Mummies and Corpses

I've been wanting to recommend The Phoenix Comic for a while. It's produced by David Fickling and arose out of the ashes of the DFC, another very good comic.

A regular feature of The Phoenix is Corpse Talk where the corpses of historical figures are invited to sit and chat with the host. The list of guests includes Winston Churchill, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, Blackbeard, Albert Einstein etc., etc. 

What penetrating questions would your children ask these figures from history? 

We used Kar2ouche in the past in a similar manner to interview Henry VIII about his wives and I remember William Shakespeare being interviewed as part of a Tudors green-screen video made at the CLC. These are fun ways to engage the children with "thinking" about historical characters and events.
Cleopatra is included in the Corpse Talk list and she leads me nicely into mummies. There is a lot of information about Egyptian mummies and the mummification process always fascinates children. The Egyptian mummies are artificially preserved whereas, if you want to extend their mummy knowledge, those found in the Andes of Peru have mummified naturally in the cold, dry conditions. There are other South American mummies deserving of research and also those of western China. In her book, The Mummies of Urumchi, Elizabeth Barber describes the 4,000 year old "chinese" mummies with their remarkable Caucasian features and the wonderfully preserved woollen cloth (of Celtic origin) so reminiscent of Scottish tartans.

Original woollen cloth

Reconstruction

Of course, preserving human bodies is only a short step from preserving food, another fascinating science topic.
How many ways are there to do this? 
How many were available in past times?

Flipbook & PowerPoint animation

I remember drawing figures in the corners of annuals as a child in order to make flipbook-style animation. I think they were mostly about aliens attacking Earth and cowboys and indians. Flip books are still going strong, as a web search will show, and they are useful tools to show short term changes e.g. volcanoes exploding, solar flares, different types of exercise, seeds developing, etc.

From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_book

There is an online flipbook maker at:-

http://www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbookdeluxe/

I "borrowed" some flipbook sheets from the web and used them to make very effective PowerPoint animations. As with "scanmation", I removed the background in Photoshop and made .gif images. I imported these on to separate slides, lined them up and set up the slide show. On setting the slide show up, remember you want it to "loop until ESC pressed" and each slide must be on timed for 0.01s. I find this fine for my purposes. I feel that this form of animation, coupled with the use of custom animation and animated gifs, could be a source of rich creativity in many subject areas. Anyone want to have a competition and I'll find a prize?

This is a screenshot from an "Autumn" PowerPoint animation with animated figure,  falling leaves and opening conkers.

PS If you want really good and diverse resources to get into the spirit of autumn with go to the Nature Detectives website:-
http://www.naturedetectives.org.uk/

Your Paintings

You might not know about the "Your Paintings" initiative. The idea is to photograph and show onine all paintings owned by the nation - you. Brilliant. Two hundred thousand paintings and here's the first page of the Artists A to Z.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/

You need a BBC ID if you really want to use the collection properly. I logged in and began to make "My Collection" of paintings of the seaside in the local area. I was a bit rushed for time but came across some interesting stuff. My only problem was the speed of download of the images.

Seaton Carew

Seaton Carew

I did search for World War 2 and War Artists but these returned no results. I need to look at the site in less of a rush.

Scanimation

The post about animation seemed to get a few more hits than normal so I thought I'd mention "scanimation".




Good link:-

http://www.instantfundas.com/2009/12/scanimation-creating-software-impress.html

Rufus Butler Seder has produced a number of "scanimation" picture books and  a recent posting on Planet Science provided a link to a free download of resources from an author. Apologies, I am still trying to find the link but a quick internet search should find other examples or email me for the images.

Master sheet

These resources are meant to be printed on to acetate sheets and when the master sheet is dragged over the examples, they become animated. However, as I want to show a class of pupils this effect, I've made a working PowerPoint presentation. In order to do this, I removed the white background colour in Photoshop and made each image into a .gif. I then imported the example images onto separate slides in PowerPoint. The master sheet was then added to each slide. By adding custom animation "lines" to the master sheet, I produce the same effect as with two acetate sheets. The animation settings need to be set to slow or very slow and to auto-reverse. (Contact me for help).

Example 2 - Cat moving gif

Example 2 - Cat moving jpg

ARKive & Switch Zoo

ARKive is one of my favourite websites and it has just had a makeover with they say "a snazzy new design, faster loading times, clearer navigation, more species and more fun".

Not only does it have an unrivalled collection of photos and videos on a vast array of wildlife, it has Kids and Education zones.  The links with Google Earth will prove especially useful when studying global habitats. Seeing the images of wildlife reminded me of a website we used a lot at the CLC when talking about adaptation and habitats - Switcheroo Zoo. It's now called Switch Zoo but still has the fun online activities that the pupils loved. http://www.switchzoo.com/

Here's my attempt at a new animal.

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day. Reading any poems? 
Thought I'd just throw a few of my favourites into the ether, then realised how many you grow to love over the years. It's lovely to revisit.

Brian Patten - 

Looking Back On It

At nineteen I was a brave Old Hunchback

Climbing to 'tremendous heights'

Preparing to swing down on my golden rope

And rescue the Accused Innocence.

But on my swooping, downward path one day

Innocence ducked

And I amazed at such an act crashed into

A wall she had been building.

How silly of me to think myself able to rescue anything!

From "Little Johnny's Confession"  (Allen & Unwin, 1967)

Adrian Mitchell -

Lullaby for William Blake

Blakehead, babyhead,

Your head is full of light.

You sucked the sun like a gobstopper.

Blakehead, babyhead,

High as a satellite on sunflower seeds,

First man-powered man to fly the Atlantic,

Inventor of the poem which kills itself,

The human form, jazz, Jerusalem

And other luminous, luminous galaxies.

You out-spat your enemies.

You irradiated your friends.

Always naked, you shaven, shaking tyger-lamb,

Moon-man, moon-clown, moon-singer, moon-drinker,

You never killed anyone.

Blakehead, babyhead,

Accept this mug of crude red wine -

I love you.

From "out loud" (Cape Golliard, 1969)

Roger McGough -

30

sitting alone

with my bottle of sauce

KNOCK KNOCK

"who's there?"

noone of course

from "Summer with Monica" (Michael Joseph , 1967)

and just to prove I progressed beyond the 1960's..

Dorothy Porter

I survived

I've always known 

my enemies.

When I was a child

Amun had the better of me.

I was little Horseface

with the wheezing lungs

and the wet bed.

Amun threw me down

in drooling, pissing fits.

I was only a second son

they all thought I'd die.

Amun would climb on my face

and spread his black bum

over my eyes and mouth

I thought he'd choke me

while my brother 

Tutmose

swanned around Karnak

in white linen

Amun loved him.

But one day

my parents gave me 

Aten

like you'd throw a child

drinking from a street sewer 

a slice of honey bread

I gorged on my God

I swelled up huge

that year

Tutmose shrivelled up

and died

I survived.

From "Akhenaten" (Serpent's Tail, 1992)

Finally, a recommendation, if you're a biologist and admirer of Charles Darwin, to invest in "Darwin : A life in poems" by Ruth Padel. To go with this, you could also look out a very good CD of specially composed songs featuring Chris Wood, Katrine Polwart & Stu Hanna - "Darwin Song Project Shrewbury 2009" (SFFCD01).

Who wants to have a go at Scratch?

Scratch is a free visual programming language suitable for primary children developed by MIT. It has hundreds of thousands of registered users. I've played about with it and have been following comments and developments through the Computing at School website.

http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/

I'd like to explore using this software in school but not being in a school, I'm looking for teachers who are similarly interested. If you've never heard of Scratch (other programmes also exist) then here are a few web-links by way of introduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFNBZUEyXs&feature=relmfu

There are a significant number of resources available to support introducing Scratch either within the curriculum or as an extracurricular club (Creative Computing Club). 
Scratch can be used by pupils to enter Animation 13 run by Manchester University. This might be a good starting project.

http://animation13.cs.manchester.ac.uk/

Scratch can also be used with Lego WeDo which I'm afraid I know little about but which is an added point of interest.

In case someone is interested, part of the discussions on the CaS website centres round getting girls interested in computing (and science). One correspondent pointed readers to GoldieBlox as an interesting development to watch.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls