Instructify

The Centsables fight against financial irresponsibility
The Centsables is an interactive training tool for explaining and teaching students about economic and monetary responsibility. The premise revolves around a group of financial superheroes who explain healthy economic principles in a campy comic-book format that is engaging and fun for young students.

Living Galapagos explores balance between man and nature
In order to document and present the challenges the Galapagos islands face, a website call Living Galapagos has been created with a wealth of information about these islands’ current situation.

Talk about gaming and learning in the Learning Games Network Teacher PLC
Are you passionate about gaming as a valid form of education? You’re not alone. The Learning Games Network wants to put you in touch with other like-minded educators through their Teachers Professional Learning Community.

Win education travel fellowships from EarthWatch
EarthWatch has created fellowships for students, teachers, conservation professionals, and corporate employees to participate in research expeditions worldwide.

Net Cetera: A handy cybersafety booklet from the FTC
I don’t know what I did to get on the Federal Trade Commission’s radar, but I’ve gotten a bunch of email from them lately. So far, it’s all been good — the first email was for YouAreHere, a cool site that tells kids how to be savvy consumers. Now they’ve sent me Net Cetera, a handy guide for good online citizenship.

BY BILL FERRIS

I don’t know what I did to get on the Federal Trade Commission’s radar, but I’ve gotten a bunch of email from them lately. So far, it’s all been good — the first email was for YouAreHere, a cool site that tells kids how to be savvy consumers. Now they’ve sent me Net Cetera, a handy guide for good online citizenship.

Net Cetera deals with the benefits and hazards of P2P file sharing, privacy issues, identity theft, phishing, spamming, cyberbullying, sexting, and other cleverly named vices unique to the internet. (more…)

BY DAVID BARGER

As Mark Twain famously remarked, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” In today’s world of war and unrest, it is not hard to see that we all could use a little less of these things in our lives. Given the current economic climate, though, overseas travel is probably not making the cut in most family budgets. Although our wallets might be getting smaller, the world is not. It’s as big and wonderful as it has always been.

So how do we get out there and enjoy it? The folks at the EarthWatch Institute have a good idea. They have created fellowships for students, teachers, conservation professionals, and corporate employees to participate in research expeditions worldwide.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Are you passionate about gaming as a valid form of education? You’re not alone. The Learning Games Network wants to put you in touch with other like-minded educators through their Teachers Professional Learning Community:

“The PLC will provide a forum for teachers to share experiences and ideas for using existing games in the classroom, as well as discuss ideas and concepts for where games could fill gaps and niches in curricula. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origins of Species 150 years ago, the Galapagos Islands have always been of particular interests to scientist and environmentalist alike. Back then the diversity of species as they evolved in relative isolation formed some of the basis of Darwin’s ground-breaking and controversial scientific hypothesis.

Fast forward a century and a half and a new debate surrounds the famous archipelago and its renowned environmental treasure. Like the rest of the planet, the Galapagos is trying to deal with an ever increasing human population in relationship to a finite amount of resources locally available; it’s a delicate balancing act in an area with a fragile ecosystem.

In order to document and present the challenges the islands face, a website call Living Galapagos has been created with a wealth of information about the current situation in the Galapagos. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Understanding how to budget your resources and not spend more that you take in can help children create a foundation for success later in life. Unfortunately, the subject often seems boring and intangible for students — graphs of production curves, widgets, butter versus guns, the law of diminishing returns…I remember them all from my economics class, but at the time, they seemed to have no relevance to my personal situation.

But here we have The Centsables, an interactive training tool for explaining and teaching students about economic and monetary responsibility. The premise revolves around a group of financial superheroes, The Centsables, who explain healthy economic principles in a campy comic-book format that is engaging and fun for young students. (more…)

This periodic table includes elements and their real-world applications
This version of hte periodic table helps students not only learn the different elements, but then connect them to real-world uses and even explore the method in which the element is applied.

Keep track of climate issues at Climate 1-Stop
Weather and climate conditions change constantly. Whether it’s global warming, el niño/la niña, or some other event causing climatic change (volcanic eruptions, for example), it would be helpful to find a reliable resource that covers the range of climate concerns and topics and synthesizes information from a variety of sources. This is exactly what Climate 1-Stop offers.

NASA eClips shows videos of science in action
Want to see how NASA made Michael Phelps’ swim suit so fast? Wonder what astronauts do to stay in shape in space? How about checking out if anybody’s at home on Mars? NASA eClips explores these and lots of other areas, churning out new videos each week during the school year.

Abe Lincoln, this is your life: The Lincoln Log
The Lincoln Log has nothing to do with those fun wooden playsets you can build houses with. Instead, it’s “A daily chronology of the life of Abraham Lincoln.” Seeing as how Lincoln lived long before people could record the daily minutiae of their lives in blogs, the staff of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln combed through a lot of historical documents in order to find out what Honest Abe was up to on any particular day.

BY BILL FERRIS

The Lincoln Log has nothing to do with those fun wooden playsets you can build houses with. Instead, it’s “A daily chronology of the life of Abraham Lincoln.” Seeing as how Lincoln lived long before people could record the daily minutiae of their lives in blogs, the staff of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln combed through a lot of historical documents in order to find out what Honest Abe was up to on any particular day. In addition to a keyword search, you can search by date, year, or see what happened today in Lincoln’s life.

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BY BILL FERRIS

NASA eClips presents lots of great videos that STEM teachers in any grade level will find useful. Through several examples of applied science and math, kids will get a sense of the cool stuff they can do by studying the sciences.

Want to see how NASA made Michael Phelps’ swim suit so fast? Wonder what astronauts do to stay in shape in space? How about checking out if anybody’s at home on Mars? NASA eClips explores these and lots of other areas, churning out new videos each week during the school year. (more…)

Here’s what we were up to at this time last year, in no particular order:

How to cope when your school blocks YouTube

Instructifeature: A K-W-L chart for the 21st century using VoiceThread

Go where no classroom has gone before with The Water Rocket Achievement World Record Association

Professional development is just a “tweet” away

Learn about hibernation

Prepare for frog dissections online with Froguts

Do a writing warm-up with One Two Fiver

Rustle up some money with Grant Wrangler

Learn science facts in small chunks Bytesize Science

Keep track of presidential campaign promises with the Obameter

BY DAVID BARGER

If you live anywhere near me, you have probably heard the following during the last few weeks, “Yikes, is it cold out!”  A month or so earlier, you probably heard “Yikes, is it wet out!”  Preceded by “Yikes, is it  hot and dry…” Okay, you get the picture.

Weather and climate conditions change constantly. Whether it’s global warming, el niño/la niña, or some other event causing climatic change (volcanic eruptions, for example), it would be helpful to find a reliable resource that covers the range of climate concerns and topics and synthesizes information from a variety of sources. This is exactly what Climate 1-Stop offers.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

I clearly remember (not in a good way) my 8^th grade science teacher making us memorize the periodic table of the elements. We each had to present an element as well as a model in front of the class, I had mendelevium, and at the time it seemed one of the more pointless things we had to memorize that year. There was no practical application besides things like gold and iron which everyone knew about…what the heck is terbium and why should a twelve year old care? I finished the project, passed the test, and then like most rote memorized items with no practical application, the knowledge faded quickly.

Well, if Dr. Kazuk had given us this excellent version of the periodic table, perhaps we might have considered the memorization a little more applicable to our everyday lives. (more…)

Make better animated movies with Xtranormal State
Last year we reviewed Xtranormal Text-to-Movie, a free computer animation app that lets you create your own cartoons. The folks at Xtranormal have made an even more impressive program called State, which adds characters who can walk around, advanced camera movement, movies with multiple scenes, and the ability to record your own voiceovers to your movies for free.

See, hear historic congressional moments with the Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives
The Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives shows you the legislative branch through the eyes of the people who were there during several important historical periods.

FreePoverty donates drinking water based on your geography knowledge
Do you enjoy playing video games, learning geography, and helping those less fortunate, not necessarily in that order? The online game FreePoverty rewards your knowledge of geography by donating 10 cups of water to thirsty people around the world for every city or landmark you can correctly place on a world map.

Free lesson planning from the Red Cross for disaster preparation
In light of the recent earthquake in Haiti, it seems appropriate to offer up tools for teaching about the possibilities of natural disasters and preparations that can be done locally in our schools which may better prepare students for coping with the situation should it occur. To that end, the Red Cross has assembled their Masters of Disaster curriculum focused for students K-8.

Learn about free speech in books in Libraries and the First Amendment
The McCormick Freedom Project is committed to helping American citizens understand their First Amendment rights. The Libraries and the First Amendment exhibit has been created to make us think critically about our freedom of speech and it shows how the library is one of the first lines of defense in making sure that materials, however controversial, should be available to the American public.

BY LESLEY RICHARDSON

The McCormick Freedom Project is committed to helping American citizens understand their First Amendment rights. The Libraries and the First Amendment exhibit has been created to make us think critically about our freedom of speech and it shows how the library is one of the first lines of defense in making sure that materials, however controversial, should be available to the American public. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

In light of the recent earthquake in Haiti, it seems appropriate to offer up tools for teaching about the possibilities of natural disasters and preparations that can be done locally in our schools which may better prepare students for coping with the situation should it occur. To that end, the Red Cross has assembled their Masters of Disaster curriculum focused for students K-8.

(more…)