iSpot Crowd-source nature identification site

From the OU Facebook feed:

iSpot, your place to share nature (www.ispotnature.org), has a new look with a fresh design and exciting additional features, including:
- create a 'Project' gathering observations from a location, species group or time period on one page
- experience iSpot through four core themes: Explore, Identify, Contribute and Personalise
- 'My Spot' becomes 'Your iSpot' with new features to filter observations
- the website will now re-size to fit the device you are using.

...See More

iSpot

iSpot - Your place to share nature. iSpot is a website aimed at helping anyone identify anything in nature. Once you've registered, you can add an observation to the website and suggest an identification yourself or see if anyone else can identify it for you.

WWW.ISPOTNATURE.ORG

Information on this years Royal Institution Christmas lectures

It may seem a bit early to think about Christmas but this years RI lectures look like they be a Cracker :-)

Sparks will fly: How to hack your home

Danielle George, a Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at The University of Manchester, will present the 2014 CHRISTMAS LECTURES. 

In her three-part series 'Sparks will fly: How to hack your home' Danielle will explore how just a spark of your imagination and some twenty-first century tinkering can change the world. She will take three great British inventions – a light bulb, a telephone and a motor – and show you how to adapt, transform and hack them to do extraordinary things. Danielle will announce the new rules of invention and show you how to use modern tools and technologies and things from your home to have fun and make a difference to the world around you.

Further details here

This should be of interest to Teachers & parents:

I am writing to let you know about a fantastic new game that we have put together in order to support children in learning about their local wildlife and to also enable them to share what they discover with other children around the country.

The game has three main aims:

1) We believe that children have to a large extent lost the connect with nature that they used to have and this game has the aim of improving general basic knowledge of common creatures in the UK through reconnecting kids with nature.

2) To use technology to reduce the amount of screen time kids get by encouraging them outdoors

3) To give parents, schools and other organisations an easy to access, free tool that makes it easy and fun for them to support kids in connecting with nature.

Here it is: http://www.flyonthewall.uk.com/wildlifetrackers/

We need help in raising awareness of the game and have been kindly supported by The Wild Network and various Wildlife Trusts through mentions on their websites and social media sites but also need a LOT more help to bring the tool to as many children as possible.

Kind Regards

Joel Chudleigh

joel@deepfootprints.co.uk

Fly On The Wall

http://www.flyonthewall.uk.com/

May be interest to teachers of year 12 physics students:-

I want to share with you the Weizmann UK Safe Cracking Physics Tournament, where teams of Year 12 students from across the UK have the opportunity to compete in a safe making and breaking competition.

Teams design and build safes which have locking mechanisms based on the principles of physics. They then put their safes to the test in a tournament of 'safe cracking'. They get to be creative, challenge their knowledge, see physics in action and have loads of fun!

I am still in awe of the brilliant ideas the teams had at the last tournament and can't wait to see the next lot of safes. You can see more by watching the following videos, which include safes which can only be opened by using potatoes, making a cup of tea or 'playing' table football! The videos are here: http://bit.ly/1scnPEP

Teams who win the UK tournament will receive a travel grant to cover flights and accommodation to enable them to represent the UK at the International Tournament at the Weizmann Institute of Science where they compete against teams from across the world.

Please can you forward this information to school students and teachers who you think may be interested in participating? Registration for the competition closes at the end of September 2014, and the UK tournament will be held on Sunday 8 February 2015.

Let me know if you have any questions about the competition.

Thank you,

Lydia Wood
Science Projects Coordinator
T. +44 (0)20 7424 6866
lydia@weizmann.org.uk
www.weizmann.org.uk

Registered charity no: 232666