N.pdf
Interactive for all ages -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/click/january/W5A13_N.pdf
French -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/lecture/january/F5A13_N.pdf
Teacher Picks -http://scholastic.ca/clubs/specials/january/P5A13_N.pdf

Crash Course - Romeo and Juliet

Crash Course has done Biology and History and now they are taking it to Literature.  John Green examines Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare. John delves into the world of Bill Shakespeare's famous star-crossed lovers and examines what the play is about, its structure, and the context in which it was written.

Wonderville

This website was developed by Science Alberta Foundation.  There is much here that relates to the science of the oil industry and careers in the oil industry.  I wanted to point out the video on Carbon Dioxide as it might be relevant in a grade 9 science class.  See below.


There is a second video on carbon capture put out by them also.  There are many activities, games and videos in the "teachers" section.  Click here to see this.