Take a Virtual Tour of the National Museum of Computing

98% of the press releases that are sent to me are completely worthless. Then every once in a while I get one that's actually kind of helpful. That was the case when earlier this week I got a press release about The National Museum of Computing.

The National Museum of Computing documents and celebrates the development of computers and computing. There is a physical museum that you can visit (if you're near Bletchley, England). There is also a great virtual tour of the National Museum of Computing. Throughout the virtual tour you'll find dozens of clickable hotspots to learn about the artifacts housed within the museum.

In addition to the virtual tour, museum's website hosts some picture-based challenges about computers. Students have to spot the differences between the images of artifacts from the museum.

Applications for Education
Some of us will remember using some of the computers related products that are featured in the virtual tour of the museum. For our students, it's an interesting history lesson about the development of technology. One of the things that some of my former students found fun to do was to try to find the original prices for old computers and convert that into inflation-adjusted prices.

By the way, the featured image in this blog post is of a Compaq laptop manufactured in 1993 that was in the repair closet in my classroom last year.

Squirrels!

In my family we have a bit of a love/hate relationship with squirrels. We hate that they take so much food from our bird feeders. But we do like to watch them and my daughters do enjoy reading Those Darn Squirrels! That's why I was intrigued when SciShow Kids released a new video all about squirrels. 

Stupendous Squirrel Storage is a SciShow Kids video all about how squirrels find food, store food, and the role of that process in the ecosystem. Take a few minutes to watch it and you might find yourself with a new appreciation for those pesky squirrels. 

Applications for Education

Before watching the video I'd ask students to think about how animals like squirrels find and store food. After watching the video I'd ask them if they can think of other animals that find and store food in a manner similar to that of squirrels. 

Watching the video also reminded me of a global nature observation project called Project Squirrel that is still open to contributions from classrooms.