Free Webinar – Using Rockets to Investigate Forces and Motion
The Smithsonian Learning Lab hosts a regular series of free professional development webinars for teachers. The next one is titled Using Rockets to Investigate Forces and Motion. The free webinar will be on Tuesday, April 11th at 4pm ET. The Smithsonian hosts the webinars on YouTube which means you don’t need to register to attend. […]
A Free Smithsonian Webinar Tomorrow
Some of my high school history students often took a while to understand the idea that just because a document is an old primary source it doesn’t automatically mean that source is infallible or even an accurate representation of events. They still needed to account for context and the potential for an author’s bias among […]
Tutorials for Getting Started With the Smithsonian Learning Lab
The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans from a wide range of Smithsonian-hosted resources. It also lets you create collections to share with others as well as create assignments to give to your students. To start the new school year The Smithsonian published a collection […]
Expedition Insects – An Interactive Book from the Smithsonian
Expedition Insects is a neat interactive book from the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The book was written to helps students in third through fifth grade learn about insects from all over the world. The book is full of pictures and videos to complement the text. Throughout the book students can click or tap on underlined […]
Five Good Resources for Learning About Airplanes and Airlines
We’re planning a little trip this fall to visit some family that we haven’t seen since before the start of the pandemic. When we told our daughters that we’re going to fly they got very excited about it. We’ve now been answering questions about flying seemingly nonstop for a few days. Those conversations prompted me […]
Best of 2022 So Far – Smithsonian Canvas
I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. This week the Smithsonian Learning Lab released a new tool that could be very helpful to history and art teachers. The tool is simply called Canvas (no connection to the […]
Two Free and Cool Summer Learning Opportunities for Teachers
Summer feels like it’s a long way off right now which is why I like to start thinking about it now and putting some fun things on summer calendar. If you like to do the same, here’s a couple of cool summer learning opportunities that you might want to investigate and apply for. C-SPAN Fellowship […]
Mark Your Calendar for Three Free Smithsonian Learning Lab Webinars in January
The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a great resource that I’ve featured dozen or more times over the years. Later this month the Smithsonian Learning Lab is hosting three free webinars for teachers who want to learn more about how to use it for online and in-person instruction. All of the webinars will be livestreamed on […]
Transcribing Early Copyright Applications
By the People is the Library of Congress project that was formerly known as the Crowd project. The name changed at some point in the last year, but the purpose of the project remains the same. That purpose is to enlist the help of the public to transcribe historical documents housed the by the Library […]
A Virtual Tour and Videos for Learning About Breaking the Sound Barrier
Chuck Yeager died yesterday at the age of 97. He was the first person to fly an airplane faster than the speed of sound. The BBC’s article about Chuck Yeager’s passing included some archival footage of his flight in the Bell X-1 that he flew. Watching that footage reminded me of the Smithsonian Air & […]
A Good Game for Learning About Nutrition Around the World
The Smithsonian offers a lot of neat apps and games for elementary school students. One of those games is called Pick Your Plate. It’s available to play in your web browser or as an iPad or Android app. The premise of Pick Your Plate is that students have to create balanced meals within a budget […]
DIY Smithsonian Mini Exhibits
The Smithsonian Learning Lab is an excellent resource for social studies and language arts teachers. I’ve been using and recommending it for years. One of its many features is an option to create and share collections of artifacts from the Smithsonian and external sources. And every month the Smithsonian Learning Lab sends out an email […]
How to Measure, Share, and Download 3D Models from the Smithsonian
Last week the Smithsonian launched a new collection of nearly three million digital artifacts that you can download and reuse for free. I published a video about how to access and search through that new collection. For the sake of brevity I didn’t include everything that you can do with the artifacts in the Smithsonian’s […]
How to Search the Smithsonian’s Open Access Collection
Earlier this week the Smithsonian launched a new open access collection. Smithsonian Open Access contains more than 2.8 million digital artifacts that you can view and download for free. While the Smithsonian Open Access homepage does have a couple of introductory videos, they’re more promotional than they are instructional. That’s why I created the following […]
Getting Started With the Smithsonian Learning Lab
The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans from a wide range of Smithsonian-hosted resources. It also lets you create collections to share with others as well as create assignments to give to your students. The video playlist embedded below teaches you how to […]
An Educational Game About Animal Habitats
Habitats is an educational game from the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The online game challenges elementary school to match animals to their habitats. In the Habitats game students are shown images representative of four habitats; desert, coral reef, jungle, and marsh. To play the games students have to drag pictures of animals from a list […]
Wiggle & Stomp – A Fun App for Learning About Animals
Shutterbugs Wiggle and Stomp is an educational game produced by the Smithsonian. The purpose of the game is to help children recognize the movements of animals. In the game children move through a virtual zoo with a zoo keeper. As they go through the virtual zoo the zoo keeper will ask students to take pictures […]
An Online Lab for Learning About Weather Patterns and Forecasts
The Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Weather Lab is one of many online learning activities produced and hosted by the Smithsonian. The Weather Lab is designed to help elementary and middle school students learn about weather patterns. In the Weather Lab students select an ocean current and an air mass then try to predict the weather pattern that will result […]
Two Online Primary Source Document Activities for High School Students
Earlier this week the Library of Congress launched a new crowdsourcing project called Crowd. The project seeks volunteers to transcribe primary source documents that are available online through the Library of Congress. Crowd is similar to the Smithsonian’s Digital Volunteers program. Both programs provide an opportunity for high school students and some middle school students […]
Smithsonian Learning Lab Announces Most Popular Resources of 2017
The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a great tool for organizing collections of resources available through the Smithsonian. Through the Learning Lab you can search for and then gather together documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans. This playlist of videos will show you everything that you need to know in order to use the […]
Virtual and Interactive Resources for Science Teachers
Virtual labs have come a long way in recent years. While nothing compares to completing a hands-on lab in an actual science classroom, sometimes it isn’t possible. Cost and access to equipment are possible obstacles. Other barriers include location. As more classes are being offered online, it necessary for students to complete activities in virtual […]
View and Print 3D Models of Smithsonian Artifacts
Smithsonian X 3D (SIx3D) offers a neat way for students to learn about artifacts from the Smithsonian museums. The site is the result of a collaboration between Autodesk and the Smithsonian Institution. More than artifacts are currently featured on Smithsonian X 3D. The artifacts can be viewed as 3D models that you can virtually manipulate. Many […]
5 Good Elementary School Activities from the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian offers wonderful online resources for students of all ages. The Smithsonian’s Learning Lab lets teachers create collections of resources. But you don’t have to use the Learning Lab to use many of the activities available through the various Smithsonian channels. Here are five good online activities available through the Smithsonian. These are activities […]
Fun and Short Smithsonian Videos
Ask Smithsonian is a fun video series featured on the Smithsonian Magazine website. All of the videos in the series are less than two minutes long. Each video tackles a fun topic in science. Some of the videos address questions that are less serious topics than others. For example, on the first page of Ask Smithsonian […]
Collect, Customize, and Share Resources from Smithsonian Learning Labs
Late last year I wrote a post about The Smithsonian Learning Lab which is a fantastic tool for organizing the thousands of digital resources available through the various Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans. In June the Smithsonian put forth a revamped version […]
STEM in 30 – A Smithsonian Webcast for Middle School Students
STEM in 30 is a neat webcast produced by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The series featured 30 minute live webcasts about a variety of topics related to air and space travel and science. During the live webcasts students can submit questions to the show’s hosts. Students can also submit questions in advance […]