Help NASA sort through thousands of Mars images and have fun learning about space exploration at the same time! There have been so many images taken of Mars that scientists cannot sort through all of them by themselves. So, they have asked the public to help them sort through the images through their website Be A Martian, which was created with the help of Microsoft.
From BBC News article:
Players at Be A Martian can earn points in one game by helping Nasa examine and organize the images into a more complete map of the planet.
Another game gets users to count impact craters to help scientists understand better the relative age of rocks on Mars' surface.
Nasa hopes the mix of real data and fun will also inspire the planetary scientists of tomorrow.
"We really need the next generation of explorers," says Michelle Viotti, from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions.
"And we're also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There's so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important."
Having a difficult time deciding on a Masters Degree program? Well, if you're a big fan of The Beatles and are interested in the impact they made in their hometown of Liverpool, you may want to consider getting your degree in 'The Beatles'.
Liverpool Hope University is now offering a brand new Masters Degree in The Beatles, Popular Music, and Society, setting a new standard for teaching about pop culture as a whole. It's a statement as well as an initiative, showing just how much Liverpool values the influence The Beatles have had.
For days now I've had the Sesame Street pinball countdown song in my head. I thought I would post it today so this catchy tune can play over... and over... and over in your heads too. You can thank me later.
Here's another vintage Sesame Street clip of "The Ladybugs' Picnic" that I thought you would enjoy.
Watercliffe Meadow opened its doors in September. It has 500 students, classrooms, teachers and a playground. Technically, it is a school, but calling it a "school" has been forbidden because of its 'negative connotations'.
'We decided from an early stage we didn't want to use the word "school",' she [Linda Kingdon, headmistress] said yesterday. 'This is Watercliffe Meadow, a place for learning. One reason was many of the parents of the children here had very negative connotations of school.
'Instead we want this to a be a place for family learning, where anyone can come. We were able to start from scratch and create a new type of learning experience. There are no whistles or bells or locked doors.
So would a student get expelled if he or she called it "school"? Seriously, a school is a school.
A kindergarten teacher in Florida allowed students to vote out a fellow classmate, who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism, from the class.
After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.
By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.
Melissa Barton filed a complaint with Morningside's school resource officer, who investigated the matter, Port St. Lucie Department spokeswoman Michelle Steele said. But the state attorney's office concluded the matter did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse, so no criminal charges will be filed, Steele said.
John Corcoran is a retired teacher who taught high school for 17 years and all that time he couldn't read, write or spell. Until the age of 48, John was illiterate.
By acting up in school, John was labeled as having emotional and behavioral problems so his inability to read went unnoticed. He made it through school by cheating off of friends and managed to graduate from college with a bachelor's degree in education.
Creating an "oral and visual envrionment" in his classroom, John relied on his teacher's assistants to do board work and read necessary documentation. He did a great job teaching, but felt ill deceiving his students. John eventually took a leave of absence to become a real estate developer.
At the age of 48 he decided to learn how to read and write again and began working with a 65-year-old volunteer at the Literacy Center of Carlsbad. After a year he was able to read at a sixth-grade level.
Programmers Kasper Neilson and Ole Iverson from Denmark have developed interactive learning floors called "Wisdom Wells". Not meant to replace ordinary classroom teaching, Wisdom Wells not only encourages individual learning, but also collaborative learning where the students can learn from each other. [link]
