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"I'm pleased to say that John Bailey and I have a paper out in "Google Earth and Virtual Visualizations in Education and Research" on 19 best practices on how to design Google Earth tours for education. The paper isn't free to download but to give you a taster I've taken a table from a draft of the paper  which summarizes the best practices discussed (note GET = Google Earth Tour).  I've discussed many of these best practices on this blog so I've added links to posts within the table (some posts also discuss other topics)."

"MIT's Neil Gershenfeld originally envisioned Fab Labs as small-scale digital workshops accessible to all. Blikstein adapted the concept specifically for junior high and high schools.  His FabLabs@School are spaces where students work on long-term, creative projects, using their imaginations to bridge the gap between their ideas and the tools and training necessary to bring them to fruition. Since 2009, Blikstein and his colleagues have opened five experimental FabLabs@School: one in Bangkok, Thailand; one in Moscow, Russia; and three in Palo Alto. A sixth is opening soon in Melbourne, Australia, a seventh in Mexico City. As they roll out the labs, they conduct careful research on how best to deploy and make use of them in an educational setting."

"One of the benefits of using videos on an IWB in Science lessons is for those moments when you want to demonstrate something that is just too dangerous to do in the classroom. This is particularly true when demostrating the reaction of Alkali Metals with water. You can demonstrate small pieces, but it's a little dull. And when the kids ask "go on Sir, throw in a bigger bit" you still can't use too big a bit for obvious safety reasons. Which is why it's good to then turn to a good video to demonstrate the reaction. An old favourite of mine was from the TV show "Brainiac":"