Instructify

Captain’s Blog, Stardate 51908.5: We have… encountered strange… applications! Ensign Redshirt has beamed down to the surface to… investigate.

Want to get kids interested in space? Here are two sites that should be helpful.

SETI@home is a distributed computing effort from University of California, Berkeley. SETI stands for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and is a great way to engage a student’s sense of scientific wonder. SETI collects observational radio transmission data—A LOT of data—and distributes it to various personal computers for analysis. The program runs as a screen saver or by taking advantage of otherwise unused processor power, without interrupting your computer’s normal operations. If your class should happen to find alien life, you just remember who sent you.

First Google Earth allowed you to look down on our planet, now WorldWide Telescope lets you take a look in the opposite direction. Drawing from the Hubble Telescope and several terrestrial telescopes, your students can pan and zoom wherever the data will allow. It’s definitely fun to just zip around and explore on your own (which is one reason it’s taken me so long to write this post). The quality of the images and variety of views through different filters, spectrums, etc. are also a great boost towards its usability in the classroom. – NICK YINGLING

Captain’s Blog, Supplemental: If you a trying to come up with a writing… style!… that looks like the way William Shatner acts… I would use a lot of… ellipses. Also, the Shatner schtick is a little… old-hat and derivative.

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One of These Days…Bang! Zoom! To Google Moon!

Welcome to the Carnival of Education Career Fair! We’ve retracted the bleachers and set up the booths on the gymnasium floor so these brave teachers can see what they might be doing if they weren’t teaching (perish the thought).

Motivational Speaker
Mr. D at I Want to Teach Forever agreed to sport a freaking mohawk as long as his students worked hard, which was about three weeks. Sadly, his motivational experiment has concluded. Long live the mohawk.

Camp Counselor
As a kid, my wife got to go to Space Camp and Marine Science Camp. Had Tisha Kulak and American Consumer News been around back then to point out how to save money on tuition to summer research camps, I might’ve been able to go, too.

Productivity Consultant
Instructify-favorite studenthacks.org has some great tips for students who want to learn how to write a research paper.

Pro Athletes
The Jose Vilson uses Derek Jeter as an example of how nurturing students’ talent and leadership ability early on can reap great results.

And over at Jay P. Greene’s Blog, the author talks about the importance of identifying students’ talents, whether they’re a left tackle or potential honor student.

Economist
ESL teacher Larry Ferlazzo knows that money is the international language.

Translator
Melissa B. at The Scholastic Scribe provides a handy-dandy English-to-Eduspeak dictionary.

Director
Mathew Needleman at Creating Lifelong Learners takes a proactive approach to managing disruptive students during a class movie project.

Advice Columnist
Let’s Play Math! has some advice on teaching math to a struggling student.

Detective
OverwhelmedMom gets to the bottom of problems that gifted students face.

Investigative Reporters
The proprietor of a voice from the middle knows the means to discovery is asking the right questions.

In addition, eduwonkette responds to a Wall Street Journal article about the criteria used to evaluate teachers.

Game Developer
Alvaro at SharpBrains shares a few games to stimulate your temporal lobe.

Diplomat
Coach Brown tries to reach an understanding with hostile parents.

Nutritionists
At Homework. Dinner. Life. Angela points out that good nutrition habits ought to be maintained year-round, not just a few days before the test.

Meanwhile, Chanman at Buckhorn Road says all that caffeine students drink can’t be good for them.

Cartographer
Dan Callahan, a.k.a. geek.teacher, harnesses Google Maps for a lesson in community mapping.

Librarian
@EDU takes the work out of student research by pointing them toward Google Alerts.

Politician
Jane Artabasy at Golden Apple Teaching Excellence Network unloads the loaded word of the day, “elitism,” showing it’s nothing to be frightened of - especially in schools.

The folks at Golden Apple also mull over the differences in races and learning styles.

Astronaut
HowDoWhy asks, what is a solar system, anyway? Furthermore, just how big is ours?

Human Resources Specialist
Over at Right on the Left Coast, Darren discusses the sticky situation of a teacher dating an 18-year-old student at a different school.

Mentors
Allison Jones at Entry Level Living wants to revamp the way young people think about leadership.

The folks at the Efficient Leadership Files have some ideas on that as well.

Statistician
Lead from the Start crunches the numbers about the disconnect between teachers and EdSector.

Strategist
Seth Pearce at NYC Students Blog has an intriguing idea on how to overcome schools’ non-stop test preparation.

Lobbyist
PZ Meyers at Pharyngula has some news about a disturbing bill in the Oklahoma legislature regarding religion in schools.

Road Grader
As the great homework debate rages on, Shabam School makes a good case for grading homework.

Kindergarten Teacher (sorry, I couldn’t come up with anything else)
Kiri at Elbows, Knees, Dreams shares her thoughts (and asks for others’ opinions) about early entrance to Kindergarten.

Photo credit: ou_ags on flickr

Want to check out where, exactly, the eagle had landed? From the folks who brought you Google Earth (namely Google) comes Google Moon. Now your students can explore the Sea of Tranquility from their desks.

Google Moon works a lot like Google Maps and Google Earth except, you know, on the moon. In addition to satellite imagery, Google Moon has facts from all six manned missions to the moon, including samples of moon rocks, descriptions of gravity experiments, and a few words about moonquakes. Students can also get closeup views of the lunar surface, and a little background information on the brave astronauts who hurtled through the cosmos and landed on the famed green cheese orb.

Sadly, though, Google’s normally excellent driving directions don’t seem to work with Google Moon. -BILL FERRIS

Google Moon

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Observe NASA’s Earth Observatory

Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium free for the downloading. The program is small and yet the graphics are amazing and realistic, but don’t count on any laser shows like the ones your local planetarium might have to offer.

You can use this program to explore individual stars and their distances, as well as examine planets from far away. The default view is from a “naked eye” perspective from Earth, but if you tinker around you might be able to find a way to zoom in and see if there are any aliens lurking on Mars. The program isn’t terribly intuitive for us common stargazers, but if this is something you know more about (read: you are an Astronomer, or you teach Astronomy) then you’ll be able derive some pretty useful information from it. There’s also a forum on the website if you want to discuss your questions and suggestions with other users.

At the very least, it’s a fun tool that allows you to view the night sky without having to find a piece of totally flat Earth in your area. Besides, you can view graphic representations of the constellations that you can later use to impress your friends by saying “ah, there’s Cassoipeia’s leg.” Check out this free app for some fun and point your students there for a “stellar” reference tool. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Stellarium

Learn the workings of the solar system by building your own. With My Solar System you can see how suns, planets, moons and comets interact.

You choose the number and size of heavenly bodies in your solar system. And size matters - make your sun too big, and watch a planet crash into it (which is kinda cool, actually). Make a planet too small and its moon will ditch it to just revolve around the sun instead.

My Solar System also has preset solar system alignments, which are definitely worth checking out. My favorite - the slingshot, where a planet is revolving around the sun, minding its own business, then gets caught in another planet’s gravitational field. Next thing it knows, it’s getting flung into deep space because that meddling planet #2 doesn’t have enough gravity to hang onto it. So tragic. So fun.

Your students should enjoy My Solar System whether you’re an elementary teacher studying the planets for the first time, or if you’re a physics instructor demonstrating gravitational pull. And don’t forget to discuss the ethical implications of creating planets specifically hoping they’ll collide. -BILL FERRIS

My Solar System