On the morning of December 26, 2004, many coastal residents of northwestern Sumatra were startled as water at the shore dramatically receded below the normal low-water mark, leaving fish flapping on the exposed beach. The people drawn closer to the coast by this remarkable sight surely didn’t know how to explain the water’s bizarre behavior. Yet even in the early hours of the tsunami disaster, scientists began to grasp what was happening. In the following days, using maps of the seafloor and seismic data, tsunami researchers produced remarkably accurate computer simulations of the monstrous series of waves that took hundreds of thousands of lives.

In this interactive, examine some of these models and other graphics that reveal details of the tsunami from its initial generation in deep water to its deadly collision with coasts around the Indian Ocean.

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This article is the text of a speech by John Taylor Gatto accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990.

We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world’s narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn’t buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan fifty per cent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure. >> Read more

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Homeschooling is Cool! A to Z Home’s Cool community website will help you homeschool your kids from preschool, kindergarten, through homeschooling high school with free online education, home-friendly lesson ideas, educational websites, helpful articles, top homeschool programs, books, materials, curriculum… and best of all… Homeschool Friends!

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The Starfall learn-to-read website is offered free as a public service. They also provide writing journals and books at a very low cost that can be used with the website or separately. Starfall materials is an inexpensive way to make the classroom more fun and to inspire a love of reading and writing.

Primarily designed for first grade, Starfall.com is also useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade. Starfall is perfect for Home Schooling.

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You are your child’s first teacher, and understand them better than anyone else. By talking to them, playing with them, and introducing simple skills you can help set the scene for their future development.

The most rapid development of your child’s brain takes place between their birth and the age of two. Your child continues to learn and develop rapidly during the important early years of their life.

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Online Learning by the United Nations University is an open educational resources that you can freely use as a learner for self-study and as an educator in your teaching.

This project is developed by the UNU Media Studio.

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FunBrain is the Internet’s premier location for interactive, educational games (math, grammar, science) for children and kids of all ages.

This is a really fun site. You will find activities and games that teach Art, Geography, History, Languages, Math, Music. Science, and Technology. Each activity includes instructions, explanations, and illustrations. In addition to the classic games there is a section for kids under six to play with their parents, Web Books, and Entertainment Center and an arcade just for fun.

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Low Life Labs was created by the Learning Technologies Center at The Science Museum of Minnesota! Low Life Labs is an imaginary environment where cockroaches, ants, and similar creatures are studied. Robots are then built using the knowledge gleaned from these creature’s natural adaptations to their environment.

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Easy-to-Play Reproducible Games That Teach Essential Math Skills.
Get kids fired up about math with this big collection of super-cool reproducible board games that build key skills: multiplication, division, fractions, probability, estimation, mental math, and more! Each game is a snap to make and so easy to play. Add them to your classroom routine and watch those test scores soar! Content is correlated with the NCTM Standards.

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Science Toys has loads of cool toys you can make at home with common household materials, often in only a few minutes, that demonstrate fascinating scientific principles.

To make it easier to build some of the toys, they have a catalog of parts and kits that you can buy online.

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