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When you think about it, math should be incredibly engaging. We’re talking about the laws of reality here. Like, what if 5 + 5 did NOT equal 10? What if it just didn’t?

Ok, ok. Students tend to ponder such mind-blowing thoughts during other, um, recreational activities. Well, one thing that even a terrible math student like myself never forgot was the perfect pattern that the nine multiplication tables always followed.

Listverse.com explains: “hold both hands in front of your face - drop the finger that corresponds to the number you are multiplying (for example 9×3 - drop your third finger) - count the fingers before the dropped finger (in the case of 9×3 it is 2) then count the numbers after (in this case 7) - the answer is 27.”

Now everyone with an ounce of wonderment in them has to admit that on top of being useful, that’s just a cool thing. Listverse.com breaks down nine other math “tricks” (whoa…nine again…) Most of them are more complicated than this one, like a trick for multiplying big numbers by 11, or finding the square root of any number ending in 5.

It’s the little phenomena like these that excite the less math-savvy imagination. Check it out and remember to relish saying those four little words: “It works every time.” –PATRICK O’BOYLE

10 Easy Arithmetic Tricks

Do you sweat over your lecture notes after class wondering what they mean? Do ideas get lost in a constellation of bullet points? Then take note of a great way to…well, take notes.

Cornell Notes is a note-taking format that divides a piece of paper up into three memory-inducing sections. Draw a horizontal line about four inches from the bottom of the page. Then draw a vertical line about two inches from the left margin, running from the top down to the horizontal line.

When class begins, start jotting in the notes section, the fat column on the right. It’s wide enough for short sentences, but you’re advised to use sentence fragments or shorthand to save space. Eliminate as many words as you can without delving into gibberish. Leave space to add to ideas if necessary.

After class, put off meeting your buddies at the coffee shop for five minutes while you write the key concepts from each page of notes in the skinny, left-hand keyword column. For each main idea, write a word, a question, a picture, whatever works as a concise memory-jogger.

Almost done. Fill in the bottom section with a summary of all the important stuff on each page for easy reference. Voila! You’ve got a handy study guide. Stack the pages on top of one another so only the keyword columns show, and you’ve got flashcards to boot.

You can download free, printable PDF forms, and Word templates preformatted for Cornell Notes. They make a great gift for your glassy-eyed students in your final class period. Their newfound alertness from not poring over their disorganized hen scratch in the wee hours will be thanks enough for you. –BILL FERRIS

43 Folders

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The good news: once you’ve been approved, we’ll remember your email address and allow future comments without moderation. Not bad, eh? Eh?

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Rescue some technology from the trash and stretch your school’s supply budget with this cool project. Does your school have a busted laptop or a flat screen monitor bound for the dumpster? Hack-2-School, a site for design students, shows how you can combine the LCD screen with an old overhead projector to make a wall-filling video projector on the cheap (scroll down to get to the entry).

This project may be a little on the advanced side if you’re not of the handy persuasion - you’ll have to take the monitor apart to remove the LCD panel and cooling fan. But even if you haven’t picked up a screwdriver since high school wood shop, the video demonstration makes it look pretty doable. Just make sure you use it for educational purposes. –BILL FERRIS

Make Your Own Video Projector
via Hack-2-School (scroll down for post)

I can’t remember the last time I used a phone book for its intended purpose (though I do have two copies of the Yellow Pages currently raising my monitor to the appropriate height). When I need a phone number, I generally just Google it. This has worked great on most occasions, but I’m consistently foiled when I need a phone number and I’m not near a computer.

That ends today, though - I just programmed Google’s newest service, Google Voice Local Search, into my mobile phone’s speed dial. When I need to call a business - or find a business within a certain category—I just call Google’s toll-free number, 1-800-GOOG-411, say my city and state, then say the name or category of the business I want to call. Google Voice Local Search will give me a list of options, and then connect me for free. It’s the “free” part which sets Google’s service apart from my old pal, 411.

Google’s site says, “Google Voice Local Search is still in its experimental stage.” I’m doing a little experimenting of my own - with a new Chinese restaurant I found using this new service. –ROSS WHITE

Google Voice Local Search

Podcasts are forcing themselves into the mainstream, but most of the time, the choices of what to listen to look like a college radio station’s line-up. If you like podcasting, or the idea of podcasting, or maybe you just want to see what all the fuss is about, why not do something useful at the same time? EPN is the Education Podcast Network, and allows you to actually put some useful information into that brain of yours.

You may remember a poster that featured a famous cartoon orange cat with a book strapped to his head. A caption underneath read: “I’m learning by osmosis!” or something to that effect. Now you can do essentially the same thing by utilizing that expensive iPod for something other than Amy Winehouse’s gentle crooning. EPN allows users to download subscriptions of podcasts ranging from Language Arts to Math, and a bundle of helpful subscriptions specifically to help teachers. The site is easy to manage, and you’ll find something fun and useful no matter what subject you teach. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Education Podcast Network

I’ve always loved hearing the rich tones of people speaking their native tongue. Probably because my high school Spanish class was so full of students (myself included) torturing words and botching the accent. Back then, they equipped us with a cassette tape so we could hear the language spoken correctly.

It’s too bad sites like Mango weren’t around then. Mango is a site featuring several free language learning courses, each loaded with digital audio and flash animation that highlights the pronunciation of every word. Select from languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and German. There are also courses in English for speakers of these other languages, so it could be very helpful if you’re an ESL teacher. –BILL FERRIS

Mango

Ah, the works cited page. It’s not just a way to pad the page count on a term paper. It’s also that frustrating last bit you forgot to budget time for while printing your final essay ten minutes before class. But a free site called Son of Citation Machine makes citing sources as simple as filling out a Web form.

For many researchers, the works cited page consists of arcane citation formulas that vary by books, magazines, number of authors, day of the week, and the gross national product. Son of Citation Machine (which I’ll henceforth refer to as simply “Citation Machine” because “Son of Citation Machine” sounds like a 1940’s sci-fi flick) lets you select from the major citation styles - MLA, APA, and Chicago, with Turabian still in development - as well as from various print and electronic formats. Good news, since you’ve probably flung your dusty old MLA manual across the room because it doesn’t include a section on citing Web pages. After you enter the source’s information - title, author, publisher, and so on - Citation Machine spits out a lovely, fit-for-print citation you can copy and paste right into your document.

Citation Machine is a great time-saver if you’re working on a master’s or PhD, and essential for your students doing a report on Son of Dracula. It’s also fun to make a citation for that book idea you’ve been kicking around for years:

Ferris, Bill. Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose. 1. Chapel Hill, NC: LEARN NC, 2006.

So the next time you set your alarm for 5 a.m. the morning your thesis is due, remember: every source you cite through Citation Machine equals five extra minutes of sleep. –BILL FERRIS

Son of Citation Machine

Tired of getting nothing in your email but forwards of jokes your uncle sent or one of those no-longer hilarious LOL-cat pictures? Want to read something useful in your emails for a change? Sure you do, and what better email than some classic literature? DailyLit is quite possibly one of the easiest ways to cram as much literature into your technology fueled existence as you can muster. Literally. (Rimshot.)

Visit the site and search for your favorite novel– or better, one you’ve wanted to read for a while—then, type in your email address and zim-za-la-bim, you’re on your way to book club meetings in no time. The books are sent in installments, and you choose the rate at which the installments are sent to your inbox. You don’t even have to register unless you want to sign up on the forums, and after all, what fun are books if you can’t talk about them? There’s plenty to choose from here, but the library is rather limited to classic stories and novels by dead authors. But if you want to start reading again (because we all know you need to) this might be just the place to start. But you don’t have to take my word for it. (Cue Reading Rainbow sound.) –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

DailyLit

Your fancy metric system ain’t so hot now, huh, Europe? According to the Associated Press, the original prototype for the kilogram - a 118 year-old platinum and iridium alloy cylinder - is inexplicably 50 micrograms lighter, about the weight of a fingerprint. Is there any wonder now why America chose against such an inconsistent, arbitrary system of measurement in favor of ounces, gallons, and feet?

This makes for a great discussion with your science students about what the heck is going on here. In addition, what are the consequences of the official standard of metric mass going on a diet? How will it affect engineering, or the price of gold? There are lots of fun questions you can ask while you rejoice over not having to suffer the evils of the metric system. –BILL FERRIS

Official prototype of kilogram mysteriously losing weight via CNN.com

Even with the luxurious feature of T9 Text prediction on my cellphone, I still end up with garbled little memos in my message folder that read things like “buy act done” instead of “buy cat food.” Despite getting to adopt a new cat every week or so, this process is not the best way to keep notes of important deadlines or spur of the moment decisions. I could go out and buy a tape recorder or an iPhone, sure, but I have this expensive cell phone so I might as well take advantage of it, right?

Thank ye Internets for bringing us Jott.com, a simple-to-use Web application that allows you to use your phone to leave yourself and others voice messages which will be converted to an email or a text message and sent directly to whatever number or email address you like. The service is free and rather easy to use. Though it’s still in beta, it works just fine. Basically, you sign up with an email address, pop in your phone number, and then call an 866 (toll free) number to access the directory.

It’s all automated in a friendly lady’s voice who will guide you through the steps as easily as possible. The email is sent right away, and you have the option to listen to your recorded message in case anything gets lost in translation. Nonetheless, I was able to conveniently have in my inbox my note to self: “Remember to buy lunch of cat food because otherwise the cat will starve and you don’t want to buy new cat this week.”
jott.com

-JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

[UPDATE 1/14/09: Sadly, Jott will drop all their free services as of February 2, 2009.]

Through the window of your computer screen, Washington grows one step closer to transparency.

For people who can’t spend their weekends with C-SPAN, Opencongress.org provides bill-by-bill breakdown of what’s going down in the House and Senate. It also relays campaign contributions from the reputable Opensecrets.org. Other relevant congressional news goes up on the Congress Gossip Blog.

This is a great tool for showing students the legislative process inaction in action, not to mention a lunge at the unicorn of political accountability.

As ’08 candidates keep plowing down the campaign trail, prepare to hear a lot of impassioned generalities like “I think we really need to think about how we think about education in this country!”

Next year, hopefully, websites like Opencongress.org will let us know if we’re still just thinking about it. -PATRICK O’BOYLE

A wiki as easy to make as a peanut butter sandwich? Maybe I take my peanut butter sandwiches too seriously, but doing them right takes patience, a firm hand and a steady knife. A wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich first sounded to me like building a car as light as an elephant.

I was wrong.

PB Wiki is a free wiki you can set up for your class or yourself in about ten seconds. This may be the easiest way yet to create a collaborative class project. Have your students write a group report that links to other sections. Or use a wiki to organize various units of the class, creating a cross-referencing, online textbook.

They’ve got lots of WYSIWYG tools to walk you through the process of setting the thing up. Add pictures, upload files, the whole nine yards. All that without sticking to the roof of your mouth. –BILL FERRIS

In our rush to infuse our lesson plans with tools like blogs, wikis, and other fun words that didn’t exist until a couple years ago, we must remind ourselves this stuff is still new to a lot of teachers. And most importantly, it’s new to a lot of parents and administrators who like things the way they are, thank you very much. Before we go storming the Bastille and demanding schools tear down the firewalls, we must arm ourselves with arguments as to why it’s a good idea.

In the Raleigh News & Observer article, “Embracing E-Writing,” Bradley A. Hammer, an instructor at Duke University (a fact which we UNC folks will try to ignore) states that writing for the Web has distinct advantages over the traditional research paper:

“[Students] defend their analyses and argue with real purpose because they are forced to be conscious of an audience beyond the limited scope of the instructor…Often they’re shocked to discover that effective academic writing is more complex than adherence to grammatical rules. They’re arguing, debating and, yes, writing about real-world issues in a context that the traditional classroom fails to offer.”

If you read this blog, Hammer’s article is probably preaching to the choir. But remember, it’s not written for you. It’s for the people who look at you funny for trying to do things differently. Or for the PTA member who yells blogs would open the door to Internet predators and porn. To overcome the Luddites, it’s vital to show them how and why Web 2.0 tools are an improvement over the status quo, and not just the latest tech toys. –BILL FERRIS

Embracing E-Writing

Here’s a little recap for the week, friends.

The Yuckiest Site on The Internet - The site itself is quite nice, it’s just the subject matter that’s yucky. Luckily, we love this sort of stuff.

Howjsay.com - Stop talking with those marbles in your mouth! No marbles? Then check out this site and say things the way you are supposed to.

Time Management Tools - Take 32.7 seconds and read this article, then spend the rest of your minute folding a paper crane or contemplating what to have for dinner. You earned it.

eSnips - Share your stuff online with plenty of storage space. Make new friends and share their stuff, too. Stuff!

Rubistar - Alas, this is not an online star-shaped Rubik’s cube. It’s a great rubric creation tool, though.