Special thanks to Chris Stec from the American Canoe Association who brought to my attention a resource that has been out there for a while but I had no idea.

The American Canoe Association has a committee called Safety Education and Instruction. They look at trends and issues relating to instruction including insurance, course sanctioning and best practices.

They have a free monthly newsletter of the recent activities of the committee called SEI Focus.

Subscription information is on their website along with back issues. Here is a direct link to the latest issue.

What else is out there? Are you an Association holding out on telling us about your really cool resources, newsletters and gossip industry related news? Send us your info so I can spread it with the paddling community.

Reading a Slashdot today, I was directed to a really cool free e-book out there. Take a peek at "What's Up 2007 - 365 Days of Skywatching" It is a huge 410 page book that gives you a list of things to watch for in the night sky. The idea is that you just need to print off the page and head outside. It is written for amateur astronomers looking in the sky with their naked eye. Absolutely amazing.

I also added the book to our free teaching resources section for those that want to download it on our site.

Speaking of resources for skywatching, we have a huge pile of resources available. You are welcome to browse through them but need to register if you want to download them. It's free.

 

Over the past year or so, I have recently developed quite an interest in weather websites. There are so many out there all with their own, slightly different focus. Some sites show weather forecasts for the general public while others show the same data from a much more technical point of view for those with a weather background.

There are several great weather websites with a focus on education. One of them is the USA Today Newspaper. It has a great resource section with lots of animated resources that clearly show the interaction of different elements of weather.

Another great website that I really like can be found at Weather Underground. I like to think of this site as the hangout for weather geeks. There are many different areas of this site that I like but probably the most useful for (for kayakers) is the marine section. Weather Underground has tapped into the off shore marine buoy network from around the world and has presented the information in a really unique way that makes the information a more relevant then other marine weather sites. 

Click on the graphic on the right. It takes all the information collected from the buoy and displays it in a really interesting visual manor. It also allows you to view the weather in multiple views, either by the day, week or by the month.

The marine forecast page could also be a good teaching aid as you can easily show your students the interaction between temperature, wind, sea state and barometric pressure.

So maybe I was a little hungry I'm not sure. I decided to see what was out there in the way of cookbooks for camping. Well, I found four different cookbooks so I decided to make a whole new category specifically for camping skills.

View our new cooking skills category.