July 2, 2009
“Discover Unseen Life on Earth” at Microbeworld
With all the press that H1N1 has gotten, you might think that all microbes are harmful. In fact, the vast majority of microbes are not at all harmful, and many are downright helpful. At Microbeworld, you can discover the abundant positives of microbes.
Get some perspective on the galaxy with these videos
If you were already feeling like a tiny speck of dust in the universe, these YouTube videos will show you just how tiny we are in the grand scheme of the universe. Each video sizes up Earth against the larger planets in the solar system, and the sun, which in turn gets dwarfed by the hypergiant stars in our galaxy.
Is your coffee a 60 or 78? Malcolm Gladwell speaks on differentiated instruction (kinda)
In this talk, Gladwell tells the story of Howard Moskowitz, who revolutionized the food industry by figuring out what people actually wanted, as opposed to what they said they wanted. In doing so, Gladwell also inadvertently makes a great case for differentiated instruction.
July 2, 2009
BY REBECCAH HAINES
It being pretty early in the summer, I know you’re not really thinking about developing that perfect lesson plan. However, in mid-September, when you’re frazzled from start of school madness, parents’ night, and you realize you don’t have a lesson for tomorrow, you’ll want to refer back to this website, Science with NOAA Research.
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July 1, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
“The difference between coffee at 60 and coffee at 78 [on a scale of zero to 100] is the difference between coffee that makes you wince and coffee that makes you deliriously happy.” -Malcolm Gladwell
I stumbled across this TED Talk from Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. In this talk, Gladwell tells the story of Howard Moskowitz, who revolutionized the food industry by figuring out what people actually wanted, as opposed to what they said they wanted. In doing so, Gladwell also inadvertently makes a great case for differentiated instruction.
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June 30, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Want to feel insignificant? No, you say? I’ll take that as a yes.
If you were already feeling like a tiny speck of dust in the universe, these YouTube1 videos will show you just how tiny we are in the grand scheme of the universe. Each video sizes up Earth against the larger planets in the solar system, and the sun, which in turn gets dwarfed by the hypergiant stars in our galaxy.
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June 29, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
This week’s MBTN features larger file attachments for Gmail users, following your favorite authors on Twitter, and how to shoot better video. Read more after the jump.
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June 29, 2009
BY REBECCAH HAINES
We’ve heard a lot about some renegade microbes in the news lately. The Swine Flu hysteria closed down many schools across the country and continues to be an issue worldwide. With all the press that H1N1 has gotten, you might think that all microbes are harmful. In fact, the vast majority of microbes are not at all harmful, and many are downright helpful. At Microbeworld, you can discover the abundant positives of microbes.
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June 26, 2009
Go beyond basic Spanish vocabulary at Speak Like a Spaniard
If you teach Spanish, you’re probably very familiar with sentences like, “Juan es muy guapo.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sort of phrase gets muy boring — both for you and for your students. We all know that every culture expresses itself with more color than such pedestrian sentences indicate. Help your students experience some of that color with the Speak Like a Spaniard blog, a compendium of idiomatic phrases, slang, and colloquial speech commonly used in Spain.
Color Scheme Designer improves the look of bulletin boards, art projects, websites
Picking a good color scheme is, for me, like calculus — an ordered, complex set of laws that I’ll never, ever understand. Thankfully I can use cheats like referring to the color wheel, or this slick online Color Scheme Designer.
Free course opportunity from Game Design Concepts
Game Design Concepts is an experimental class in game design and pedagogy being taught by Ian Schreiber, a game designer with several years in the video game industry. You had better act fast — the class starts Monday, June 29th.
Top 5 screencast tools
A screencast is a slick way to demonstrate lessons or concepts to your students. You can use screencasts in online courses, sub plans, or for visual storytelling assignments. In this advanced age we live in, you can make lots of high-quality screencasts with free web applications. Here are Instructify’s top 5 screencast tools.
Download free images for educators at Pics4Learning
Pics4Learning is another handy resource for teachers who need images to use in class that: 1) look cool, and 2) won’t get them in trouble for copyright violations.
June 26, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Keep your lit students reading this summer with The Book Seer, a handy online book-recommendation tool. The interface is simplicity itself — students enter the title and author of the last book they’ve read (or for better results, the last book they liked), and the heavily bearded, titular Book Seer suggests books by similar writers or pertaining to similar subjects. The recommendations come via Amazon and LibraryThing. Not that it matters, but as a fun bonus, the site’s favicon is a stylish handlebar mustache.
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June 25, 2009
BY NICK YINGLING
Computer science and programming language can both be pretty intimidating. In fact, they can be a little forbidding if you try to jump in feet first. The thing about computers, though, is that they aren’t going anywhere, and they’re just going to keep talking their crazy language. That’s why it’s great to have a little help to chip away at that mystique.
Google Code University is a great resource that computer science students and educators can use to stay current with tools and computing technology. Everything is Creative Commons, too, so it should be easy to work it into your classroom.
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June 25, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
A screencast is a slick way to demonstrate lessons or concepts to your students. You can use screencasts in online courses, sub plans, or for visual storytelling assignments. In this advanced age we live in, you can make lots of high-quality screencasts with free web applications. Below are Instructify’s top 5 screencast tools. All of them are free and easy to use.
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June 24, 2009
BY NICK YINGLING
Free course, y’all! (I write Southern now.) Game Design Concepts is an experimental class in game design and pedagogy being taught by Ian Schreiber, a game designer with several years in the video game industry. Registration in the course is free, but there is a required textbook. No problem there, right now it is listed for less than $20 on Amazon. You had better act fast — the class starts Monday, June 29th. Sorry for the short notice on this one.
The aim of this course isn’t to teach you the technical code work involved in designing a game, but rather the theoretical and conceptual design issues. You know, the kind of stuff that keeps a really good video game from ending up like Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge.
At the end of this course you should be familiar enough with the processes to start developing your own games. This can be particularly beneficial if you’re kicking around the idea of being a consultant for some game-based learning developers. At the very least, though, it will help a teacher in any capacity gain a more critical eye when evaluating games for their classroom.
Game Design Concepts
Related stuff:
Games aren’t just for fun, but for learning too
Stereotypes about video gamers debunked
TVO Kids - flashy, freaky, functional fun
Photo credit: striatic on Flickr.
June 23, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Pics4Learning is another handy resource for teachers who need images to use in class that: 1) look cool, and 2) won’t get them in trouble for copyright violations. According to the Pics4Learning site, “Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection.” No fuss, no muss, and most importantly, no cease-and-desist letters from angry copyright holders.
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June 23, 2009
BY EMILY JACK
If you teach Spanish, you’re probably very familiar with sentences like, “Juan es muy guapo.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sort of phrase gets muy boring — both for you and for your students. We all know that every culture expresses itself with more color than such pedestrian sentences indicate. Help your students experience some of that color with the Speak Like a Spaniard blog, a compendium of idiomatic phrases, slang, and colloquial speech commonly used in Spain.
Read the rest of this entry »
