15-year-old Javier Fernandez-Han won this years Inhabit's Invent Your World Challenge and scored a $20,000 scolarship with his algea-powered system that produces food and fuel, treats waste and captures carbon dioxide.

Quantum to Cosmos festival is being held at the Perimiter Institute (and online) Oct 15-25, 2009. Admission (as well as school trips) are free but registration is required.

A new project called Wordnik, which was inspired by a TED talk about the shortcomings of online dictionaries, plans to find out everything about every word.

Using a web site as a core piece of your language arts teaching opens up a number of possibilities for ties with the reading part of the curriculum.
It can be used anywhere a class newspaper would be used.
It can also be used as the organizing entity for your start of day routines. You can set up daily features as well as adding any interesting articles you've found or any date specific web sites.

The Spinalist Tips webpage is full of tips on how to live with a spinal injury, from picking things up to going to the bathroom. This could be used in a lesson on empathy, since it gives concrete examples of what everyday life is like for a disabled person.

I was going over my notebooks before putting them away for the term, and came across a couple of links in my music book I thought worth posting. Terry Kelly - A Pittance of Time A moving video for remembrance day. Operation Respect especially the CD and book "Don't laugh at me"

Just saw this in Slashdot: The Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar.

And a bit of fun, The Manga Guide to Statistics

Name that element quiz

A site with information on Canada's 7 regions
http://churchillmeadows.peelschools.org/grade4/lucas%20webpage%202007/r…

If you are using a smart board, be aware that having children fill in data or answers can take a long time, leading to boredom and management issues. As an alternative, leave the pages up and have the children fill in the data on their own during the day.

The children tend to start loosing it toward the end of Friday afternoon. It's best to give in and spend the last 10 - 15 minutes doing cleanup (especially if it's an art period).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoopa_hs/sets/72157604178274003/ outstanding page of high speed photography. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081124-giant-squid-magn… - Giant underwater squid.