Helpful links
Helpful links and Happy Reading
Over the past few weeks teachers have shared articles and links they have felt have been interesting reads during this "working from home/ remote learning" period. Here are some articles we thought may be helpful, fun and interesting for students and teachers:
With Coronavirus Closing Schools, Here’s How Video Games are Helping Teachers
The Washington Post
Elise Favis
April 15, 2020
The quarantine caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted teachers to utilize popular video games like Assassin's Creed, Minecraft, and Roblox to conduct lessons on a range of topics. Game publishers are facilitating this trend by making their platforms as accessible as possible to educators during the crisis. In 2018, Ubisoft added a new mode to Assassin's Creed: Origins, which is set in ancient Egypt, called Discovery Tour. This mode lets players embark on guided tours through famous historical sites and cities. This mode was recently adapted for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey—set in ancient Greece—complete with additional content like quizzes. Minecraft also comes with an education mode, which Microsoft has made free for educators and students through June 2020 due to the pandemic. Roblox is a platform that lets players create their own video games from scratch. The company has partnered with more than 170 educators from 35 countries to discuss applications for the game.
NASA Using Red and Blue 3D Glasses to Drive Mars Rover While Working From Home
Gizmodo
Andrew Liszewski
April 17, 2020
Planners at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are remotely piloting the Curiosity rover on Mars while working from home. Without access to JPL's powerful workstations and special three-dimensional (3D) goggles due to quarantine orders, the team must rely on red and blue 3D glasses. While antiquated by today's 3D standards, the cardboard glasses are essentially the same anaglyph 3D technology as the special goggles normally used by the team to plan the rover's movements and more accurately target its robotic arm and probes. The team successfully executed Curiosity's first mission planned outside of JPL's facilities just two days after relocating to home offices.
These Fold-Up Robots Fly Just Like Ladybugs
Popular Science
Kate Baggaley
April 15, 2020
Researchers at Seoul National University (SNU) in South Korea have built remote-controlled robots inspired by ladybugs, with wings that snap open, lock, and fold up like origami upon landing. Kyu-Jin Cho and colleagues at SNU's Soft Robotics Research Center constructed fabric wings with artificial plastic veins, and affixed them to robotic insects previously engineered to jump or crawl. The team tested the robots by having one leap from a roof, whip its wings open in midair, and glide down. They threw another robot off the second floor of a building, and after gliding safely to the ground, it refolded its wings and crawled along the Earth. Said Northeastern University roboticist Alireza Ramezani, “The way they are trying to integrate origami designs in this kind of bio-inspired robot is interesting.”