Futility Closet - An entertaining collection of educational related curiosities

Futility Closet is an entertaining website that shares strange and curious stories from history, language, literature, math, science, art, philosophy and more. You can read stories about amazing coincidences, unusual occurrences or try to solve challenging puzzles. The site has over 6800 entries and is growing daily. You can browse by one of their 19 topics, use the search bar or click the "random" button and see what "curiosity" appears. While Futility Closet's posts will appeal to anyone, teachers should be able to find material that they can incorporate into their lessons to make them more interesting. Once you begin reading the material on Futility Closet, you will likely find yourself returning over  and over again.

3 great science sites

The United States Government for all it's many faults does have an impressive amount of educational material available to students and teachers. This post is the first of many where I will be sharing those resources with you. I hope you are able to discover something useful for your classroom.

Science and Innovation
Energy.gov, the website for the U.S. Department of Energy, contains multiple layers of educational material for students and teachers. Their science and innovation section provides links to articles and videos on physics, biology, chemistry and environmental science. These resources could prove useful for high school and college level instruction.

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Energy Kids
Next you'll find the science education section which when you first view it seem rather plain. There are a number of videos but looking deeper you'll find the Energy Kids area which is full of  energy-related kid's resources including games, riddles, field trips, and classroom activities. The site also contains a teacher's guide with lessons for students of all ages. 

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Energy Star Kids
Finally there is the Energy Star Kids section which explores energy conservation and is targeted for elementary level learners. This page does include information, games and a parent/teacher area with lesson plans.

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Everyday Mysteries
The Library of Congress website has a very cool science area called Everyday Mysteries where students explore science based questions and mysteries. There dozens of "mysteries" for students to examine from ten science based categories. Each "mystery" comes with a detailed explanation and pictures to help the student learn more about the topic. There are also additional resources given for those who are doing a research project.

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All that is interesting - Pictures of our amazing world

All that is Interesting is a website that feeds our desire to be amazed by our world. The site contains a large collection of photographs from the web and each photo is captioned explaining the picture. You don't need to look too deep into through their website to find a picture that will capture your attention. The photographs are sorted by categories such as "astounding", "curiosities," and "photography." Teachers will be interested in knowing that other categories include "history", "science", and "art." All that is Interesting is a website worth browsing and may prove to be useful to some educators out there.

Good Commercials, Comics, and Humor

I hate commercials. Not all commercials, just the average, run of the mill commercials. Now good commercials are often better than the television show I am watching, but outside of Superbowl Sunday, they are as rare as  a solar eclipse. I would love it if there was a place I could go to view great current commercials as well as classic ones. Well that place exists and it is called Sharethrough.tv. This site finds the best advertisements, both past and present, and posts them on their website. Why not go there and perhaps you will discover cool commercials like this kindness themed one from Coca-Cola.

As I shared in an earlier posting, one of the best resources for discovering new websites is Diigo. Yesterday, one of the cool sites that was shared (by Michelle Brown) is called Chogger. With Chogger you can create your own online comic either by drawing them on the site or uploading a picture and adding word balloons. Best of all you can save and share your comics with the world. This site is a great way to utilize your creativity and have fun.

Last up today is a fun site I recently discovered via Stumble Upon. The site is called Humor-Image.com and is simply a humor site that shares funny images from around the world wide web. We all enjoy a good chuckle so if you head over to this site you'll find funny things such as This is What Humor Looks Like.

Sketching, Infographics, and Google

Sketch Toy is a website that allows you to draw a picture on their website and share it on your Facebook page. One advantage to Sketch Toy is their "graph paper" background to help you keep your art centered and symmetrical. They also have a feature that makes your art vibrate much like an old cartoon. If drawing is your thing, why not give Sketch Toy a try.

Daily Infographic is a website that features the best and most dynamic infographics found on the world wide web. If you are searching for an infographic about a specific topic then this website can help you as well. You can use their search bar or just select the category that interests you and they will more than likely have the infographic you were looking for. If you really enjoy their site then you can subscribe to their site and have daily infographics emailed to you.

Seems as though just about everyone uses some type of Google product these days. Google Tutor is a site that wants to be your resource for all things Google. They are one of the leading websites for news, tips, and tutorials for Google and their products and services They are not affiliated with Google, but are just huge fans of Google who want to share their passion with the world. If you have any Google related questions, go to Google Tutor and they should have the answer.