Gina+Kuntscher

· **Science on a Sphere building**- As you enter this building there is a fairly large sphere that will automatically start to play a video. Your avatar can actually pick three different videos (energy, coral reef, or arctic regions). o **Energy**- description of renewable and nonrenewable resources, what various countries are using for energy, impact of various energy sources o **Coral reef**- description of great reefs, corals and how temperature affects this particular ecosystem o **Arctic Regions**- brief description of properties of water, affects of temperature, and how these regions affect the rest of the world o All three videos would make a good intro/ engagement to either energy (IPC TEKS 6D) or ecosystems (BIO TEKS 12F). · Tried the weather balloon ride and hurricane plane ride and was completely underwhelmed. Not worth trying as the graphics are terrible and rides pointless… other than when I stood up I dropped a long way down and still managed to walk away. Science Friday hosts weekly talks about various science topics (don’t know if you could record and use for various periods throughout the day) Think I would use this as a way to meet new people/ contacts; stay current in content Side note: Went to this landmark and met an Aurora Kitaj who friended me What I learned from her: Groups to join: Bridge to the Future (holds weekly meetings at Virtual Learning Explorers), American chemical Society, MICA-VW Astrophysics New friend teleported me to MICA Large Amphitheater, StellaNova where I got to listen to a Rob Knop on the History of Universe (left early due to time constraint on class but from what I gathered there are weekly lectures from various people in the astrophysics field. Link from presentation: [] Found great landmarks here ·  The NASA Learning Technologies Program (LTP) is NASA’s educational technology incubator. LTP engages in activities that incorporate NASA content with revolutionary technologies or innovative use of established technologies to enhance education in the areas of math and science. ·  MathTrax is a graphing tool for middle school and high school students to graph equations, physics simulations or plot data files. The graphs have descriptions and sound so you can hear and read about the graph. Blind and low vision users can access visual math data and graph or experiment with equations and datasets. · World Wind is open source Windows software that lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there. · Virtual Lab completely emulates a scanning electron microscope and allows any user to zoom and focus into a variety of built-in microscopic samples. It also comes with a set of educational materials such as a demo on how a SEM works and movies of the real thing in action. · NASA SVS (Scientific Visualization Studio) has visually intense animations that encompass the entire globe. These samples range from biosphere, sea temperature, carbon dioxide, ozone and more. · What's the Difference allows a user to choose any item that is tagged with comparison data. You can compare different planets or moons to each other and select a topic which will show the similarities and differences between them. Links: learn.arc.nasa.gov prime.jsc.nasa.gov · Ties in water, metals (chem./ phy properties), etc. and how space technologies impact everyday life
 * NOAA Virtual Island in SciLands **
 * Science Friday **
 * Astronomy 2009 **
 * NASA eEducation Island Main Buliding, NASA eEducation **
 * Found this link while exploring SL: **[]