In our ongoing quest to help the larger homeschooling community learn about science, here are some of our favorite science-related resources.
Science Olympiad Resources
The Science Olympiad organization (Sci-oly) provides peer-driven resources for students organized by event. http://scioly.org
SOinc is the official site of Science Olympiad and is the source for training materials and event information. http://soinc.org
Science Olympiad TV is a YouTube channel featuring information on Sci-oly events. https://www.youtube.com/user/ScienceOlympiadTV
Texas Science Olympiad information from Texas A & M, which has information about the state level events and information about the competitions being held in Texas http://outreach.science.tamu.edu/scienceolympiad.php
Online Learning Resources
You’ve heard about Coursera, right? Well, there are many many more programs you can use (many free of charge) to learn more about anything, including science.
Khan Academy offers thousands of instructor-led lessons on academic subjects for free. Materials begin at an introductory level and often move on to very advanced subjects. Learners can log into the platform and search for subjects they are interested in, or follow a curriculum with pre-assigned courses. https://khanacademy.org
Saylor Academy offers some highschool-level courses on biology, physics, chemistry and more. https://learn.saylor.org/
Coursera partners with top universities and organizations to offer courses online. https://www.coursera.org/
The Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Their goal is to combine open, high-quality courses, continuous feedback, and research to improve learning and transform higher education. Programs are offered through different schools including:
Carnegie Mellon: http://oli.cmu.edu/
edX, founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012, offers high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere. http://edx.org
Science NetLinks provides information for students in grades K-12 from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) http://sciencenetlinks.com/
Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from preschool to university, including professional training and informal learning. http://wikiversity.org/
TED Ed turns TED Talks into educational lesson plans. https://ed.ted.com/lessons
OpenPediatrics courses https://www.openpediatrics.org/learning/
The New York Times links science and math news of the day to topics students should learn more about. https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/learning-science-math
FutureLearn offers free online courses from top universities and cultural institutions. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses
General Science Websites
Science Daily latest science research news https://www.sciencedaily.com/
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) http://www.aaas.org/
ScienceStage is an online portal for the advanced teaching of science and scientific research http://sciencestage.com/
Science Learning Hub from New Zealand features thousands of articles, videos, and lessons on science-related topics. https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/
The Physics Classroom is a free online website primarily for beginning physics students by physics teacher Ted Henderson http://www.physicsclassroom.com/
PHYZARDRY is a free online website that provides terrific resources on physics-related subjects including optics, thermodynamics, astronomy, electricity, mechanics, and precalculus. http://www.phyzardry.com
Drawing Related Resources
Science isn’t just about numeric data and words. Visuals can often help convey complicated concepts and insights. One of the 2017-2018 SciOly events for middle schoolers is Picture This.
Here are some resources we have found to be useful in learning to convey information visually:
Diane Bleck is a gifted artist who founded the Doodle Institute. Although she’s closing this version of the institute next June, in the meantime she’s offering free courses. https://doodleinstitute.mykajabi.com/
On Diane’s Facebook page there are many free videos of her classes, which are terrific and very educational. https://www.facebook.com/thedoodleinstitute/ She also does live classes for free, broadcast using the Periscope App, that she mentions on her FB page.
Terrific article from Diane on the benefits of drawing:
In addition, one of our coaches, Marcia Conner, has a board on Pinterest of her favorite sketching resources and inspirations: https://www.pinterest.com/marciaconner/sketchnotes/
The New York Times has a new section called What’s Going on In This Graph that provides both terrific ways to convey information visually and an in-depth look at how to analyze information. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/learning/announcing-a-new-monthly-feature-whats-going-on-in-this-graph.html
The Math of Science Resources
Check out http://crypto.interactive-maths.com/ to find encrypting and decrypting methods for ciphers.
A great place to practice monoalphabetic ciphers is https://www.cryptograms.org/ There is also a tutorial with some basic methods used to solve cryptograms.
Anatomy, Physiology, Epidemiology and Disease-related Resources
National Eye Institute For Kids website provides a variety of fun learning tools for elementary age kids about the human eye, ranging from optical illusions to video interviews with scientists.
The Center for Disease Control provides online resources including interactive learning opportunities for students and creatively gives a deeper look in the world of science. Learn about microbiology, infectious diseases or become a food detective and learn about different types of bacteria. The CDC’s Teacher Roadmap provides lesson plans, training materials, and more to teach a 12-week course on public health science. The resources are available for online viewing or PDF downloads.
Study and Test Taking Resources
Quizlet is an online learning tool that also contains many teams’ science olympiad study sets http://quizlet.com
Science Olympiad Competition Prep Resources
Although some events change each year, the general event categories are similar each year. We’ve organized these resources by type of event.
LIFE, PERSONAL & SOCIAL SCIENCE
EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE
PHYSICAL SCIENCE & CHEMISTRY
Chemistry Lab (C)
Circuit Lab (B&C)
Crime Busters (B) & Forensics (C)
Density Lab (B)
Potions and Poisons (B)
Protein Modeling (C)
Sounds of Music (C)
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
INQUIRY & NATURE OF SCIENCE
More Competition Prep Resources
The following are specific resources to help prep for the questions you’ll be asked.
See what years your event has run previously.
SCIOLY now has 2 areas where there are old tests available.
From their homepage, you can go to Test Exchange.
There is also a test archive from previous years
And an index of all things related to shared tests.
For those of us in Texas, UT 2019 Regionals Tests/Keys
Old tests/keys from UT’s invitationals and regionals going back to 2014.
2019 Cobra International (Middle School in Michigan) Div B
2019 MIT’s Invitational (Div C)
University of Michigan’s Invitational (Div C)