21Things4Students is an online resource to help students improve their technology proficiency as they prepare for success in the real world. Teachers value 21Things4Students because it's experiential, relevant, applicable and adaptable. Students say they love this class!

Students will create a weekly Podcast regarding a current or future technology based on research. Students will need to provide a typed summary  and works cited page for teacher approval prior to creating the podcast. This is a great lesson for integration into the school news or class webpage.

Students will discover a cultural tradition of many Spanish speaking countries, compare it to cultural conventions in the United States, and create a tangible, memorable product to commemorate the learning and growth. 

To discover, understand, and compare/contrast cultural conventions in the target culture with students’ culture.

In August 2008, the "Mountain Weather Workshop: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Forecasting" was held in Whistler, BC, Canada. It was sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, UCAR/COMET, and the Meteorological Service of Canada. The workshop brought together researchers, faculty, students, and operational forecasters. Its primary goals were to help provide a better understanding of the state of the science of mountain meteorology from both a research and an operational perspective, and to discuss ways of improving interaction between the research and forecasting communities. The workshop consisted of lectures by distinguished speakers covering numerous topics related to weather in complex terrain. This webcast collection contains recordings of the presentations from the workshop.

This dashboard is a collection of tools to support a variety of accessibility needs including Autism, Dyslexia, hearing, visual, and more.

Students focus on specific tasks that have changed because of technology. They compare the task of writing and mailing a letter to the task of sending an e-mail.

In this activity, students watch a short clip from the ASHP documentary 1877: The Grand Army of Starvationto learn about the impact of railroad expansion on Americans and the nation as a whole. After watching the clip, students complete the “Technological Turning Points and their Impact” worksheet in order to examine the positive and negative effects of the railroad.

This story, featuring a pigeon named Amelia, takes place in New York City. Amelia's owner, a young girl named Maria, receives a gift from her grandfather-a camera specially designed for strapping on to a pigeon along with copies of old photographs taken of New York City landmarks. Suddenly, Amelia's flights around the city take on new relevance; she visits the Bronx Zoo, Central Park and Battery Park to take updated pictures of those same landmarks from her "birds-eye" perspective. Through Amelia's adventures, and with some help from a NASA scientist, Maria learns about the history of aerial images, the use of images to detect changes over time, the significance of color, texture and shape in interpreting those images, and the importance of images taken from today's NASA satellites to our understanding of Earth.

In this problem-based learning module, students will 'dig' for fossils in a digital environment, using the advanced graphing techniques of line-of-best-fit and piecewise functions to look for different kinds of trends in the health of the history of the earth. They will apply this information to their knowledge of the laws of superposition and index fossils to form a complete analysis in the historical health as well as to predict where we are going in the future.

In this problem-based learning module, students will be asked to brainstorm ideas and think innovatively both independently and collaboratively in addressing a real-world problem that is relevant to their daily lives and health. Are students aware of their calorie intake and how it affects their overall health? Students will investigate the calories consumed in a typical day and how much physical activity is needed to stay healthy and fit. Students/teams will be encouraged to use the internet for research purposes in their design phase. Students will utilize various online platforms to design an infographic that can be shared with relevant individuals in the community and others in the school building

In this lesson, students will use Google Earth to explore global temperature changes. They will use Google Earth to determine how the temperature of the Earth has changed during a recent 50-58 year period. They will also explore, analyze, and interpret climate patterns of 13 different cities, and analyze differences between weather and climate patterns.

This professional development article describes approaches to using social media in harnessing the power of Web 2.0 technologies to reinforce the connection between multimedia literacy and powerful content-area learning in grades K-5. The emphasis is on collaboration with the school librarian. The article appears in the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which is structured around the seven essential principles of the climate sciences.

This board game challenges players (ages 10+) to build a spaceship and fly to a black hole. The game provides opportunities for understanding phenomena based on current black hole research. During the game, players will experience the dangers and excitement of a real space mission, and learn about the nature of black holes by launching scientific probes. The game can be played competitively or as a team (instructions are also provided for playing in large groups. Black Hole Explorer consists of: Game Board, Game Rules, Spacecraft Data sheets, Science Briefing Room document, Event cards (28), Probe result cards (12), Energy tokens (140). Game components are available as PDF downloads; dice and game pieces must be provided by the user. NOTE: tokens and cards need to be cut to size from letter-size cardstock.

This lesson explores several of the recording mediums used throughout the early 20th century. Along the way, students learn how sound waves travel, how the human brain converts those waves to recognizable sound and how inventors learned to capture them on wax, magnetic tape, and finally as digital information. From there, this lesson then investigates the creative impulses and scientific developments that turned multitrack recording from a dream to a reality. Students also get hands-on experience using the Soundbreaking Mixing Board TechTool, which allows them to be sound engineers, playing with "the mix" of a multitrack studio.

This session will bring new, integrated ideas and technology know-how to the K-5 teachers. Our goal for the session is to engage students, teachers, and parents, to share sample lessons, substantial amounts of free resources, and ways to integrate tech.

Link to presentation slides:

bit.ly/Literacy2Life

"Build It Yourself: Satellite!" is an online Flash game hosted on the James Webb Space Telescope website. The goal of the game is to explain the decision-making process of satellite design. The user can choose to build a "small," "medium," or "large" astronomy satellite. The user then selects science goals, wavelength, instruments, and optics. The satellite is then launched on the appropriate rocket (shown via an animation). Finally, the user is shown what their satellite might look like, as well as what kind of data it might collect, via examples from similar real-life satellites. Satellites range from small X-ray missions without optics (like the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer) to large missions with segmented mirrors (like the James Webb Space Telescope).

This is an activity about the moon. Learners will create their own models of lunar orbiters out of edible or non-edible materials. They determine what tools would be necessary to help us better understand the Moon and plan for a future lunar outpost. Then they incorporate these elements into their models. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is used as an example of a spacecraft armed with "eyes," "ears," and other tools for exploration. This activity is part of Explore! To the Moon and Beyond! - a resource developed specifically for use in libraries.

This is an lesson about spectrographs. Learners will build and decorate their own spectrographs using simple materials and holographic diffraction gratings. After building the spectrographs, they observe the spectra of different light sources. Requires advance preparation to spray-paint the inside of the containers black the day before construction. The activity is part of Project Spectra, a science and engineering program for middle-high school students, focusing on how light is used to explore the Solar System.

Students learn about refracting telescopes in this Moveable Museum unit, in which they construct a simple telescope. The three-page PDF guide includes suggested general background readings for educators, activity notes, step-by-step directions, and information about where to obtain supplies.