Thursday, January 15, 2009

Naked Scientists

Now that I have your attention. I have been working on building reading strategies grade eight science unit on Optical Systems using Mirrors and Lenses. Now doing this without a teacher's guide took me back to my first year of teaching when I had to teach science and had definite anxiety attacks. Fortunately in high school I was a whiz at multiple choice exams because I managed to spend a year and a half of science labs in chemistry without lighting a buntzen burner (I didn't like matches). I have taught science but looking at the grade eight science text definitely gave me anxiety.
At the end of the unit there was a question about why a window would reflect at night but not in the daytime. Now I knew I should know the answer but I wasn't sure so what did I do?
I googled and what did I find? A very neat website called-you guessed it- Naked Scientists. In the section Kitchen Science, I found the answer and I understood it.
According to the website, "The Naked Scientists are a media-savvy group of physicians and researchers from Cambridge University who use radio, live lectures, and the Internet to strip science down to its bare essentials, and promote it to the general public. Their award winning BBC weekly radio programme, The Naked Scientists, reaches a potential audience of 6 million listeners across the east of England, and also has an international following on the web."
Too fun, and great for students and educators.

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