Ask A Scientist

I still have not received an answer from Ask A Scientist yet.  My question was what is the difference between brain cells and other cells that make them last so much longer? 


I was interested in finding out whether brain cell death was a natural occurrence or not.  If it was a natural occurrence then I wonder what the difference is between the 500 brain cells that die this hour and which ones survive to the next hour.  


I would like to use this site in a classroom but I would be worried that the scientists would not answer all of the students' questions and one student might get left out.  

Web Tools

Animoto (www.animoto.com)

This website allows you to upload photos or video clips and turn them into a music video.  It would be a great attention grabber for the beginning of a lesson or could be used by students as a part of a portfolio displaying photos of the sequence to a project they worked on or a field trip they went on. 

It is very simple and quick to use. A 30 second video is free.  All you need to do is provide the pictures or video. A year subscription is $30.  With a paid subscription you can make longer videos.  

The animated transitions between pictures are nothing too impressive but would appeal to younger children.  You can upload up to 15 elements (pictures/vid clips/text) per video.  You can upload your own music or select one of theirs to add to your video.  The advertisement is that it will make your pictures look the quality of a music video, but that is not quite true.  I could probably do a better job with windows movie maker or an equivalent program but it was much faster to create and they provide you with an automatic embedding code to share with friends, family, or colleagues.  

The site does give a tutorial video of how to use the uploader and make your video but the site was so easy to use, it probably is not necessary.  The only thing I did not like about it was that if you choose to use one of their songs, there is not a search engine to see which ones are available.  You must simply browse through each category to find one you like.  This website could be accessible from anywhere there is an internet connection as long as you have your photos or video clips accessible.  I uploaded my pictures directly from another internet site so they were already handy.  

Here is the video I made using pictures from the science center.  I edited it a couple times, but in all, the final product took less than 5 minutes to create.  

Mckeever: A Home Away from Home

Prezi (www.Prezi.com)

Prezi is a presentation tool that works similar to the way PowerPoint would but in a very nonlinear fashion.  It provides an infinite plane of space to cover your topic using texts, drawings, pictures, graphs, etc.  

The appeal of Prezi is the transitions between slides.  It spins and zooms in and out to create an eye - catching sequence of content.  It is very neat to watch a presentation on Prezi, but it makes me dizzy the way it moves around.  It does look very professional though, as if it was done by skilled computer programmers.  The site offers various video tutorials and a “Help” button. 

I am not sure if many younger students would find this program as easy to use.  Because there is such a large plane of space to use, it is almost overwhelming as to where to place the objects as opposed to the linear fashion of PowerPoint where everything goes on a slide and when you run out of space you simply move to the next slide.  You could make it linear with Prezi if you chose to place everything horizontally or vertically but it would really defeat the purpose of the program.  

Prezi Basic is free to use and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.  The presentation can be downloaded to be viewed offline.  You can purchase Prezi Pro and be able to create presentations offline as well.  Prezi presentations can be easily shared and they provide you with an embedding code. 

I made this very simple one just so I could test out the program.  

American Bison

Open Zine (www.openzine.com)

The idea behind Open Zine is to allow you to create an online magazine about the content of your choice.  The first thing I noticed about this website that may not make it suitable for classroom use is that on the homepage there are samples of other zines with cover pictures that are not quite suitable for school.  There may be a way to access the website without viewing other zines but it would be something to look into. 

I started to create a simple zine to see how easy the site was to use and it was a bit overwhelming.   This would be great for a year long or semester long project for older students to create.  It is basically a multi - page blog that can be collaborated on by multiple people.  It was easy to upload and crop or resize photos. I did not see any tutorials of how to use the site but there were so many buttons to click on, it was hard to tell where things were.  

It is free and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.  I believe your zine can be shared by link or it could be a private zine available only to those with the password.