Blue Origin brings space exploration back to Texas

January 5, 2007

Texas plateTexas’ regular license plate features a Space Shuttle, some stars and a crescent Moon, but a lot of Texas 8th graders are foggy on just why. I hope kids living near Houston have a better idea, since the Houston Johnson Space Center is in their area. To most kids under the age of 20 in Texas, space exploration is not a part of Texas history. I had one student in class ask why it was that in the movie version of the Apollo 13 story, the astronauts said “Houston, we have a problem.”

The drive to get a private spacecraft into commercial use has at least one company using Texas as a base. Space exploration may once again become a current event item in Texas social studies classes.

Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, tested their space craft in November, and the tardy news is bustling around the internet — and present in print and broadcast media, too. That the story is so hot on the internet should be a cue to mass media that it’s time to start paying attention.

The company’s test site is in Culberson County, in far west Texas — far away from the giant media markets in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. El Paso is the closest major market, and it’s in a different time zone from the rest of the state.

This space exploration group reverses NASA’s Houston-to-Cape Canaveral style of operations — Blue Origin is headquartered in Kent, Washington, closer to Bezos’ Amazon roots.

Blue Origin is hiring engineers, by the way.

Watch that space.

Goddard in flight

Tip of the old scrub brush to Futuresheet.

3 Comments | Current History, Geography - Physical, History, Science, Space exploration, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Olla podrida

December 29, 2006

Olla podrida is a local, Spanish term for a Mulligan stew, for olio, etc.

Founding fathers and illegal immigrants — A new blog on the migration debate, cleverly titled Migration Debate, highlights a New York Times opposite-editorial page piece that details how many of our “founding fathers” took advantage of illegal immigration, or immigrated illegally themselves.  William Hogeland wrote the piece, whom some of you will recognize as the author of The Whiskey Rebellion:  George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the Frontier Rebels who challenged America’s newfound sovereignty. (Scribner, 2006)

Google’s amazing powers:   Bad time to be speechless:  Over at 31fps, Google.com/maps magical powers are explained:  The author finds a store on Google maps, clicks a button, and Google first calls his phone, and then calls the store — go Google, and leave the dialing to Google.  Star Trek wasn’t this good.  Just be sure you’re over being speechless when the party at the other end answers.

Amazing cosmos:  Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy lists his top 10 images from outer space for 2006.  #1 is a doozy, but be sure you read the explanation Phil offers.

Fashionable extinction:  Microecos explains how fashion wiped out a beautiful, unique bird, the huia, in New Zealand, a century ago.   It’s a reminder of how stupid humans can be — a good exercise is in there somewhere for geography classes, or a general lecture on the effects of colonization.

Leave a Comment » | Astronomy, Books, Economics, Education, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Geography - Physical, George Washington, Maps, Natural history, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Free Inconvenient Truth for teachers

December 23, 2006

    Update: As of February 11, 2007, all 50,000 free copies have been given away. You may register for other giveaways and contests of Participate.net

.

Participate.net is giving away 50,000 copies of the movie on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

First 50,000 teachers who ask. Go here: http://www.participate.net/educators/pub_files/ait-block_dvd.jpg

One more way Al Gore is ahead of his time.

2 Comments | Accuracy, Current History, Economics, Environmental protection, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History video sources, Video and film | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tools for teachers: Make your own Google map

December 3, 2006

Almost inevitably I want a map different from those provided by the text and all my ancillary and auxilliary sources. It’s maddening for a non-cartographer. So, I can see uses for custom map-making tools.

You can figure out what to do with this, if you have a computer and access to project it to a class — or if you send your class out on the ‘net to work: Maplib.

Tip of the old scrub brush to If:book. Be sure to check there for examples.

Leave a Comment » | Education, Geography - Physical, Maps, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Man dancing”: Checking the facts

December 2, 2006

If you haven’t seen it, you may be in a minority that includes mostly people without internet access.

The story behind it is rather innocent and charming. Matt Harding, a young American computer programmer working in Australia, decided to spend a year touring the world. Somewhere along the line he got the idea to shoot video of himself dancing in various places. He posted in on YouTube. A chewing gum company saw the thing, and for reasons known only to public relations freaks and geniuses, called Matt to do it again, with better production quality, for a bit of publicity. So there are two videos of Matt Harding dancing, in exotic and interesting places.

Especially if this is new to you, you’re skeptical. Good. Kempton’s Blog was similarly skeptical, and did some research on the video, and on Matt.

Is there a lesson plan in here for history and other social studies? I think so. This can go directly to the issue of how we know what we know, and what are primary and secondary sources for history, as tested in Texas’s Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).

There are several ways to use these videos, when I sit down to think about them for a moment, listed below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Brain learning, Classroom technology, Current History, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History video sources, Lesson plans, TAKS, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas claim on Thanksgiving

November 22, 2006

Patricia Burroughs has the story — you New Englanders are way, way behind.

Palo Duro Canyon in a winter inversion

Palo Duro Canyon during inversion, Winter 2001, site of the first Thanksgiving celebration in what would become the United States, in 1541. Go here: www.visitamarillotx.com/Gallery/index3.html, and here: www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/paloduro/

Update, 11/27/2006:  Great post here, “Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving.”

10 Comments | Accuracy, Geography - Physical, History, Texas, Thanksgiving | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Map projection lesson planning material

September 6, 2006

Ooooh. I love maps. I like teaching about them. Projection is an issue for middle schoolers, though — they seem not quite to grasp why it’s important to show Greenland smaller than Australia.

Well, that’s an issue I have not reconciled.

But I did stumble across some cool animations on the Fuller Projection, such as that shown below.

Go see. And see an animation here.

Update: In comments, spatulated at A Bit Tasty lists a source for a poster of the Earth done in Fuller Projection.

2 Comments | Geography - Physical, Lesson plans, Maps, TEKS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

More maps!

August 23, 2006

This is too good to leave in comments.  A reader named Chris commented on my earlier post about NOAA maps with a list of sources.

Humans generally take in information much faster visually, and retain it longer.  Maps provide a key tool for teaching history.  The more the better, I think.

Chris wrote:

The NOAA data center is one of many really neat places to get data, images, and materials. Here are a few more (and let me know if you want more on any one topic, as I collect links like these – and happen to work in the field!):

Earth Observatory Science site. Free! One of the best sites out there.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Visible Earth:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/

Find Space Objects! Easy views from your location. Cool.
http://www.heavens-above.com/

Space weather/environment. Great insight into the sun and upper atmosphere.
http://spaceweather.com/
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/

Elevation, land use, maps, and lots of other GIS data:
http://seamless.usgs.gov/

Learning technologies. Some fantastic educational materials:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/index.html

Direct Readout Data. Great images.
http://directreadout.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Distributed Active Archive Center.
http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/www/

More great free images.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Cheers!
Chris

Leave a Comment » | Education, Geography - Physical, History, Maps, TEKS, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Great maps from NOAA

August 21, 2006

This is just one of several stunning images available from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC).

Downloadable, available on CD-ROM — this is good stuff for PowerPoint presentations and other classroom use.

1 Comment | Education, Geography - Physical, Maps, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

News roundup

August 6, 2006

Huntsville Times (Alabama) on extensive summer workshops teachers take in order to keep current and keep teaching credentials: Who says teaches take summer off?

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) notes that some educators seem to fear teaching history for fear of saying something politically incorrect; Australia’s public school history courses are virtually non-existent, with the topic covered in other subjects: Schools ‘afraid of teaching history.’

An Associated Press story on a project that I think would work wonders in my high school classes: Pitt professor aims to help teach other subjects through music. A sample:

What do Woody Guthrie, Neil Young, James Brown, Dolly Parton, Irving Berlin and Bob Dylan have in common? They, among others, just may save music in American schools and put a powerful tool in the hands of teachers of all subjects.

A University of Pittsburgh music professor is disseminating a new approach to teaching history, English, social studies and other humanities by including music to be studied like any primary text. The results have been stunning for those teachers who have implemented his program in their curriculums.

More from Down Under: The Australian notes that several parts of Australian history face pressure from revisionists — and goes on to detail a challenge to the common notion that the Great Depression there featured a lot of evictions of renters into the rain — it was, instead, a tough time where Australians helped each other get by: The Myth of the Great Depression.

A press release from Pearson Scott Foresman details a new California history curriculum the company is selling, which is almost completely digital, and focused intensely on California standards.

A high school history teacher in Tibet got a 10-year prison sentence for writing a text on Tibetan history, government and geography that appears to have come too close to telling the facts, for Chinese authorities. He’s asked the United Nations to intervene.

One of America’s great local newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal, carried a report on the death of Henry E. Cheaney, a University of Kentucky professor who collected massive amounts of data on the state’s African American people, for in-depth history.

The Grand Rapids Press (Michigan) criticized proposed history standards from the Michigan State Board of Education. According to the newspaper:

A straight telling of the American story is what Michigan students need. State education bureaucrats should have been able to provide it.

Instead, they produced a truncated and ideologically tilted version that fully deserved the subsequent uproar and the decision of state Superintendent Michael Flanagan to send it back for remedial work.

Enjoy!

Leave a Comment » | America's founding, Education, Geography - Physical, History, Public education, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Applied history

July 31, 2006

Here’s a profession where history reading is a critical skill:

Robert Young writes down the measurements recorded by state-of-the-art digital equipment held by survey party chief Barry Brown.

Photo by J. G. Domke, special to Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

Caption: Robert Young writes down the measurements recorded by state-of-the-art digital equipment held by survey party chief Barry Brown.

See excerpts of the story, about George Washington’s profession, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Business, Current History, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, George Washington, History, Texas, Texas history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Mount Timpanogos

July 4, 2006

Among many underappreciated mountain peaks in the U.S. is Mount Timpanogos, in the Wasatch Range of the Rockies. It is northeast of Provo, Utah, and it was due east of my bedroom window for the nine years I lived in Pleasant Grove, Utah, before I headed off to college.

Here is a site that offers some stunning views of the mountain: http://utahpictures.com/Timpanogos.html [update:  pictures moved to this site:  http://utahpictures.com/Timpanogos.php]. While I often hiked the “backside” of the mountain, I never made it all the way to the top. You can see what I missed.

4 Comments | Administrivia, Geography - Physical, Hiking, Utah | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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