The app presents stories, descriptions, historical facts and images of over 700 historic places in Victoria, Québec and Halifax – three of Canada’s most popular and beautiful port cities. The GPS functionality literally puts travellers “on the map”, and suggests local points of interest in the vicinity. Visitors are invited to save their favourite sites and selections, and share them within their own social media community. It is also available for both Apple and Android devices.

Download Edifica for your next trip to these three cities, from the iTunes App Store or Google Play. For more updates coming out of the Canada’s Historic Places initiative, be sure to follow them on Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr.

To celebrate the “anniversary” of Pinterest’s fame, we’d like to highlight a few particularly enjoyable Canadian museum pinboards:

The Diefenbunker

It has a “Zombie Apocalypse” section. What more do you want? In the last few years, Canada’s Cold War Museum and underground bunker has upped its community profile in leaps and bounds, hosting a wide range of events and educational activities. Whether looking for info on Valentine’s events and movie nights, or simply to learn more about Canada’s involvement in the Cold War, the Bunker’s Pinterest board is fun, informative, quirky and nuclear.

The Bata Shoe Museum

Now here is a museum for which Pinterest was built. The Internet is crawling with footwear fashionastas and aficionados, and the Museum doesn’t disappoint with exciting selections from its collection, its podcast series, and from history.

Art Junction Gallery

This Whistler gallery is known for bringing a refreshing and personal left-coast feel to its pinboards. Their profile features details on Gallery Highlights and their Picture Framing services, but also a BC thirst for the outdoors from My Backyard and Mother Earth. Also thrown in for good measure is a set of Internet eccentricities that we also find Very Droll.

Devon Elliott presented an introduction of the much-anticipated 3D printer: how far they have come, and how accessible they currently are. While these types of technologies have been around for over a decade in the industrial design world in the form of stereolithography (SLA), they have only recently been modified to trickle down into mass market. There are plenty of opportunities for museums in this field: the creation of reproductions for sale or for comparative research purposes are two simple examples.

There’s also the software side of the 3D printing equation. Examples of thousands of objects have been created through freeware Trimble SketchUp (formerly Google SketchUp), and are available in their 3D Warehouse. The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) has created learning resources that demonstrate how simple the process of designing for 3D can be. Another great online outlet for the enthusiast is Thingiverse, which is an online community of 3D designers, and hosts a number of museum institutional members (check out the fantastic Museum Love in 3D category, hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago!).

Lastly, relatively accessible 3D scanning and capture solutions were demoed. While desktop laser scanners are on the market, they can be prohibitively expensive. 3D images can now be created right from the camera of your mobile phone through the use of apps such as Autodesk’s 123D Catch. For the gamer, the Xbox Kinect provides some fairly sophisticated image-based 3D capture, and museums have started incorporating these types of out-of-box tools in their exhibits and programming.

For Your Calendar: To mark International Museum Day, on May 16 at 7:00pm Western University in London, ON, will be presenting a free session entitled “Museums and the Future of 3D Printing and Imaging” at Museum London.

This exhibition promises to bring you an informative and historical perspective on the development of the Bytown Locks, which took place prior to the turn of the 19th century. With over two centuries in existence, it is no surprise that this waterway has been featured as part of The Google World Wonders Project (a platform which brings world heritage sites of the modern and ancient world online).

This exhibition has been developed for virtualmuseum.ca in partnership with the Heritage Conservation Research Collection of the Archives and Research Collections (ARC) at Carleton University and Ottawa’s Bytown Museum – two vital history-keepers in the Ottawa area located along the Rideau Canal itself.

In 1953, the state of Israel designated the evening of 27 Nisan  (falling on April 8 in 2013) through to the evening of April 8 as “Yom HaShoah”, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, to come together in solidarity to recall the actions and events of this period, and educate ourselves to prevent such unspeakable violence from reoccurring. This Yom HaShoah delivers particular resonance, as it marks the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which took place in Poland in 1943.

We invite you to commit some time through the month of April to visit some of these online resources to preserve the memory of the tragic loss of human life and of the strength embodied by Holocaust survivors:

The Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau & the Cybrary of the Holocaust host a virtual tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau internment camp used by Nazi forces in Poland during the Holocaust. Moreover, the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute has multiple online exhibits with interactive materials such as their exhibit Survivors: Testimonies of the Holocaust.

At home in Canada, we invite you to browse the website of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), which is an excellent resource for social justice learning materials and online exhibits.

Other institutions from NGOs, libraries and museums have taken up the essential task of making these stories available for all. A great starting point for listening is the Memory Project Archive of the Historica-Dominion Institute. Over the last decade, they have put together an impressive online portal of thousands of Veteran stories, with specific emphasis on those from the Korean War and the Second World War. Browse the collection online by Veteran, Conflict, or Theme, and immerse yourselves in the past lives of those who fought for Canada.

The Canadian War Museum has recently digitized its collection of interview transcripts with veterans of Canadian military operations, both past and present, and citizens affected on the home front. The interview transcripts are now available via the Military History Research Centre’s online database. The new content also includes links to interviews with Second World War and Korean War veterans as part of the Memory Project website.

Another of Canada’s premiere resources for digitized military oral history stories can be found at the website of the University of Victoria Libraries, British Columbia. The Library has digitized hundreds of military oral history interviews from various archival fonds found in its collection.

First Story is being developed in partnership with the Toronto Native Community History Project at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto and The Centre for Community Mapping at the University of Waterloo, with the support of Miiziwe Biik Aboriginal Employment and Training.

Download First Story at the Google Play Store
Keep up-to-date on developments on the First Story Blog
Like First Story on Facebook
Follow First Story on Twitter

Yes, you heard right! Astronauts are tweeting—or at least our Canadian astronaut is. The new commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield, is tweeting to the delight of many fans. In addition, he often posts images taken from space. With a following of over 500,000, you could even say he is widely read. Buzz Aldrin (who travelled in space with Neil Armstrong) and even Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) have had conversations with him.

From an educational standpoint, Chris Hadfield replied to many people who had questions about outer space or the living conditions at the Station. Ask your students to prepare some questions and post them. You never know… Also listen to the song he recorded live from outer space. It’s stellar!

Annick Deblois, M.A. Ed., EAO/OCT

One of our goals is to support teachers by shaping and enhancing immersion learning in Canada. Here are a few of the useful tools that we have developed:

ACPI directory – http://www.acpi.ca/ressources/repertoire-acpi

The ACPI has developed a virtual directory of effective educational resources targeted to the needs of immersion teachers. ACPI members were asked to suggest Internet destinations they consider useful and that currently meet their needs. These suggestions were organized into six different categories:

• Websites of immersion associations
• Websites offering lesson plans and online activities
• Reference websites for immersion teachers
• Discussion and training website for immersion teachers
• Websites created by immersion teachers
• Pre-literacy and introduction-to-reading websites
• Listening comprehension websites (e.g. reference framework for oral competencies)

You are invited not only to visit this directory often, as it is constantly growing, but also to add to it using the list of criteria established by the ACPI.

Chantal Bourbonnais
Chief Executive Officer
Association canadienne des professeurs d’immersion

For higher-level students, the Science at Work section provides career profiles to assist them in choosing a career path.

Visit Science.gc.ca to learn more about science in Canada.