Instructify

Before August and the new school year hits, take one last look at these fleeting days of summer by revisiting the most popular posts of July.

Five great tools for math teachers

Top 5 citation applications

mySchoollog organizes students’ lives

Collaborate online in real time with EtherPad

Is your coffee a 60 or 78? Malcolm Gladwell speaks on differentiated instruction (kinda)

Beyond Wikipedia: Locating authoritative web resources for scientific research

Wolfram Mathworld: Making the math world slightly less frustrating

Too much texting? New York Times looks at increased student text messaging

Monday by the numbers – July 6

International Spy Museum unveils interactive spy game

BY BILL FERRIS

I think Twitter is a hoot. It’s a good way to keep track of what other educators are up to. Also, I love a witty one-liner, and 140 characters is the perfect format for that. There are plenty of reasons teachers should use Twitter.

What I want to know is whether Twitter is useful enough to teach with it? Do any of you use Twitter in your lesson plans? Any Twitter-based assignments? Again, I think Twitter is highly useful and fun for teachers, but “fun new app” isn’t always synonymous with “great teaching tool” (see Wordle). If you use Twitter in your teaching, please share your ideas in the comments. Oh, and follow us on Twitter.

Related stuff:

Professional development is just a “tweet” away

Follow LEARN NC/Instructify on Twitter

BY BILL FERRIS

Before all these fancy-shmancy video games, folk used to play games on slabs of cardboard. “Board games” we called ‘em, and I don’t recall people getting bored playing them.

Now, a few of you creative types as like as not have games you play in your class. You think to yourself, “This is a pretty fun game, and my students actually learn something. I wish I could play this on an actual game board instead of drawing it on the blackboard like a caveman.” Well, you can make your game idea a reality with The Game Crafter.

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BY BILL FERRIS

If you use the polling program Poll Everywhere, they’ve just added a few more features. Audience members can now add Tweets directly to your PowerPoint slides (you can still moderate them before displaying, of course). You can also collect donations for your fundraiser via MobileCause. And just in case you’re thinking of making the jump from the free (poll up to 30 students) option to a premium plan, they’ve recorded several short videos that explain PE’s advanced features.

Related stuff:

Use cell phones to poll your students

NCTIES — Tammy Worcester shows off what cell phones can do in class

BY NICK YINGLING

In the comments for Bill’s posting about the Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast, I mentioned that people who enjoyed that show might also enjoy Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. It’s a little dry and demands some attentive listening, but can be pretty rewarding if you find that you enjoy it.

Dan Carlin brings a really unusual perspective to looking at history. In one of his more sensational episodes, “History Under the Influence,” he explores how drugs and alcohol might have played a role in history. For example, have you ever considered the possibility that certain historical figures were tweaking on amphetamines or strung out on painkillers? How about asking who was drunk and possibly bi-polar? It definitely sounds irreverent, but remember that history is often written by the winners.

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BY BILL FERRIS

How far would your students go to save a lost pet? Would they infiltrate a nefarious underground factory that turns cuddly animals into food? Would they disguise themselves as monsters to outsmart gremlins, golems and yetis? Would they still go through all this rigmarole if they knew it was a way to practice their math skills?

Lure of the Labyrinth is an mathematics game from Maryland Public Television designed for middle-school pre-algebra students. The protagonist, a kid who’s just had his beloved pet abducted by Bigfoot and taken to a subterranean food mill, has to solve a series of math-based puzzles to get him back. The puzzles focus on proportions, ratios, fractions, and variables.

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BY BILL FERRIS

This week’s MBTN features ways to thwart cheaters in online courses, great web apps for elementary students, and bird evolution in action. More after the jump.

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Tuesday by the numbers
In this week’s by-the-numbers edition, read about the things you need to know before going 1:1, find the best free web-design tutorials, and read the heartwarming story about how the 112th element finally became a real boy got a name.

Manage your email like a pro with Postbox
I’ve been using Thunderbird for my email since 2006. It’s a highly functional, lightweight email option. This week, however, I made the switch to Postbox. Postbox is to Thunderbird as Super Mario is to Mario — bigger, stronger, and occasionally able to shoot fireballs. Well, two of those things, anyway.

Five great tools for math teachers
Some kids love math. Some see it as a form of torture. Most are somewhere in between. If you’d like to reach out to students in the last two groups, consider using these five tools in class some time to help bridge the gap. I don’t teach math, but if I was still a student, these five would get me excited about math class.

BY NICK YINGLING

According to the plot summary for Teen Wolf on Wikipedia, “High school student Scott Howard is seventeen years old, sick of being average and wishing he were special… Scott keeps undergoing changes and eventually undergoes a complete change and becomes a wolf… During the final basketball game, Scott refuses to “wolf out” and insists on winning the game on his own.”

Isn’t that heart-warming? The message is just be yourself!

So, what does Teen Wolf have to do with anything here? (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Some kids love math. Some see it as a form of torture. Most are somewhere in between. If you’d like to reach out to students in the last two groups, consider using these five tools in class some time to help bridge the gap. I don’t teach math, but if I was still a student, these five would get me excited about math class.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Check out these upcoming educational grants, as listed on Grant Wrangler.

Last minute:

Gladys Marinelli Coccia Awards — Deadline August 1
This award recognizes young (14 to 17-year-old) female social entrepreneurs who start enterprises for the common good. The winner receives $2,000 for the enterprise, travel, and access to social enterprise resources from Youth Service America.

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BY BILL FERRIS

I’ve been using Thunderbird for my email since 2006. It’s a highly functional, lightweight email option. This week, however, I made the switch to Postbox. Postbox is to Thunderbird as Super Mario is to Mario — bigger, stronger, and occasionally able to shoot fireballs. Well, two of those things, anyway.

Postbox takes the best features of Thunderbird (in fact, Postbox is built on Thunderbird’s open-source code by some ex-Mozilla personnel) and creates a much more robust email program. Frankly, Postbox bears as much resemblance to Gmail as Thunderbird — the conversation view and the big, fat “Archive” button are straight out of the Googleplex.

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BY BILL FERRIS

In this week’s by-the-numbers edition, read about the things you need to know before going 1:1, find the best free web-design tutorials, and read the heartwarming story about how the 112th element finally became a real boy got a name. More after the jump.

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After some server headaches, Instructify is now back online (obviously). Thanks to the intrepid LEARN NC tech staff for their hard work getting us up and running again.

Monday by the numbers
This week’s MBTN looks at inspiring TED videos for educators, how to sabotage your resume, saving for college, and free ebooks on personal finance.

Top 5 citation applications
Your students don’t know how lucky they are to have handy pieces of software to do the arduous work of building bibliographies for them. Here is Instructify’s list of the five best bibliography and citation applications out there. Pass these on to your students and spare them the agony of building bibliographies the hard way.

Too much texting? New York Times looks at increased student text messaging
What’s the latest technology threat to the health and well-being of the American teenager? Text messaging, according to The New York Times. Citing the Nielsen Company, it reports that “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008.” That number, they say, is double the average from the previous year.

Office Depot Star Teacher program offers discounts, free breakfast
Once August hits, it’s time to gird your loins and restock your supplies for the fall. Since you’ll be buying supplies anyway, you can save some bucks and eat some donuts at Office Depot during their Star Teacher Appreciation Week beginning in late July and early August (exact dates vary by location — see when Teacher Appreciation Week happens in your area).