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On this day, November 10th, in 1975, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald (a taconite carrier) sank during a storm on Lake Superior. All of the crew, 29 nine men, perished. The event was memorialized in the lyrics of singer Gordon Lightfoot’s popular ballad, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Though sad, this historical event presents an engrossing opportunity for students and teachers to collaborate and engage in interdisciplinary research. It’s a perfect storm of learning.  Delving into what lead up to the tragedy allows pupils to explore elements of:

• history/case studies/critical reading of reports–pupils can pore over the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Report on the event
• geography–Lake Superior via Google Earth, geography of the Great Lakes, the site of the loss (46°59.9N 85°06.6W /46.9983°N 85.11°W/ 46.9983; -85.11),
• science–topics such as weather conditions that lead to the sinking, the Great Lakes Ecosystem, What Floats Your Boat via ScienceNetlinks,
• mathematics–boat capacity math, ship building and math (via  Michael of Rhodes),
• language arts
• and music.

Diving into this and other historical events, using them as case-study investigations into why and how things happen, makes learning more rewarding and allows students to integrate technology resources in a more meaningful manner.

Related resources:

• For a more informed reading the lyrics of of Gordon Lightfoot’s popular song, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, take a look at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wx Wise data-rich page devoted to the freighter’s sinking.
• The Great Lakes are well-known for some treacherous weather. The University of Wisconsin’s very useful Coastal Natural Hazards page has intriguing descriptions of seiches and storm surges.
• Wikipedia’s very thorough entry on seiches has an animated explanation of the causes and nature of seiches.

creativity, environment, learning, literature, math, music, nature, science history, maps, math, music, science, song, songs

Educators and students are visiting the CDC’s  2009 H1N1 Flu website for frequent updates. They’re using technology to enrich their understanding of the disease. That’s fortunate. Why? Science Daily and other sources report that computer models indicate a rapid vaccine rollout is effective in reducing infection rates; however, frustrating shortages of the H1N1 vaccine make the quick and thorough vaccination of the population unlikely. Help your pupils make better health-related choices. Teach them how to use FluTracker to keep up with the spread of the disease.

Related links:

• For timely news about major epidemics and outbreaks, visit the World Health Organization’s informative Disease Outbreak News Center.
• It’s a good time to revisit Peter Haggett’s insightful book, the Geographic Structure of Epidemics. Interested? If so, some of the text of Haggett’s work is available via Google Book Search. Hagget’s work explores concepts such as diffusion waves, what epidemics are, and how we can construct practical models of the ways in which epidemics spread.
• Put social networking to good use. Mashable’s How To Use Social Media for Better Health is a must-read guide for individuals who want to use technology to avoid illness.

math, numbers disease, epidemics, graph, health

Are your pupils exploring geometry? Do you have an interactive whiteboard or wireless slate? If so, you’ll want to take a look at two very useful FREE programs that I’ve been sharing that make learning mathematics an engaging experience. Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend and present at the 2009 Math & Science Summit Conference in Liberty County, Georgia. While I was there, I shared interactive math resources with the system’s high school teachers.

During the course of my presentation, I introduced the teachers in attendance to one of my favorite freebies, a program called GeoGebra. This spiffy tool for thinking helps students create constructions with all the necessary components: points, segments, lines, vectors, and functions. thanks to its dynamic interface, GeoGebra allows users to directly enter and manipulate equations and coordinates. You can download the program or use its Webstart feature. My audience at the Math & Science Summit Conference also appreciated the GeoGebraWiki. It’s a growing repository of all kinds of free teaching materials using GeoGebra.

C.a.R. is another free resource that I shared with my attendees. This application is useful for generating dynamic geometric compass and ruler constructions on a computer. Thanks to the digital nature of the displays created with C.a.R., constructions can easily be altered by simply dragging one of the basic construction points. Like GeoGebra, there is a Java Webstart edition of C.a.R. that is always up to date with the most recent program version. Imagine students discussing and demonstrating their constructions using an interactive whiteboard.

Related resources:

• GraphCalc is an open source and GPLed computer program that runs in Microsoft Windows and Linux that provides the functionality of a graphing calculator. I like this program.
• MatheGrafix is a program for drawing, presentation and printing graphs of functions.

math, visualization geometry, interactive