C4T #2

The blog that I viewed this week is full of information that goes right along with all of the things we have been learning in EDM310. The posts were made by Richard Byrne who is a high school Civics and US History teacher. The purpose of his site is to share free resources for teachers around the world. The first blog post I commented on was about enchaining a history lesson about Eli Whitney's cotton gin. He mentions how it is important to enhance learning with visuals and provided an animation of how the cotton gin works. I watched the animation and it even taught me something that I did not know. The animation engaged the students to understand how the cotton gin actually worked. This blog also provides links for lesson plan ideas with history.
The second post I commented on was about virtual volcanoes. Mr. Byrne provides a list of resources when teaching about volcanoes. The new addition to the list is from the Discovery Channel. It is a virtual interaction that shows you where the volcanoes are located in the world. There is an animation of what a volcano looks like inside. The neatest part about this website is the part that they students can build their own volcano and watch it erupt. The students can play around with different levels of viscosity and gas to see what kind of eruption they will get.