On May 5, 1961, U.S. astronaut Alan B. Shepard became the first American to orbit the earth when his Freedom 7 spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  NASA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. human flight with several ceremonies and a parade, and the U.S. Postal Service has just released a new stamp honoring Shepard.

Students can visit NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature Site to check out several decades of space exploration, from the 1950s through 2000.  This terrific interactive site features Automa, a talking robot, who introduces visitors to the great features of the site.  Students can explore decade by decade, listen to music and news broadcasts for each time period and even launch rockets!  The site’s interactive timeline is easy to navigate, and students (and their families) will find much to discover at this site, which goes far beyond just space exploration.

Feeling blue, red hot or tickeled pink?  Try this new Multicolr Search Engine that searches through images on Flickr’s photo sharing site with Creative Commons licenses.  This allows you to remix, reuse and share creative works that have been given more flexible copyright. 

So, next time you’re looking for a picture in a particular color scheme, give this site a try.  You can select up to 10 different colors, and then the search engine uses “Piximilar visual search technology” to find the perfect color match  in its database of 10 million images.  They’ve got just the right color picture for you!

School library media Kids was created by a school librarian and reading specialist and has a great selection of educational links and book-related resources.  In addition to approximately twenty fun and educational games, which help kids work on typing skills, grammar and spelling, SlimeKids includes book reviews and book trailers, links to favorite author sites, kid-friendly search engines and reference tools. 

Random House, the publishers of The Magic Tree House series, has just launched an all new site, MagicTreeHouse.com featuring Mary Pope Osborne’s books. The site introduces a fun and educational new game, Magic Tree House Missions, in which children join characters Jack and Annie as they travel through time and collect clues to solve puzzles and complete missions. The game features more than 60 unique missions and over 250 trivia questions based on facts found in the books.

Did you know that a wheel of cheddar cheese weighing over 1400 pounds was served at a reception during Andrew Jackson’s presidency and that the White House smelled like cheddar cheese for weeks afterward?  You’ll find many fascinating food-oriented facts about the presidents as well as recipes at a blog called The History Chef. Maintained by Suzy Evans, who has a Ph.D. in history, the blog was started when Evans was writing a book about favorite foods of the American presidents.  She shares that her goal ” is to help parents and kids learn how to cook together, learn about history together, and hopefully help them create many great memories and meals together.”

Our  library subscribes to several online databases to supplement out print resources and provide engaging educational digital content.  Students and their families may use these resources from any computer with Internet access.

BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr (K-3) provide “animated, curriculum-based content that engages students, supports educators, and bolsters achievement.”  Short movies feature a range of educational topics and can help students understand difficult concepts.

For the month of September, a special Spotlight on Digital Citizenship introduces 21st Century Skills to students including the topics of Blogs, Cyberbullying, Digital Etiquette, Email and IM, Social Networks, Information Privacy, and much more.

We encourage you to post comments on this blog and suggest that you view this video on Digital Etiquette.