Instructify

BY KEVIN HODGSON

If we really believe in the axiom of “learning by doing,” then teaching the concept of stopmotion moviemaking should begin with a program like Pivot Stickfigure Animator. Pivot is a freeware program for PCs (an alternative freeware program available for all platforms is called Stykz) that is deceptively simple to use. Users are given a stickfigure to start. By moving the figure and adjusting its various body parts, users create a stopmotion movie, frame by frame.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Here at Instructify, there are a few terms that make us sit up and pay attention. One of them is formative assessment. Just saying those two words can send Dr. Hobgood into an hour-long session on the importance and practical applications of formative assessment with an ear-to-ear smile the whole time. Recently, the advent of wireless clickers has provided a new tool for teachers to plan formative assessment strategies in the classroom. But like all new technologies, this equipment is somewhat expensive, and not practical to put in every classroom (especially with students’ propensity to walk out of classrooms with items).

Enter Microsoft’s rather oddly named application Mouse Mischief. Mouse Mischief is a program that takes an ordinary wired or wireless mouse and a PowerPoint presentation and turns it into an interactive teaching environment where teachers can engage in…wait for it…formative assessment of their students’ understanding and comprehension of the lesson plan or subject they are studying, allowing for the all important on-the-fly reevaluation of learning goals. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Like most children going through middle school and high school, I on occasion was shown one of those grainy black-and-white film on the day we had a sub. You know the ones, made during the good old days when the narrators talked in monotone, the music consisted of dramatic orchestra swells, and everyone wore suits or long dresses. Well, the good old days are back in full force with the government-funded FedFlix, an extensive archive of government-funded films made from back in the 1940s to the modern day.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Storybird opens up another door to publishing student written work in the form of picture books. The site, which technically is still in beta, is constructed around the idea of using illustrations and artwork for storytelling. The site has many, many collections of beautiful and interesting pictures available for use.

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

As most of you know very well, the day-to-day (not to mention hour-to-hour) tasks of a teacher can be hectic and time-consuming. In addition to actually teaching the warm little bodies in our classes, we have to grade papers, attend meetings, participate in school leadership committees, create bulletin boards, set up for labs, meet with students, plan future lessons, prepare for and administer tests…the list seems endless. As if that isn’t enough, we’re also faced with the critical task of communicating with parents about their students and the classroom in general. Thankfully, the internet has made this task a little less time-consuming for teachers and parents. This article will discuss the many tools that can help you design a website to keep parents in the loop.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Let me start off by saying InterroBang is both ambitious and potentially time-consuming, but it’s also a really cool idea. In a nutshell, InterroBang is a game that sends you on real-life missions of discovery and learning. Now I use the term mission because that’s what they refer to it as, but these really cover a wide range of activities, from basic — go somewhere you’ve never been before and observe who goes there and try and deduce why — to complex — go to both a supermarket and a farmers’ market and compare produce varieties and countries of origin. The more complex the mission, the more points you receive. You prove your team completed the mission by uploading pictures, video, and other documentation of your activities.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

I used to think that the definitive YouTube video about our universe was Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song, but now I have to admit the good people at the American Museum of Natural History have raised the bar with their “The Known Universe” video that, in the simplest of terms, is like a universe-sized version of Google Earth on steroids. It’s about seven minutes long and just kind of mind boggling in scope.

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

DIY screen printing on Instructables

Kick off your art class with this simple creativity test

New teacher? The New Teacher Zone is for you.

Punnett squares made easy with The Biology Project tutorial

E.gg Timer keeps you on schedule

Nifty facts about the sun

You don’t have to be clairvoyant to see Futures for Kids

Find instructions for everything you own at The Manuals

Show off your geography skills at Know Your States

Visualize your sugar intake at Sugar Stacks

BY BILL FERRIS

Energy use feels like an amorphous concept — unlike a fast-food transaction in which I know that five dollars gets me a third of a pound of artery-clogging goodness, it’s tough to visualize just how much leaving the living-room lights on all nights will cost me. General Electric has created a slick energy-awareness app that shows you how much each appliance costs you. Not just in terms of money, either. It shows kilowatt consumption, gasoline consumption, as well as showing how much use you can get out of a single kilowatt.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Now approaching its 200th show, the weekly Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast (and later podcast) is a wealth of interesting discussions and resources for teachers trying to navigate ways to use technology in the classroom. Hosts Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim invite guests each week to talk about an issue, or a technology tool, and then skillfully guide the discussions around teacher stories and reflections on the issue.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Several months ago, online writing collaboration tool EtherPad realized the dream of every 21st-century startup company — they got bought by Google. The search giant wanted to integrate EtherPad’s seamless multi-user collaboration into their much-ballyhooed Google Wave project. What they weren’t so interested in doing, however, was keeping EtherPad up and running, meaning that you can no longer create new documents at the EtherPad site.

If you’d planned a bunch of classroom writing activities based around EtherPad, fear not. Google has made the code base for EtherPad open source, meaning anybody can set up EtherPad on their own server for free. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

I am a bit of an oddity in that I enjoyed taking the SAT, ACT, and GRE a great deal. Perhaps I’m just wired for that kind of thing, or maybe I’m a bit of an educational sadist. For many people who aren’t me, though, these tests and the preparation they require causes a great deal of stress and anxiety. If you have students sporting a twitching eye and worn-out appearance due to preparing for a standardized test, perhaps it’s time they checked out VocabSushi.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

What’s a classroom if not a place for motivation? We want to encourage our students to reach inward and for their very best. We do this with words and actions, but sometimes, a well-placed poster or saying can help, too. Poster-Street is a site that offers up free downloads of inspirational posters that can be used in the classroom. The site is divided up among such themes as Teacher Posters, Kid Posters, and more.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Any time there is a good merger of the study of history and the use of technology, it’s a surefire Instructify post. This is the case with the site Show Me from our friends on the British Isle. Show Me is a cataloging of the best (and most fun) resources from museums and galleries across the United Kingdom. It’s a great idea — with as many museums and historical locations as Britain has, it’s a lot easier to collect all the kid-friendly content in one place rather than having to go to each museum’s web site.

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BY BILL FERRIS

It’s amazing how pervasive advertising is in our culture. There are the obvious means — billboards, commercials, newspaper inserts — as well as the not-so-obvious channels, like logos on clothing, branded shopping bags, giveaway products, and lots more. Though advertising isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s important for students to recognize it for what it is — a message designed to persuade them to give someone else their money. Admongo, an online game from the Federal Trade Commission, takes students on a journey into a virtual tower that’s crawling with advertisements. Along the way, the game teaches kids exactly how they’re being marketed to, and how to recognize it when it’s happening.

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