The 2008 National Cyber Convention is underway!

This month's topic:

Back to School 2008

Consider the possibilities for your students.....

Atmospheric Optics
http://www.atoptics.co.uk
Awesome collection of pictures of beautiful visual phenomena created by light, weather and atmosphere, from rainbows and ice halos to nacreous clouds and anti-crepuscular rays.

CarbonRally
http://www.carbonrally.com/
This engaging site posts challenges, like cutting your shower time by two minutes or line-drying your laundry for a month to motivate you to reduce your carbon footprint and help your community to go green.

Contagion
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/
This site presents six notable epidemics from world history using primary source materials such as historical pamphlets, serials, books, and manuscripts totaling over 500,000 pages.

DailyLit
http://www.dailylit.com
Visit this site, sign up, find a book you want to read, and start receiving it in easily digestible chunks every day, every other day, or just once a week via e-mail or RSS feed.

Digital Vaults
http://digitalvaults.org/
This site presented by the National Archives provides a glimpse of the Federal Government's historical records, providing a curated view of 1,200 of the most impressive holdings.

Europa
http://europa.eu/abc/keyfigures/index_en.htm
An interactive and lively site created by the European Union to provide access to key facts and figures about topics like quality of life, transport, and economic activity and trade.

FactCheckED
http://www.FactCheckED.org
Designed to help students cut through propaganda and deception that permeates the information they encounter every day. See also Political Fact Check at http://www.factcheck.org/.

Free Rice
http://freerice.com/
The site challenges you with word quizzes and pledges to donate 20 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Program for each definition you get right. The words get harder the longer you play.

H. W. Wilson Art Museum Image Gallery
http://www.hwwilson.com/Databases/artmuseum.htm
With more than155,000 images from throughout history, teachers can quickly locate images cleared for educational use to reinforce instruction, provide content for lesson plans, or extend special programs.

International Space Station: An Interactive Reference Guide
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/ISSRG/index.htm
This site is worth sitting back and watching in its entirety. After the introduction, visitors can listen to Commander Mike Fincke talk about the various scientific endeavors that are part of the Station's mission.

MathMovesU
http://www.mathmovesu.com/
Middle school students learn math via popular interests such as music, sports, and fashion; includes a glossary and hands-on worksheets for students looking for additional help and support.

NationMaster
http://www.nationmaster.com
NationMaster offers you world data on an impressively wide variety of topics, letting you compare nations with one another based on a variety of criteria.

Ourbania
http://www.ourbania.com
This fun, interactive site that lets you explore the world through its buildings. Visitors can add photos and notes and even plot a building's location using a Google-powered map.

Picnik
http://www.picnik.com/
Perfect for beginners, it lets you crop borders, remove red-eye and add a range of special effects, such as blurring, tinting and heat-mapping, to any picture you upload.

Presentations Etc
http://etc.usf.edu/presentations/
From Florida's Ed Tech Clearinghouse, this is a free repository of tens of thousands od backgrounds, themes and slideshow templates, ready to use in your own presentations.

Science of Music
http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/index.html
Part if the Exploratorium, visitors can join an online drum circle, explore the world of step dancing, create their own remixes, and view short films on everything from the tuning of musical instruments to the blues.

Twitter
http://twitter.com/
This Web 2.0 application allows students to share brief, bite-sized pieces of information with a defined group of peers; a great alternative to the clunky, hard-to-manage keypals of a decade ago!

Viewzi
http://www.viewzi.com
Viewzi aggregates search results from Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, and other popular sites, and lets you pick how you want them presented. A different twist on a visual search tool.

WhatTheFont
http://www.whatthefont.com
To find out which font is being used in an image or on a Web site, upload a scanned image or submit the URL and this site analyzes it and sends you the name of the font to use in your own design projects.

WikiSky
http://wikisky.org/
This site has gorgeous images of comets, galaxies and nebula accompanied by short scientific explanations that will delight astronomy fans and visual learners.

The Innovative Teaching Newsletter is free to educators everywhere.
Copyright©2008 http://surfaquarium.com/NEWSLETTER/
This newsletter may be forwarded, copied and distributed provided the header and signature information remain intact.