Well, it has been an entire week of blogging for me in the month of BLOG-VEMBER, and I wanted to end the first week with a BANG! After exploring the TEDEd Periodic Table of Videos earlier this week, I began wondering, "What other types of periodic tables exist?" As we all know, the answer to most questions is only a Google search away. So, I very innocently and unexpectedly typed into the search box PERIODIC TABLE OF and then conducted and Image search. Let's just say that it was a bit of a rabbit hole. On and off for the past couple of days, I have collected now periodic tables that may be worth exploring and sharing with your students. I present five of my current favorites below and then a link to a Google Spreadsheet where I have listed 60 at this point. I will continue to add to the list as I learn of new ones. If you know of ones that you think should be on the list, please comment below. Also, I have tried to keep the list "kid friendly" as there were many tables that may not necessarily be suitable for educational purposes. 

While it could be quite interesting to simply consume the tables, I think it would be far more interesting to have students produce their own. Consider some of the following ideas to get you started. 

1. How are Periodic Tables organized? What is the structure that the tables have in common? What makes them different? 

2. What makes a "GOOD" Periodic Table? Are tables in the list that could be significantly improved? 

3. What Periodic Table is MISSING? Are there things that could be classified that no one has yet created a table? 

If you use this activity with your students, please share the results with me. I would love to hear how it went! 

There has always been something uniquely compelling to me about the simple beauty and organization of the periodic table. As a gifted student growing up, there was something about the poster that was on many classroom walls that was an immediate distraction. In today's blog entry, I write about the TedED version of the Periodic Videos Collection (http://ed.ted.com/periodic-videos). 

First things first, Periodic Videos (http://www.periodicvideos.com) is a site created by folks at the University of Nottingham and has been around for a while. For those of you who have not seen it, basically they have created a short video for each and every element on the periodic table. That is pretty cool in my book. 

What is even cooler and would surely get a LOT of kids excited to use the QR Code Scanner on their digital information devices is the Periodic Table of Videos QR Code Posters! They have the poster available in an assortment of sizes for you to download and print. 

But what is really SUPER COOL is what TED Ed has done with the Periodic Table of Videos. For those of you familiar with TEDEd, then you already know that for every one of their educational videos they have an accompanying lesson to go along with it. In each lesson, there are a set of questions and extension resources that ask the view to THINK (by answering multiple choice and open ended questions) DIG DEEPER (and learn more about the topic), and DISCUSS (with a guided and open discussion forum). Even better is that TED Ed allows teachers to CUSTOMIZE THE LESSON. This allows you to create a version to share with your students who sign visit the URL that it creates for you. The students then need to sign in to view the video and answer the questions. In the customized lesson, you can alter the questions and even create your own. Better still is that TED Ed puts YOUR NAME on the lesson. So, it makes this look like you did something really impressive. I will be posting much more about TED Ed and its resources in future blog entries, but this is certainly enough to get you and your students investigating the Periodic Table in a brand new way.