[TIPS] - Gore's Ted speech, and a fun mashup

No matter WHAT you think of the man as a polititian, Al Gore's speech is funny and it's thought provoking. Science teachers especially will appreciate this speech given at the TED conference (I've GOTTA get there someday!) about his "An Inconvenient Truth" research. This is the link to stream it: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=al_gore and this is the link to download it: http://ted.streamguys.net/ted_gore_al_2006.zip This would be an excellent video to watch and then ask your students to write a blog or journal entry about it. They should also try to verify the facts as presented to see what they come up with, etc. Here's the accompanying website: http://www.climatecrisis.net/ Science teachers - this one's for you.

 

Now for the fun mashup. A mashup is when you take data from one website (in this case Google Maps) and mash it together with your own stuff. There are MANY examples, but this one is just for fun - and so may be blocked at school: http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html 

 

This creator even lets you use your hometown as the flight area. See the link at the top.