In trawling the web in search of Electronic Whiteboard sites, I am yet to find a well organised, subject specific site with lots of great ideas that I can link to in the one place. This is my feeble attempt to try to do so. I intend to try to put one of these posts up for each subject area over the next few days. As a former Science Teacher, here is a good place to begin.

Firstly, for the general motivation of kids in science, you could not go past using sites like line rider. Ok, I know it is a big gamey and full of ads but you have to admit, it will get your kids discussing Physics principles right off the bat. Phun, is a similar sort of open-ended investigation calling itself the 2D physics sandbox. It reminds me of interactive physics a lot. Whoops! showing my age again. BTW, it looks like you can export IP simulations in .swf format now I see.

Now before the Biological Science and Chemistry folk start getting all upset, I reckon that you guys are spoilt for choice of introductory ideas. Some of the Woodlands Junior School content on life processes and living things is easily able to be brought up onto the board and used as a quick refresher at the start of a topic. You can also get a lot of ideas from the excellent 10 quick ideas on biology on the IWB. In the chemistry field, I really like the great resources on echalk, but you could also find some good applets on this interactive library. Back to echalk, there are so many good science simulations on this site, that anyone would be crazy to forego a subscription for the less than US$100 that it costs. The IWB.ORG site from the UK seems to agree as almost all of the science KS3 resources that they mention are from this site.

Science Simulations are popular for use on boards, so here are suggestions of places to look for some. Sunflower learning is very good for simulations http://www.sunflowerlearning.com/index.htm, as is newbyte http://www.newbyte.com/ both of these have phyisics chemistry and biology simulations. Crocodile Clips has only Physics and Chemistry http://www.crocodile-clips.com/
All of these are paid sites with limited previews. Check out Yenka for their free animations site: http://www.yenka.com/freecontent/search.action?r=new at time of posting there were over 100 but unfortunately none for biology. Focus educational do some nice, low cost software simulations
http://www.focuseducational.com/html/category.php/cid/1 and furry elephant
http://www.furryelephant.com/ has full lessons with review questions packaged with the simulations similar to the Explore Learning “gizmos”. http://www.explorelearning.com/

For the Aussies reading this, you will know that the federal government put money into making lots of simulations called the “Learning Federation Learning Objects” I see that some are available for sample here. I checked out the one on fair tests and it looks cool, if not a bit limited as a sample. I am not up on what has happened to these and whether they are being made available commercially. Perhaps someone can write a comment and let me know.

You also need to be aware of all of the NASA Science Activities and Simulations which are all potentially great to get kids up to use on an EWB. Choose carefully as some are not very interactive!

Another huge area of use of the EWB for science is opened up by attaching a document camera/visualizer to the computer that the IWB is connected to. This site has a great many ideas of how these tools can be used in a classroom with many science examples.

In conclusion, it would be remiss of me not to mention a lot of the open-ended, cross curricula tools that could easily be used on an EWB for solid engagement of all science students. These include but are in no way limited to some of the following:

Online collaborative graphing via a tool such as editgrid, might be good at generating discussion during a practical session. I am not sure if Google Spreadsheet offers the same, real-time updating of a collaborative chart based on a spreadsheet. Here is a link to a great lesson suggestion using spreadsheeting based on a simulation. It might be good for ideas.

Other generalist tools include VoiceThread which can easily be controlled, annotatated and even added to via the EWB. Quizlet is a great tool for making flashcards which could be introduced or used via the EWB. delicious, bubblus is a great online alternative to inspiration for mindmapping, and xtimeline is great for visualising timelines.