I am Stephen, a science teacher from northern Ireland.
I am married to the lovely Sharon, who is also a science teacher (no we don’t talk about science all the time).
We have a little man (son), little lady (daughter) and littlest man (another son) who entertain us endlessly, at least three cats; jess, biscuits and tallie , several goldfish, about a dozen chickens and a few thousand honeybees.
Well that’s about it apart from the rest of life which you can read about in the blog.
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January 11, 2010 at 9:57 am
Hi Stephen- I’d be keen to know if you’re doing anything innovative using ICT in the classroom. Check out my blogsite for details on the NI Innovative Teachers competition and don’t hesiate to contact me if you have any questions.
Tom Jackson-Microsoft Education Programme Manager NI
April 14, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Hi Stephen
Saw your blog today about Star spatial representation. If you love that type of thing and haven’t seen the Microsoft Worlwide Telescope make sure you download it for free and give it a try
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/Home.aspx
I would still love to visit your school to see what you’re doing with your students
Tom Jackson
Microsoft Education Programme Manager
April 15, 2010 at 8:14 am
Hi Tom,
I love the Microsoft Telescope. I have used it about a month ago in the classroom as it is a quick way to find brilliant images of deep sky objects. It looks great on the interactive whiteboard.
April 25, 2010 at 10:20 am
Are there any major advantages or differences between Microsoft Telescope and Stellarium?
Alan.
April 26, 2010 at 2:19 pm
For me, Microsoft Telescope and Stellarium seem to be two different kinds of program that serve different functions. I think Microsoft Telescope is great for looking at specific things. It has very high quality images that are brilliant for looking at the planets, galaxies and nebula. In the classroom Stelarium serves a different function. Stellarium (whose images are nowhere near as good) is the software I would use explaining things like the apparent motion of the sun in the sky and explaining the seasons and the motion of the planets. For some of these I would change the position to the north pole and then switch the ground and atmosphere off. Stellarium is also useful for eclipses as the position on the earth and the time can be easily changed. And Stellarium is brilliant when you see a bright ‘star’ in the sky and think, “what is that?” It is so easy to play about with the time on it to put yourself back to the time you saw the ‘star’.
October 8, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Hi Stephen
I am keen to know what you’re doing in class using technology. I am running a new competition for NI Teachers and the winner will go to Moscow in March 2011 to compete against teachers from across Europe. You can see the details on my site (www.tomatmicrosoft.co). Please get in touch when you get a chance.
a-tomj@microsoft.com
November 8, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Hi stephen
Still waiting to see if you’re going to enter this year’s competition:) Would love to see what you’re doing.
Tom
October 4, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Hi Stephen – I’m writing from a tv production company and am keen to talk to you about your article/blog page on ‘star jelly’. Could you email me outside of this comments page to discuss this further? Thanks!
April 23, 2013 at 5:36 pm
Hi,
I saw a great picture of a hole stone at the equinox on your blog: https://thisteacherslife.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/equinox-at-holestone.png
I am in the process of finishing my Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics and am using my visits to Ireland as inspiration for my work in clay. Specifically, I am focusing on passage tombs, dolmens, standing stones and hole stones in the Irish landscape. Would you mind if I were to use your image in my written thesis? It is possible it could be reproduced for scholars studying my work, but not for profit. Please let me know if this is amenable. I am happy to give you credit for the image.
Thank you so much!
April 23, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Denise, Certainly, feel free to use the image in your thesis. The image you refer to was made by joining a picture I took with the estimated position of the sun from an astronomy program called stellarium. I would love to say that it is a complete real image, but it’s not. I think you would have to be at the holestone on a fine day on one of the two equinoxes to get the real image.
April 23, 2013 at 6:22 pm
you can find the details somewhere in here….
https://thisteacherslife.wordpress.com/?s=holestone
September 16, 2013 at 5:11 pm
Thanks Stephen! I appreciate it!
October 22, 2018 at 9:57 pm
Really enjoyed the Holestone articles – thanks!