Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

During this holiday season, we at Instructify hope you put down your computer to spend time with loved ones, drink some egg nog, and recharge your batteries for next semester. To help you do this, we’ll be taking a break for the remainder of the year.

But don’t fret, we’ll be back in full force January 4. Until then, cough all the chalk dust out of your lungs and relax.

Related stuff:

NORAD lets kids track Santa in Google Earth

Photo credit: krisdecurtis on flickr.com

BY BILL FERRIS

It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Your elementary students can follow Santa Claus’ flight path on Christmas Eve through the magic of Google Earth.

The jolly elves at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (that’s NORAD to you and me) have been tracking Santa using a combination of satellites, radar, Santa Cams, and fighter jets (!) for years. Now they’ve joined forces with Google to better update kids on Santa’s whereabouts as he flies around the world.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

YouAreHere, a site from the Federal Trade Commission, teaches 5th through 8th graders about being smart consumers. Your students will get to hang out at a virtual mall, learning lessons about stuff like scams, supply and demand, competition, identity theft, and misleading advertising in each store.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

I’ve been a dedicated Firefox user for years because of its wondrous catalog of extensions. I like Google Chrome, too — from its load time to how it accesses pages, everything about it is fast, fast, fast. But I never made the full-time switch because it didn’t have all my geeky extensions.

In their ongoing bid for world domination Google has rectified this deficiency, opening up its sprawling new extensions gallery. To use them you’ll have to install the new beta version of the browser (don’t be afraid of using a beta version in this case, however — “beta” is Googlespeak for “software”).

(more…)

Teach history with these comic collections
Before political cartoons devolved into crude drawings depicting a guy wearing a T-shirt labeled “TAXES” and smashing something with a hammer, they were elaborately drawn works of art, and often featured more text than some of today’s news stories.

Take your class to the Lincoln Memorial Interactive
The site features an assortment of panoramic photos from all over the monument, including the engraved Gettysburg Address and the view from outside the monument. It also features reflections from the Lincoln Memorial’s knowledgeable staff — they share their thoughts on Lincoln’s presidency, legacy, the Civil War, and the final day of his life.

Learn about penguins and the environment at Penguinscience
Penguinscience has lots of things to do, particularly in their education section. In addition to reading up on Adelie penguins and their adaptations to a changing climate, students can read journals of the researchers,  watch time-lapse animations of the penguins, or make a penguin cartoon.

Update, monitor Facebook and Twitter accounts with Brizzly
If you use either or both Facebook and Twitter to establish a professional-learning community, communicate with students, or even just use them for recreation, Brizzly makes it much easier.

BY BILL FERRIS

In the great social network battle royal, Facebook and Twitter have more or less thrown competitors like Friendster and MySpace over the top rope. But even with only two networks for me to monitor, Facebook and Twitter already provide more status updates and @replies than I can keep up with. If only there was some fancy application to help me out.

After reading a setup as obvious as the one above, you’ve by now guessed that I’m about to tell you about such an app. Brizzly funnels your feeds into one location, and lets you post, update, add pictures, and do a bunch of other stuff with your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Do you remember the penguin renaissance of 2005-2007 when every movie was about antarctic fowl going surfing, doing a dance, or marching around? I think I found myself rooting for the leopard seal after a while.

Penguins’ overexposure has subsided since then, as has my irritation. That means I’m finally in a good enough frame of mind to look at Penguinscience, a science-education site that introduces students to Adelie penguins.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

I’ve only been to Washington, D.C. once in my life. It was a great trip, and I loved seeing so much American history up-close. The spot that made the greatest impression on me was the Lincoln Memorial, not only because of Lincoln’s legacy, but also because of how impressive the monument itself is. It’s hard to truly appreciate the monument without seeing it and its gigantic statue in person. The Lincoln Memorial Interactive website, however, comes close.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Today we’ve got two resources dealing with comics for you:

Before political cartoons devolved into crude drawings depicting a guy wearing a T-shirt labeled “TAXES” and smashing something with a hammer, they were elaborately drawn works of art, and often featured more text than some of today’s news stories. The Hale Scrapbook from The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library maintains an extensive collection of editorial cartoons from Gregorian England. Your students will be able to see the issues of the era as seen through the lenses of the doodlers of the day. Some seem kinda weird. Others show that times really haven’t changed that much.

(more…)

Find kid-friendly videos at ZuiTube
ZuiTube bills itself as “the largest collection of online videos for kids.” Just like on YouTube, you can search specific topics, or browse categories. Unlike YouTube, when you search for Uranus, you only come up with legitimate, kid-appropriate videos.

Try yWriter for long writing projects
What differentiates yWriter from other word processors is that it makes it easy to divide your writing into individual scenes and chapters, making them accessible without having to open multiple files. You can reorder scenes and chapters just by dragging and dropping. When you’ve got your narrative the way you want it, you can export the whole thing to RTF or TXT format, readable in any word processor.

See the history of aviation at NASA’s Lessons of a Widowmaker (and Other Aircraft)
NASA has tested some cool aircraft in its day, including the U2 spyplane, the Black Widow, and the Northrup HL-10, a wingless (!) aircraft that was an early ancestor of the modern space shuttle and weighed about as much as a Cadillac Escalade.

Build an online portfolio with Carbonmade
Back in my day, building a portfolio meant shelling out a few bucks for a three-ring binder and those plastic pageholders. Carbonmade takes the hassle out of the portfolio process by letting you or your students set up free, simple portfolios online.

BY BILL FERRIS

You can use portfolios for everything from exhibiting student projects to creating a teaching portfolio. Back in my day, though, building a portfolio meant shelling out a few bucks for a three-ring binder and those plastic pageholders — and then I had to spend way more time than I budgeted for stuffing and organizing my work in the binder. Carbonmade takes the hassle out of the portfolio process by letting you or your students set up free, simple portfolios online.

(more…)

Think the third day of the new month is too late to look back at the best posts of last month? Think again. Here are some of the best posts from November 2009.

Learn to type at TypingWeb

60 Second Recap summarizes classic literature

Map out your classroom with Classroom Architect

Get Library of Congress videos on iTunesU

Download chemistry podcasts at ChemPod

Create and share rubrics online with iRubric

Video DownloadHelper helpfully helps you download helpful videos. Helpfully.

Google offers scholarships for minority and special-needs students

Free, unlimited text messages for iPhone or iPod Touch users

Build Flash-based websites for free with Wix

BY BILL FERRIS

Here in North Carolina, we pride ourselves on being the home of the Wright Brothers’ first flight (you hear that, Ohio?) So naturally, we at Instructify were interested in the experimental aircraft showcased on Lessons of a Widowmaker (and Other Aircraft), a terrific multimedia site from NASA.

NASA has tested some cool aircraft in its day, including the U2 spyplane, the Black Widow, and the Northrup HL-10, a wingless (!) aircraft that was an early ancestor of the modern space shuttle and weighed about as much as a Cadillac Escalade. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

As you know, November was National Novel Writing Month. I decided to participate this year, and while I didn’t reach 50,000 words in 30 days (I made it to 35,000), I still plan on finishing the book in the next week or two.

To write this 1.5-month masterpiece, I used yWriter, a free piece of software developed by author and programmer Simon Haynes, who wanted a program that facilitated writing long pieces of fiction. While yWriter is geared toward novelists, it’s applicable to any long-form writing project.

(more…)