Battle Childhood Obesity, Character Ed and More [Five for Friday]

1. Explore.org - Fascinating new video & photo site that documents issues such as social justice, the environment, public health, animals, and culture from around the planet.  The free library would be appropriate for a wide range of social studies, science and health classes.  Each documentary is short enough (around 25 minutes) to fit into tight class schedules, and can be accessed across a variety of platforms. 
2. Visual Aid Shop - Beautiful books and posters on a variety of educational and less serious topics.  Data and information is visualized in a style that might remind you of GOOD Magazine or Wired.  This would be a heck of a lot better to put on your classroom wall than any of the crap they sell in teacher supply catalogs!
3. Fizzy's Lunch Lab - Looking for educational programming on nutrition that your kids will have the stomach for (I know, I'm so hilarious)?  Fizzy's is a PBS Kids show and website designed to do nothing short of stopping our childhood obesity epidemic.  There's resources for parents and teachers to help.  This would be great for parents, homeschoolers and elementary teachers focusing on health and physical education.  This month, in honor of Valentine's Day, they have a new video called "Give My Heart a Valentine" (see a still below):
   
   
4. Heroes of Character - This new interactive website, created by the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, contains tons of classroom resources and ideas for character education.  We certainly need as much of this as we can get!
5. New NY Times Math Blog - The Times has launched a new blog on its Opinionator subsite meant to bring math to the masses (much like Freakonomics does with economics).  Steven Strogatz, applied math prof at Cornell, is the ideal blogger: "In 2007 he received the Communications Award, a lifetime achievement award for the communication of mathematics to the general public."  Definitely worth adding to your reading list!