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Living over here on the "Left Coast", we're used to the ground shaking beneath our feet. We're all dialed in to Cal Tech and the USGS to keep an eye on their reports of earthquakes. Turns out all we really needed to do was to grab a copy of SeisMac.

SeisMac takes advantage of the Sudden Motion Sensor in your Mac laptop to let you know when things are a-shakin'. It graphs in real time, showing movement in all three (X, Y, and Z) axes. It's sensitive enough that you should be able to see the temblor set off by your tapping your toes or walking across the room. And if the Big One comes along, you can see it on-screen, as you grab your computer and dive under a nearby table. Big earthquakes can be disconcerting, but at least they're not tornadoes, right?

SeisMac was created with support from the National Science Foundation. It's a free download for your Mac, and runs under OS X 10.4 and later. You'll need to have a MacBook or a MacBook Pro (or an older iBook or PowerBook equipped with Sudden Motion Sensor) to be able to use it.

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Any third grader drilling away on number facts knows all about flash cards. This time-honored pedagogical tool has gotten more people through school than probably just about anything else, for one simple reason: it works. There's no substitute for drilling on facts like you can do with flash cards. So how do you improve on a technology that presumably is as old as the written word?

The Mnemosyne Project has one answer, with their automated flash card-like tool. Like traditional flash cards, you can enter the question and answer and then drill on those facts until you master them. Going one better, though, it also leverages off the smarts of your computer. After all, it can keep track of how well you are learning the stuff you're working on, and make sure that it cycles the trickier stuff through more often, letting you hit the hard stuff harder. It also supports pictures, sounds, and three-way flash cards, that can ask two different questions at once.

Mnemosyne is a free download. The latest release is available for Linux and Windows, and a previous version for Mac is also out there.

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As low-tech as it seems, sometimes there's nothing as efficient as flash cards when it comes to learning piles of facts. It worked for you in the third grade when it came time to learn the multiplication tables, and it can work again today whenever you need to master a list of facts. Things have been upgraded, however, since the days of the index card and Magic Marker.

Cerebral Imprint is an app that lets you build virtual flash cards. Rather than printing them out, these cards live on your computer, but other than that, they work the same way: on the front a question, on the back an answer. Well, not really on the back—you don't have to turn your monitor over to see the answer! Your cards will support regular flash card question-and-answer items, as well as multiple-choice, and even fill-in-the-blank questions.

To keep things interesting, you can choose to use your cards the regular way, with you getting the question and having to figure out the answer, or you can invert it Jeopardy-style, getting the answer and having to figure out what the question is. In addition, you can mix-up the order of your cards, so you don't get into a rut—the answer to the third question is "42", unless, or course, that question doesn't come third every time.

Cerebral Imprint is a free Mac application. It runs under OS X 10.5+.

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Did you sleep through high school physics class? Did you even show up? Physics isn't everybody's cup of tea, but that may be because it wasn't taught right. Unlike biology, where dissecting frogs is part of the drill, or chemistry, where evacuating the lab because of some foul smell is a regular occurrence, physics should be fun. After all, where else can you play with toy cars and watch springs for academic credit. But we digress.

Phun is a 2D physics sandbox that lets you create a virtual workspace to play with simple machines and forces applied to them. Build your own contraptions and see how they work. Make them go faster or slower. See what happens when you change the load on your machine. It's so much fun you might forget that you're doing real physics here. Oh yeah, you can let the kids work with it too. Who knows—maybe by the time they get to high school, they'll be eager to get into the lab.

Phun is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

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While FunBrain is a web site, in some ways it's more like a collection of games and tools for kids. Whether you're looking for math games, reading activities, or just plain fun, there's probably something here to appeal to you. Play games like Math Baseball (practice your arithmetic while scoring a home run), help Pearl and Flora with plural forms of words, and more. Web books and comics help with reading practice. There are also activities for younger kids, so everybody can have fun and learn at the same time.

FunBrain features a fair number of advertisements, so parents will want to keep an eye on their kids as they move through the site (but you already monitor your little ones when they're online, right?). They've got a good Privacy Policy in place, so you can feel safe while you're on the site.

FunBrain is a free service. Most of its content should be available for visitors with modern web browsers. Certain activities may require Flash or other extensions to your browser.

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How's your grasp of music theory? Do you know an Allegro from a G-clef? Whether you're an an experienced musician or have problems playing a radio, Aquallegro can give you a hand with all things musical.

It includes a series of quizzes about the "stuff" of music, and with real-time feedback, you will know where you stand as you progress through them. In addition, there are detailed help files to make sure you're grasping key concepts.

The content runs the gamut from note names, intervals, and lengths, as well as chords, scales, and sight singing. With built-in administrative tools, Aquallegro can be customized by teachers to use as part of their music programs.

While there's no guarantee that you'll be playing in the Philharmonic anytime soon, Aquallegro can help you can gain a greater appreciation for all things musical.

Aquallegro is a Mac application and requires OS X 10.4 or better.

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Over the past several years, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of online course material available. Many colleges have dramatically increased the number of classes provided online as a way to stretch resources, as well as allowing more independently paced study. Re-entry students who have full-time jobs, for example, can "attend" class during evenings and weekends, whereas they might not be able to come to a physical classroom during the day in the middle of a work week.

There are many challenges that come up in making online classes informative and relevant for the needs of their students. One way to try to make the online learning experience better for students is through tools like Moodle.

Moodle calls itself a "course management system." It provides a framework for creating Internet-based courses of instruction and the supporting web sites. Based on a philosophy called "social constructionist pedagogy", which takes advantage of interactions among the community as well as content provided by the instructor, Moodle allows instructors to create opportunity for rich interaction, including elements such as wikis, forums, and blogs, as well as quizzes, surveys, and other activities.

There is extensive documentation available on the Moodle website. If you are responsible for the design or execution of online instruction, it may be worth your while to take a look and examine in depth the types of resources that Moodle can make available for you.

Moodle is available both for Windows and Mac systems running OS X, as well as systems running various flavors of Linux–basically any system that can support PHP, and requires a database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.

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Math got you down? Kids having problems with their homework? Are you having problems with their homework? Maybe you need to do some math drills.

Math Drills is about a zillion free math worksheets–over 6,000 in reality. If you can imagine it, they probably have a worksheet for it. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division to be sure. How about integers, decimals, and fractions? Base ten blocks, order of operations, geometry and algebra. They've even got themes for different holidays–who know that St. Patrick's Day had so many math tie-ins?

These worksheets are great for teachers to supplement classroom instruction; for parents to give their young students extra practice. Use them over the summer to keep from getting "rusty".

Worksheets come with instructions and (importantly) with answers! They are all available as .pdf documents, so anybody can use them regardless of the platform you're running.

All the worksheets are free to download and use as long as they are "…helping you or someone else learn."

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Mark Twain suggested that "everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." While WeatherSnitch can't do anything about the weather, it can keep you up-to-date with current conditions and forecast information.

WeatherSnitch is always available, running in your menubar, meaning that you lose no space on your desktop. By default, it displays current conditions for your selected location. You can configure it to add additional locations, so you can enjoy basking in the sun in San Diego while keeping track of the latest storm in Buffalo, where your brother is.

You can configure WeatherSnitch to specify how often it should update its information. You can cycle through your locations, so they will each appear in turn on your menubar. Click on the menubar to open the detail window for more info. With built-in links to weather.com (The Weather Channel's website), you can drill down even further for complete weather information for your selected locations.

Maybe you can't really do anything about the weather, but with WeatherSnitch you will certainly know all there is to know about it.

WeatherSnitch is a free Mac app that requires OS X 10.4.

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Radiology Anatomy Atlas is an interesting application that allows you to look inside the human body. The app is available with a set of illustrations taken from A Cross-Section Anatomy, a classic anatomy book. The images are labeled to identify the various muscles and other body structures highlighted in them. The labels link to a database of additional information about those selected items.

The author suggests starting-out by downloading the documentation to get a better understanding of the program.

While there is currently only one additional image to download, the developer anticipates adding additional images over time.

Radiology Anatomy Atlas is available for Macintosh.

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