The $1,000,000 Car

This past week I had an opportunity to drive a $1,000,000 car. The GM designed Equinox Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car was recently blogged by Wired Magazine. You can read their review and a lot of the details there or read from GM's Fuel Cell page.

My first impression was similar to Wired Magazine...seems pretty ordinary. That is until you open the hood and see a fuel cell. That is until you start the car and are not really sure it's even running. That is until you take it for a drive and realize you burned zero gasoline, and used zero oil and created zero emissions.

Why am I blogging about this car on a blog about instructional technology? Well, the car was visiting an elementary school the next day and I thought how cool to use this car as a way to get kids interested in math, science, engineering, environmental issues, government (GM had to crash 5 cars to pass all the regulations to get the car on the road), collaboration, and all sorts of technology.

Substitute Teacher Avatar!

Next time you have to call a substitute maybe you can design your own avatar to take your place! Press play below and hear me introduce a psychology lesson!

Get a Voki now!

Motion Charts in Google Docs

Have a need to show data relationships over time? I originally blogged about this TED speech that use this gapminder tool to show UN country data. Now everyone has the ability to dump data into a Google spreadsheet and create their own Motion Chart. I've embedded an example of a motion chart below. The data is totally made-up data for the sake of experimentation My district would have the ability to create accurate Motion Charts. Be sure to hover over the dots to see individual schools and use the drop down menus to see other ways to view the data. Very cool visualizer!