Instructify

Put together cool looking models of geometric shapes you’ve never seen outside of D&D dice. Paper Models of Polyhedra is a collection of great 3D projects collected on a site whose name I can’t pronounce (korthalsaltes.com)–fitting, given the names of polyhedra like rhombicuboctahedron and icosicosidodecahedron.

“Polyhedra” sounds like the name of the scary, multi-headed serpent Odysseus fought in The Odyssey. For geometry students, wrapping their heads around a great icosahedron without a visual aid is probably just as frightening. These are great projects to help them visualize the shapes. Add some paint and markers and they can also make great art projects. A few of the pointier ones could conceivably be used as weapons – handy if you ever run across a six-headed polyhedra snake.–BILL FERRIS

Paper Models of Polyhedra
via The Crafty Teacher

When I was in school, I think the idea of the rubric was dismissed for the utilization of a simpler scale– ranging from “Great Job!” to “Please see me about this…” For the more progressive and discerning teachers of today’s educational systems, rubrics are used more widely and carefully. Teachers want to nurture their students’ creativity, certainly. Often times, you’ll assign creative projects so that students can show off their skills and demonstrate that they are learning all the while. But how do you properly grade such projects?

With rubrics, of course. Check out Rubistar, where you’ll be able to quickly find a rubric for your project based assignments in one of many examples available. You can also design your own using one of the easy templates. Rubistar offers a variety of customizable rubrics in an array of categories, including Oral Projects, Multimedia and Work Skills. Within each category, customizable rubrics range from Class Debate to Writing a Musical, so even if you have a project in mind but don’t know quite how to get it started, these will give you a base line.

Rubistar is free to use and is another great resource from 4Teachers.org, who also bring you QuizStar and TrackStar. Rubistar allows for you to integrate with both BlackBoard and Moodle, so you can directly interact with student via the web for your online course. If you’re totally unsure of what to do, the site offers a few tutorials to get you started. It’s tough to grade creativity, but rubrics will help give you a place to start. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Rubistar

It’s hard to explain the laws of the universe. After lunch, doubly so. But what can you do when students meet your lecture on neutrino mixing with yawns and glazed eyes?If you’re a physics teacher, you need to check out Symmetry magazine’s “Explain it in 60 Seconds” feature, which is exactly what it sounds like. Once per issue, “Explain it in 60 Seconds” takes difficult scientific concepts such as perceiving extra dimensions, particle acceleration, and quarks, and breaks them down into a short presentation that even an English major like me can understand. Plus, they’ve archived their “Explain it” installments on one easy page.

Symmetry is a magazine about particle physics published 10 times per year (particle physicists apparently use a metric calendar). You can subscribe for free, or read their content on the web at www.symmetrymag.org.

These “Explain it” articles are great for giving an espresso shot to your lesson plans, or for students struggling to wrap their heads around some pretty heady ideas. If only all science was this pithy. –BILL FERRIS

Explain it in 60 Seconds Archive
Symmetry

eSnips is a file sharing site that allows you to sign up, search, share and maybe even sell your own snippets of life. Whether it’s music, paintings, video, or poetry, you can upload up to 1 GB of, well, stuff. Most any file format is uploadable into easily created folders, which you can then make public, private, or specific to certain groups comprised of members of your choosing. You can have as many folders as you need, and then its up to you to promote your content.

The uploading process is easy with a tool bar, and you can then apply tags so other members can search. Personalization is easy and maybe a little fun, since you can constantly make changes and additions to your profile, including video introductions and personalized greetings. eSnips is a great resource for those just peeking around, too, because of all the user generated content and sharing, most of it is free to use. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

eSnips

It’s hard to manage time in a room full of people who want you to waste it. No student is going to remind you to “Get back to the lecture; we’ve had enough tangential dilly-dally.” Meanwhile, the temptation to let the Bill Nye video roll over into the next activity melts away those precious minutes of learn-time like fat in a Foreman Grill.

Michael Stelzner over at Copyblogger has posted some helpful time management tools in response to a survey of his readers. When asked “What keeps you from writing?” they overwhelmingly answered “time.” These three .pdf files easily carry over to any other activity.

Start with the Time Management Assessment, a checklist of useful habits ranging from the not-quite-revolutionary (“I carry a calculator, to do math faster”) to more legitimate items of efficacy (“I am not afraid to ask people for information that I need”). The Assessment also helps you tally up all those little black holes of work-time such as personal calls. Astonishingly, checking your inbox, watching YouTube and tweaking your Facebook profile aren’t listed—but do yourself a favor and add them as categories.

The next tool is a time log, a surprisingly helpful little worksheet for researching your own habits on a minute-by-minute basis. This could be ideal for maximizing class time. Now, with all you’ve gleaned, you can answer the penetrating self-scrutiny of the Time Management Questionnaire, which asks you why you think you are the way you are and gives you a big old box to write in. Stelzner found this at the “ethical work and business tools” website titled, ahem, businessballs.com. –PATRICK O’BOYLE

Time Management Tools

The problem with learning a foreign language is you have to learn all those words. That’s doubly-true in Latin–in a dead language, you can’t use the common tourist trick of simply talking English really loud (I SAID, WHERE IS THE BATHROOM?!?)

If you’re trying to teach young students some Latin vocabulary, you’ll want to see these free Latin Flash Cards from Classical Academic Press. The words are from their Latin for Children series, so you won’t be tackling anything too intimidating like Vergil. With three levels of difficulty and 32 chapters’ worth of words, these cards should keep your kids busy until the Roman Coliseum finally collapses to the ground. –BILL FERRIS

Latin Flash Cards

Quetzalcoatl. Rhinopharyngitis. Mnemosyne. If you tried to say these out loud you’d either have an aneurism or accidentally open a portal to the underworld. Fortunately, there’s a safe way to speak difficult words thanks to howjsay.com.

Howjsay.com (as in, “How do you say…”) is a free online pronunciation dictionary. Just type in a word and listen to its pronunciation. It’s ideal for students tackling a difficult reading assignment, and at the very least is much easier than the hieroglyphic pronunciation guide in written dictionaries. Now you can finally hear those unpronounceable terms from biology in English.

Mind you, that’s the Queen’s English, young squire. Howjsay.com pronounces all words in a stately British accent. This makes the pronunciations sound more official, as well as lets you have fun with limey diction. Be amazed as our friends across the pond transform “blueberry” into “BLOO-bree.” Through some sort of lingual alchemy, howjsay.com inserts a phantom vowel into “aluminum” (pronounced on the site as “a-loo-MIN-i-yum”). Howjsay.com also voices the “h” in “herbs.” Now I’m no longer confused by the Harry Potter movies when they’d need to find some mystery dudes named Herb to make a potion.

Still, English English is close enough for most words you’ll run into, and would it be so terrible for your slang-slinging students to speak the language of Shakespeare? So tonight after you take the lift up to your flat and eat your fish and chips in front of the telly, visit howjsay.com and pronounce like a pro. –BILL FERRIS
Howjsay.com

Music soothes the savage beast. Except for alligators. Apparently music riles them up.

NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports that the note B flat has a lot of crazy properties, including provoking alligators to roar. Play a B flat one octave below middle C in front of a Gator and it’ll think you’re a rival reptile. Which is great if you’re into picking fights with alligators.

Krulwich also says a certain black hole in the Perseus cluster emits the note B flat 57 octaves below middle C. That’s more bass than Barry White, people.

The NPR article has the audio piece linked to it, which also features a catchy song. Krulwich points out how B flat keeps popping up in unexpected places. Perhaps your music or physics students can ponder this one for awhile, or research some other musical phenomena. But if you see them walking into the wilderness with a tuba, you might want to call an ambulance just in case. –BILL FERRIS

Have You Heard About B Flat?

I love being told what to do. I love British accents. This makes VideoJug the perfect site for me. Part YouTube, part HowStuffWorks.com, VideoJug is a series of short videos for do-it-yourselfers. Topics covered include how to make a submarine out of a packet of ketchup, how to tie your shoelaces, and how to protect your computer in a storm.

Wondering how to make a t-shirt folding machine from a few pieces of cardboard and some tape? Has your elementary classroom inherited a bunny or corn snake that you need to care for? Want to learn how to compost? VideoJug gives simple instructions in a soothing British accent. If you’re having trouble getting started, you can even watch a video called “How to Use VideoJug,” but be warned, the upside-down narrator is a little disturbing. –ROSS WHITE

VideoJug

Why read when you can be read to? You’ll think Stephen Hawking is your personal assistant when you download ReadPlease, a free program that reads text on your computer to you in a (somewhat) realistic human voice.

A text-to-speech reader can be invaluable to you and your students. Struggling readers can follow along as ReadPlease highlights words as it speaks. Use ReadPlease as a proofreading tool–writing mistakes are never so glaring as when you hear them out loud. Have your English as a Second Language students use ReadPlease to help them comprehend a lesson, or download a Spanish voice to help you finally get through Don Quixote in the original Spanish. You can even multitask by having ReadPlease read your favorite blog (say, this one) to you while you spruce up your classroom.

ReadPlease has an adjustable speaking rate, and is fully compatible with all Microsoft voices. You can pay more for more voices, customizable pronunciations, and the ability to save text to an .mp3 file, but the free version should be useful enough for most users.

Unfortunately, ReadPlease won’t work with coveted voice fonts for Bobcat Goldthwait, Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher. –BILL FERRIS

ReadPlease

What is poop made of? What is this gunk in my ears? How do I make my stomach gurgle?The answers to these and other of life’s big questions can be found at The Yuckiest Site on the Internet, a site from the Discovery Channel that’s exactly what it sounds like, and I mean that in a good way.

Wendell, a cartoon worm/muckraking (literally) journalist is your guide through science’s disgusting underbelly. The Yuckiest Site has lots of great features such as “Your Gross & Cool Body” and “Roach World” that give kids the skinny about stuff they usually shouldn’t bring up in mixed company. One of the best aspects of the site is that it explains all the gross stuff in a scientific, demystifying manner that will hopefully spare you a year of listening to your students telling poop jokes. –BILL FERRIS

The Yuckiest Site on the Internet

Here are a few highlights from the first week of Instructify.

Maps of War
Condense centuries of hostility into ninety seconds. Maps of War features short Flash animations detailing military history.

Calc5
Your smug, battery devouring TI-85 just got some competition. Calc5, a free Web app, is an online graphing calculator.

PowerPointPalooza
Let’s face it– it takes a lot of visual aid to to really get your students focused on the American Revolution or the rise of Charlemagne. PowerPointPalooza is a site dedicated strictly to History lesson PowerPoint presentations.

Number2
Each of us must face the trials of standardized testing. When you sign up at Number2, you can access their SAT, ACT, Vocab, and GRE prep materials–great news if you’re thinking about a Masters or PhD.

ChipIn
Stop lugging candy bars to the office. Stop soliciting cookie dough and tubs of three different flavors of popcorn to your neighbors. ChipIn allows users to create an online widget to promote and monitor the target goal of their fundraiser.

Everybody hates email forwards. If you work at a school, every day you get bombarded with schmaltz like, “Little Joey will get money for his new lung if you just keep forwarding this email!” And the ever-popular, “Respond to this exciting investment opportunity!” Or spam like, “Whoever took all the dry-erase markers from the supply closet, please return them or face disciplinary action.” Worst of all, you can’t even read the content half the time because of those stupid formatting marks (>>) getting in the way.

That said, there are times when you might have useful information to forward to others. Do your e-pen-pal a favor and take out all the formatting with emailSTRIPPER. It’s a freeware program, which is good since it only does one thing. It does that thing well, though, and your emails will definitely be easier to read. Also, emailSTRIPPER fights formatting in the flyweight division, weighing in at a measly 171 KB–smaller than a lot of the emails you’ll be cleaning up.

All in all, emailSTRIPPER is a classy program, and you won’t have to wonder where to put the dollar bill. –BILL FERRIS

emailSTRIPPER

Here’s a frustrating fun challenge for you: can you list all 50 U.S. states in 10 minutes? Sure, you tell yourself, I’ve heard of the states, I’ve even been to some of ‘em. How hard can it be?

Point your browser to Ironic Sans and try it, smart guy. Then, when you’re kicking yourself because you forgot about Delaware and Idaho, let your geography students take a crack at it so they can further humiliate you.

And no, I’ve got no room to talk. It took me three tries before I could list them all, and I’m surprised it didn’t take more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to take a nap. All this humble pie has made me sleepy. –BILL FERRIS

50 States in 10 Minutes

Stop lugging candy bars to the office. Stop soliciting cookie dough and tubs of three different flavors of popcorn to your neighbors. Instead, let the dance team earn their own money for the upcoming Florida trip. And let them do it the tech-savvy way, with ChipIn.com.ChipIn.com allows users to create an online widget to promote and monitor the target goal of their fundraiser. The widget is a flash application that is easily posted to any web page and/or social network such as MySpace.com. A button on the widget allows visitors to contribute to your cause via PayPal or any major credit card. The funds are then transferred to you through PayPal, direct deposit, or check.

You can monitor your progress with the widget itself, or by managing your free account. The widget tracks how much of your goal you have received as well as the number of contributors and the end date of the fundraiser. ChipIn is free to use for goals of up to $9,999 USD. ChipIn.com makes fundraising easy and secure, with no chalky generic chocolate needed. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

ChipIn