Making Greate Photographs Memorable pictures are made using time-tested techniques, methods -- and, yes, even tricks. To help photographers of all stripes up their game, LIFE.com launched a series of "lessons" on photography, focusing on elemental aspects of picture-taking. Focusing on themes like portraits, lighting, composition, and taking travel pictures, these galleries provide simple, straightforward answers to some of the most common questions about "how to make great pictures."
With a view of travel as an educational experience like no other, the project makes use of digital media to promote an understanding of different culture and customs to students worldwide. The site hosts virtual field trips to England, Jordan, and South Africa that include more than 160 fort films that correspond to the destinations. Each video explains more about the region's food, music, culture, and language. Since 2003, project explorer has counted more than a million visitors to the site from more than 40 different countries. Recently, it won a Parents' Choice Award for "Outstanding Web Programming." The site's developers qre not working to add a fourth field trip--this one to Malaysia--the Project Explorer has lesson for upper elementary, middle and high school. They plan to offer lesson specifically designed for the early grades.
Engineering Interact is a site for elementary school students designed by the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Engineering Interact offers five games designed to teach students physics concepts. The games address concepts related to light, sound, motion, electricity, and space travel. Each of the five games presents students with a scenario in which they have to "help" someone solve a problem. The games require students to learn and analyze the information presented to them.
The Bill of Rights Institute has released a new game, Life Without the Bill of Rights? This free click-and explor activity asks students to consider how life would change without some of our most cherished freedoms. Life Without the Bill of Rights? invites studetns to understand the significance of their constitutionally protected rihts, including freedom of religion, speech, and press; freedom from unreasonable search and seizure; and the rights of private property. Other free resources include an interactive module that allows studetns to "travel through time" to converse with the Founding Fathers and report on the Constitutional Convention.
Mobile Geotagging allows users to post media (photos, video, audio or text) from a mobile phone to a specific point on a map. Flagr allows users to create public, semiprivate, or private maps. Great tool for teachers in many subject areas to enhance learning. For example, students studying habitats or different biological species can take pictures within their community and then send each picture band a description of where the habitat or species was found. In the classroom the teacher opens up the class flagr map and the students then identify the species and discuss why they were found in each particular habitat.