en Passant

One of my spousal duties is teacher's assistant which includes grading papers on occasion, technical support, and assignment ideas. Once, for a chemistry assignment, I took a Hot Wheels semi-truck and destroyed it so that it looked like it crashed. In class the students took samples of the spilled powder and determined what it was (toxic chemicals or the ingredients for cake mix!).

A resource that has been immensely helpful is a teacher driven newsgroup. Here middle-school teachers share ideas and resources they find with one another. One that I especially would like to share here is 60 Second Science. This cool, Digg-like, science blog contains links to various, short science articles. While we couldn't use this for her students (language too difficult or too crass), one link I especially liked was Crayon Physics.

This game requires the player to solve a simple puzzle (collect all the stars) using hand drawn objects and basic physics concepts. Reminding me of the game Lemmings, I started building Rube Goldberg type contraptions to solve the more difficult puzzles (i.e. get the ball across down several levels and across a chasm).

So, what are you doing? Download it and start playing!! If you like it, check out some of this authors other games too.