Beens' Blog

In response to @dougpete 's " When Things Don’t Quite Line Up " post this morning, here is Niagara Falls' road challenge, what the locals refer to as "the five corners": Not quite as many traffic lights as in Doug's post, but a nuisance intersection nonetheless!

@dougpete  sent me a message this morning  telling me about this new visual programming environment  called Google Blockly , rec ommending I add the site to my  Google A-Z reference document  (which I did - thanks Doug!). I quickly tried out the Maze demo and produced the program shown in the picture. I know it's not as efficient as it could be, but I only had a few minutes to create it. Maybe someone reading this will show me up! (assuming the maze is always the same) The website looks like it might be a fun way to get your students to start learning computer science concepts.  I look forward to see what kinds of projects grow out of it, and how teachers incorporate it into their classrooms. I know I'll be showing it to all my students on Monday!  To get started yourself with Blockly, visit  http://code.google.com/p/google-blockly/ . Update: here's a great article from Wired about it:  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/google-blockly/

The Transit of Venus will only happen once in our lifetime, occurring locally this Tuesday evening, June 5. A great site to get started learning about this is  http://www.transitofvenus.org/ , which is where I found a link to the simulation below. This simulation is centered on Toronto (but you can change it), and it shows that Venus will only be crossing the sun from 18:04 to 20:53. Remember that it's not safe to look directly at the sun, so if you do want to watch the transit live, visit  http://www.transitofvenus.org/june2012/eye-safety  to learn some safe techniques. I've bookmarked a few links related to the Transit of Venus, which you can find here . My list is not comprehensive, so I urge you to explore other sites and see what you can learn! Will you be watching the transit? Will you be telling your students about it? Please install latest Flash Player to run SunAeon Venus