Instructify

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

If you’re like me, you remember with fondness long nights with your friends, your trusty plastic icosahedron, pencils and paper, and junk food. I’m talking about Dungeons and Dragons of course, the game many of us geeks played when we were younger and had a lot more time on our hands. At one point blamed by pundits and media outlets as a bad influence on children, D&D is now making inroads in libraries and touting its value toward teaching children problem solving, teamwork, and mathematics and reading skills.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Chemistry is one of those subjects that really can flourish with the addition of multimedia elements, but often requires you to blow the whole budget on supplies and equipment. What you end up with is a state-of-the-art chemistry lab in which you show instructional videos that run on those ancient 8mm projectors talking about the dawn of atomic power.

If this is the case in your neck of the woods, you should check out the Chemistry Educational Digital Library. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Nothing creeps me out like eye trauma. The very idea gives me the shakes. Being a humble English major, I was shocked to find out that some science-minded students actually have to dissect eyeballs. I personally have nothing against dissecting animals in class, but I’m having a hard time even writing about other people slicing open an eye. That’s why I’m relieved, kinda, that there’s a virtual eye dissection app online. (more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

If you watched the Super Bowl on television this year, you no doubt caught the Google commercial that told of a love story entirely through search queries. The ad, known as Parisian Love, was effective and I know I wondered — from a writing and teaching perspective — how it could be replicated. A complicated method of screencasting seemed to be the only thing I could think of, and that would be too cumbersome for most of us, including me. But Google has now made it simple to duplicate its efforts. The company launched a site called Google Search Story, which is an online digital story tool that allows users to create a shortened version of what we saw on the Parisian Love commercial.

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This article also appears on LEARN NC.

BY CINDY PHTHISIC

A class of second-graders sits and waves to themselves on screen as the teacher tests the web camera. The students know they’re about to make a video call using Skype. This is the first time they have ever heard about Skype, so they are not sure exactly what’s going to happen. For now, they are fascinated with just seeing themselves on screen.

While waiting for word on the other end, the teacher pulls up a Google Map to show the caller will be speaking to them from many miles away in Louisiana. A message flashes at the bottom of the screen indicating the caller is ready. Students go quiet as they hear their teacher place the call.

When a familiar face appears on screen, the students whisper, “I know him.” “He was at our school.” The caller is author Mike Artell, who had visited their school just a week earlier. The rambunctious group becomes still and silent. The students sit completely captivated.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

We’ve touched on several video-capture tools and web-based file-conversion tools. Sometimes, though, you just can’t wait for Zamzar to get around to converting your file. Or maybe the video you need to work with is a local file and your online video capture tool won’t work on a local file. In cases like this you need a local solution installed on your computer, and Any Video Converter Freeware is an excellent choice for the job.

A completely free application, AVCF can convert most of the industry-standard file formats and output just as many (although you can’t input .swf files — it only outputs them). AVCF includes some editing functionality like cropping videos and arranging video clips to make movies (think iMovie without all the Apple aesthetics).

Speaking of Apple, those of you who don’t like iMovie and want to try something else, there is a mac version of AVCF.

Any Video Converter Freeware

Related stuff:

Zamzar: The easy file converter with an exotic name

Video DownloadHelper helpfully helps you download helpful videos. Helpfully.

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

This particular item comes from a teacher in my daughter’s elementary school and it’s an excellent resource for reading comprehension and literacy. Tar Heel Reader is a free online repository of downloadable books. File formats vary somewhat but they’re all mainstream file types so there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues.

These books are also fully compatible with augmentative communication devices so this resource is much more valuable if you are working with mobility-impaired students, as reading tools are often hard to come by or there is a great lack of variety.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Back in my day, it was Math Blaster! for our classes’ Apple IIe, and I couldn’t get enough. But these days, client side games are so 2000s — everything is browser-based as internet connectivity becomes more universal. Such is the case with the free-to-play, internet-based CarrotSticks. It’s a pretty straightforward math game that rewards players for correctly answering mathematical questions of varying difficulties.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

I’m convinced there’s a songwriter in everyone, if only we could lower the hurdles for creating the music to go with our songs. Not everyone has the dedication to put in years of practice to learn an instrument well enough to write a song on it. But what if we could lower that hurdle a bit? JamStudio is one such site that makes the song composition easier by allowing users to choose an instrument loop, plug in basic chord changes, and listen to what they have created — all within seconds.

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BY BILL FERRIS

This video takes James May, the host of Britain’s Top Gear TV show, on board an American U2 spy plane as it flies to the very edge of outer space. You have to see the video to appreciate how high these things fly — a commercial air liner flying below them looks like a speck of dust, the curvature of the earth is plainly visible, and the pilot and host each have to wear space helmets just to stay alive, for crying out loud. This quote sums it up nicely: “If this were 1955 we’d be considered space men. Becasue at that height the atmosphere would kill you as certainly as space would. You’d just boil, you’d be dead in seconds.”

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

We all know how important it is to get our students interested in what’s going on in the world around them.  Some things that happen in the news are inherently interesting to students, but a lot of them are so outside a student’s scope of reality that engaging them can be difficult. And then, what if you as their teacher don’t really understand the intricacies of some of the current events? How are you supposed to get your students to care about what is happening when you can’t fully explain it? Well, with the World Savvy Monitor, you’ll get help with both of these issues.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

I grew up on LEGOs, probably a top-three toy during my childhood. It’s one of the things I purchased for my kids as soon as they were old enough. So when LEGO announced its 2010 LEGO Smart contest it was a sure fire Instructify post.

The contest is only for educators — in a contest involving toys, students aren’t eligible for some reason — and the contest kit is free of charge. The contest revolves around creative ways to use LEGOs in an educational capacity. Past winners have found interesting ways to integrate the aspects of LEGO toys into lesson plans and use them as teaching tools.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

If you have a microphone, even a cheap one, and access to the Internet, then you can create a simple podcast. Vocaroo is one such site designed for simplicity. You plug in a microphone, click the green button, and record your voice. Within seconds, you’re listening back. If you stumble over your words it’s easy enough to try a second or third take. Just click the “Record Again” button and the old file is gone, replaced by the newer one.

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

Watch the news from around the world LiveNewsCameras.com

What’s fair in fair use?

Whalenet: Providing you boatloads of information since 1993

Find rare words galore at The Phrontistery

Record your screen for free with ScreenCastle

Instructifeature: It’s getting hot in here! Teaching about climate change

Don’t get fingered for the crime: PBS DNA Fingerprinting

Toast your screencasts with ScreenToaster

Get better, chunkier search results with ChunkIt!

Don’t miss National Poetry Month at Poems Out Loud

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

It’s tough to put into words how cool Stellarium is for anyone teaching astronomy or anyone learning the subject. In a nutshell, Stellarium is a high-resolution personal planetarium you install on your computer. The fact that is 100% free launches it into the Google Earth realm of awesome free applications.

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