Volume 3, No. 3                                 05 September, 2003 [To view this newsletter on line: http://www.emck.net/eline/03_09_05.htm.]

"Why did I receive this?" This newsletter is sent to all past attendees of the Summer Teacher Academies, as a free service of the  Partnership for  Kentucky Schools.

Set your calendar...

...for fun and adventure! For almost every day of the year, at some time in history, something important or interesting happened for the first time, or some important historical figure celebrated his birthday, created a lasting contribution to our human heritage, or made a great discovery! Near the beginning of the school year is a good time to look at that instructional calendar, and plan for those events which fit your classroom goals! Here's some resources to help, with some good resources on the passage of time in general thrown in for good measure!

 

On-line Lesson Plans	http://www.sldirectory.com/virtual.html All right we're guilty - this isn't a source of lesson plans at all! The Virtual Middle School Library is a free service of Linda Bertland, a Philadelphia school librarian, as a part of her School Libraries on the Web project. The latter is a listing of pages maintained by library/media specialists around the globe! We've placed this resource here because Linda's calendar guide (featured in the third Partnership Help Desk back in May 24, 2002) provided us with many of the resources we've included below.
General Calendars of Events and Birthdays	Want to know who or what happened on this date? Here's several links with some interesting slants. - http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/. A service of the New York Times LearningNetwork, this is probably the best general event and celebrity/historical figure birthday site on the Web. There are archives going back one year, but it's intended as a "day-of" resource. - http://www.earthcalendar.net/. Here's probably the most comprehensive calendar of international holidays and other cultural events. September 5th is a little slim (it's the Anniversary of Chachapoyas in Peru!), but there's usually several. Holidays are also listed by country or religion. Completely not-for-profit. - http://www.umkc.edu/imc/august.htm. Don't fret - September is down the way a bit, but as of this writing it isn't yet the featured page on this site maintained by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Education's Instructional Materials Center. This great idea is a list of events and historical shorts which could be used as sources for lessons and class projects. There are links to information pages maintained by the Center.
Links about the Passage of Time	These resources are about time in general - clocks, calendars, and time through history. The Official U.S. Time - http://www.time.gov/. Maintained by the Dept. of Commerce along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the military's U.S. Naval Observatory. This site is more than a clock, accurate to within 0.3 seconds - it provides links to "exhibits" on the subject, including this nice history of time measurement from NIST. - http://webexhibits.org/calendars/. A product of Michael Douma and the WebExibits Project, this website gives lots of neat information on calendars, including what ones are currently in use across the globe. The searchable database contains lots of lesson plan links. Time and Date - http://www.timeanddate.com/. The product of Norwegian Steffen Thorsen, this dot-com aimed at the time-and-date needs of international business has few ads, and a bunch of resources. It shows what time it is in hundreds of cities around the world, and has a very good page on the leap year.
Content Area Resources	The Arts Today in Classical Music from NPR's Performance Today http://www.npr.org/programs/pt/ NPR's Performance Today is a great classical performance show, but we've included it here because of its regular "Today in Music History" feature (look to the right and down on the site). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame offers the same service (well, sort-of!). Mathematics Math Forum's Problem of the Week http://mathforum.org/pow/ Nothing daily about math - here's a source of problem-solving examples delivered weekly at a variety of age/difficulty level. Online archives are available, and solutions are posted. Drexel University's Math Forum, a wonderful mathematics resource, was featured in The Partnership Help Desk for January 10, 2003. Reading The Library and Book Calendar http://www.libraryhq.com/calendar.html A service of dot.com LibraryHQ, this is an interesting listing of timely dates, events such as Winnie the Pooh Day (January 18th), with links to resources for each. Science Today in Science http://www.todayinsci.com/ Venerable, and yet visually obnoxious. Informative, but a dot-com with a vengeance! Today in Science, featured in The Partnership Help Desk August 30, 2002, provides a listing of events, inventions, scientific breakthroughs, and scientist birthdays for the current day. Social Studies Who What When - Timelines http://www.sbrowning.com/whowhatwhen/ Steve and Sally Browning maintain this fascinating historical timeline generator. The resultant timelines are very visual, and each bar links directly to a Google search on the person or event represented. I spent an hour there - a lot of fun! Writing Word of the Day http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl There are dozens of websites with this service, usually offered as both a web page or delivered to your inbox through email subscription. In addition to Merriam-Webster, there's OED's, Dictionary.com's  , New York Time's, and this one from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics. Oh, and don't forget Daily Grammar - an email newsletter with five grammar lessons followed by a quiz!
Software Sources	Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ A rarity these days, Celestia is completely freeware, rather than a demo or limited-functionality shareware. Programmed by freelance developer Chris Laurel and a team of friends under the GNU/Free Software guidelines, Celestia provides a three-dimensional environment for users to navigate space  through a "point and go" interface. The visual rendering of our solar system and space vehicles is particularly stunning, but this simulation gives access to hundreds of thousands of stars, and beyond. The software requires 64 megs of memory, and covers all three major platforms (Linux/Mac/Windows). It runs best on a computer with a 3D graphics card.