~ Early Web Links ~

Alastair Creelman's long-running blog explores the intersection of technology and education, covering e-learning, digital conferences, online tools, and reflections on the evolving digital landscape. Written from the perspective of an experienced education technologist, the blog offers thoughtful commentary on topics like social media, digital preservation, and learning technology trends.

The Science Spot is a physics lesson plan resource created by Tracy Tomm, a former science teacher at Havana Junior High in Illinois, offering classroom activities like Rube Goldberg projects, Newton's Challenge, and projectile motion labs. Developed since 1999, the site provides downloadable worksheets, digital lessons, and curated links aimed at helping middle and high school science teachers bring hands-on STEM concepts into their classrooms.

Aceso Under Glass is Elizabeth's curiosity-driven blog that digs into practical knowledge ranging from clothing quality and shopping strategies to statistics, queuing theory, and the history of Bell Labs. The tagline 'What if we understood more things?' captures the spirit of a writer who investigates everyday and technical topics with analytical rigor and genuine enthusiasm.

Austin Z. Henley, an Associate Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, dives deep into implementing the cosine function in C from scratch without relying on math.h, exploring several approaches including Taylor series, lookup tables, and bit manipulation. The post includes performance benchmarks, accuracy comparisons, and code samples, and became popular enough to be discussed multiple times on Hacker News and Reddit.

A beginner-friendly tutorial by Allison Parrish teaching how to add interactivity to web pages using jQuery and JavaScript, with hands-on examples covering click events, DOM manipulation, and CSS class toggling. The lesson is structured as a guided workshop with live code examples and a 'mad lib' approach that lets learners experiment with specific parts of the code without needing deep programming knowledge.

Mr. Donn's site offers a large collection of free PowerPoint presentations covering ancient history, American history, world history, mythology, holidays, and geography, all designed for classroom use with kids in grades 5 and 6. Created by Lin Donn and illustrated by Phillip Martin, this educator resource includes presentations on topics ranging from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to the Civil War and Buddhism.

Michael A. Nielsen's free online book 'Neural Networks and Deep Learning' provides a comprehensive, mathematically grounded introduction to deep learning concepts including backpropagation, gradient descent, and convolutional networks. The book is structured as a series of detailed chapters with exercises, code implementations, and visual proofs, making it an exceptional self-study resource for anyone learning AI and machine learning fundamentals.

Jason Perry, a pixel artist and game developer known as finalbossblues, offers a comprehensive series of pixel art tutorials originally written for RPG Maker users around 2012. Topics range from color theory and form to sprite animation and walk cycles, making this an invaluable archived reference for anyone learning to create game graphics.

Written by Kelson Vibber and continuously updated since 2017, this detailed technical guide walks through using IFTTT webhooks to automatically post to Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms from virtually any service. It covers authorization tokens, API calls, troubleshooting tips, and compatibility with alternative server software like GoToSocial and Snac, making it a genuinely useful reference for federated social media automation.

Created by Dr. Bill Vicars, Lifeprint.com is a comprehensive free resource for learning American Sign Language, featuring a massive dictionary of signing videos, grammar lessons, fingerspelling guides, and Deaf culture materials. With millions of visits logged and thousands of indexed signs covering everything from basic greetings to numbers and lexicalized fingerspelling, it serves students, interpreters, parents, and homeschoolers alike.