Volcanoes & lava fields - Lanzarote

iPad The crater we stood in the centre of

I hope you still have fond memories of your last holiday and high expectations of the one to come. Being self-employed allows me to take holidays whenever it's convenient for my wife (and when funds allow). We've just been to Lanzarote and, whilst looking forward to the warmth, I wasn't really expecting anything - possibly the best frame of mind to be in. What an awakener! Closest I'll ever be to standing in an alien landscape, even the presence of lichen didn't rid me of the "sterile" nature of the lava fields. 

iPod Alien landscape

iPod pavement of columnar basalt

iPod Solidified lava

I've been to Mount Etna and Vesuvius and seen volcanic craters in Bali (not far from Krakotoa) but this was as good. Standing at the bottom of a crater was awesome.
Elsewhere on the island, we were able to have lunch in a lava tube at the Jameos del Aqua and to walk through the lava bubbles in the former home of Cesar Manrique. I had never heard of Manrique but he was a really talented artist and visionary.

Manrique sculpture in lava bubble

Thank you - Sunderland & the ASE

A personal thank you to everyone from Sunderland University who either helped or attended the ASE Cheese & Wine Meeting yesterday. Special thanks to the reception staff who looked after me so well when I turned up early, the IT technician who made sure my presentation went as well as I could have wanted and the students I spoke to who were open, enthusiastic and devoid of cynicism. Everything this jade old man needed to keep him going for the next few weeks. Thank you.

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.