Instructify

The first time I heard someone talk about Seesmic, I thought to myself: “This person has to be saying it wrong. ‘Seismic‘ is a word, and it’s not pronounced ’seesmic’!” Well, although it is very rare for me to be wrong about something (really, very rare), I was in this case. And not only was I wrong, but I was also totally in the dark about a new, conversational video-sharing site that is changing the way people are able to communicate with each other!

Seesmic is an innovative new site that lets users communicate and connect online through video conversation, and has become known as the “Twitter of video” because of its micro-blogging appeal. Unlike most video hosting sites, though, it’s intended for posting instant videos of what you are doing or thinking about and having others respond to the conversation over time. It’s kind of like a message board, minus the anonymity.

What’s also pretty neat about Seesmic is that you can record your videos directly onto the website (which is handy if you want to post a quick update, or don’t have a lot of editing to do). But you also have the option to use your own camera or mobile phone, upload an existing video straight from your computer, or link to a video posted on a social network.

Seesmic could be a great tool to host an online debate on something you’re discussing in class and share with your students the perspectives of other people from around the world. You can start a thread by posting a video about a specific topic and other users can respond, starting a whole video conversation about your topic. And because conversations on Seesmic don’t happen in real time, you will have control over what you share with your students (as not everyone in the world is a friendly debater!).

While the community is still growing, people on Seesmic are already using the site to have conversations about all kinds of topics, from debates about “hummus vs. haggis,” to discussions about quality and quantity in terms of statistics, to just about anything. So go on, ask an open-ended question or state your opinion on something, and see what kind of conversation you can start! -LAUREN FROHNE

Seesmic

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10 Virtually Instant Ways to Improve Your Life - I’m all for improving my life, but why does it have to take soooo long? Here are ten easy ways to pull yourself up by your boot straps courtesy of Stepcase Lifehack. If you find yourself wanting to change something about your life, then why not start out with the simple stuff like Don’t over-generalize and Don’t take things too personally.

12 Ways to Use Project Censored in Your Classroom - Project Censored is an intiative designed to help aggregate news stories that often go under reported. This guide offers ways teachers can educate their students in fair journalism methods and help them understand the practice and importance of research. There are in-class activities and projects on the list, so if your students are studying media and journalism, this is a good place to start them on the right path.

 101 Scholarships Just For Teachers - From TeachingTips.com comes this amazing list of scholarships available for teachers working their way through college. It might be too late for most of us, but if you have some students who are interested in becoming teachers themselves, give them this list to ease college’s financial burdens. Some are region specific, so all 101 might not be completely pertinent. By the way, be sure and check out some of the other amazing lists on TeachingTips, they’ve got some great stuff there.

101 Things to Do When You’re Bored - I don’t know how anybody could possibly get bored when there are hundreds of Instructify posts to read, but if you find yourself with some idle time, then try out a few of these activities to rescue yourself from ennui. Lists Galore recommends flying a kite, starting a blog, or you know, making a list. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Wetsun on Flickr

I’m completely fine with a writer who bends the rules. There’s a little thing called style, right? I’m sure that as an educator you’ve no doubt had a student try to pass off errors as style. I know I tried when I was in school.

As they grow and mature as writers, it’s necessary for your students to crawl before they can walk. They should at least know the ground rules before they start breaking them in the name of style. And as we all know, there are plenty of rules. There is one rule—out of a whole set of rules about the use of quotation marks—that can be very effective in conveying irony, sarcasm and subtlety. Or, it can be very effective in unintentionally looking ironic, sarcastic and boldly unusual. That rule is the use of quotation marks around words and short phrases.

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks is a great site that features the abuse of quotation marks and the amusing results. While this site is intended to show the humor of misinterpreting other peoples’ bad punctuation, you can use it as an effective tool to demonstrate to your students what not to do. You might even want to mention that anyone can submit a photo to this blog. It could give your students a strange motivation to pay attention to punctuation as they walk around in their day-to-day lives. What sort of strange world would that be? –NICK YINGLING

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

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Looking for a platform for a school or classroom website? Have you always wanted to have a classroom blog that allows blogging between parents and you, or you and your students? If so, WordPress has everything you are looking for and a lot more - plus it’s the platform that powers Instructify, so you know it’s high quality.

WordPress is a free publishing platform. This site is extremely user friendly - in addition to being a quick sign-up, the site has great tutorials to help walk you through setting up your blog or website. All you need is a computer, Internet access, and an email address to get started. WordPress has more than 60 different themes for you to customize your blog to fit your needs. You can switch between your themes at any time with a few clicks of your mouse. You can also add event calenders, links and pages. Upload your own pictures, or included images from Flickr or Photobucket. Don’t forget to add a stats collector to your site that will give you instant statistics on the different visitors you have to your site.

The choice is yours whether to share your page with the public or a selected few. As for interactivity, WordPress gives you the freedom and security to allow you to have comments posted on your site with or without your prior approval. You can even set your site up to not allow any comments at all.

Blogging is a great way to keep parents informed about what’s going on in your classroom. If you blog with WordPress, you can allow parents to become active participants in your class activities. WordPress is also a great tool to allow students to collaborate on group projects. You can have as many blogs as you want. The sky is the limit. -MONIQUE ST. LOUIS

WordPress

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Bizcovering had an interesting post I came across, 10 Universal Truths About Teaching. The article covers some things that educators will inevitably encounter during their careers. Among my favorite was on ‘Meetings’:

They didn’t tell you about the meetings when you were training, did they? You know, the meetings that take place before, during and after the working day? The meetings where others teachers you don’t know talk about students you have never heard about - interminably, without pausing for breath or comment.

This article is well written and quite funny. They’ve also put together a fun graphic for each truth, accompanied by an appropriate quote. For example, the truth ‘Explaining Stuff’ is paired with this:

“To describe what you’ve read is like trying to explain music in writing.” - Peter Hoeg

It’s nice to hear some of these truths coming from a more business oriented voice, as writer R J Evans has also written a series on ICT Training. Blog Bizcovering does a nice job presenting this article amongst some of their less accessible for teachers material. The #1 Truth on the list is open ended, and we’d love to hear in our own comments section of some of the truths you’ve found in your teaching experience. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

10 Universal Truths About Teaching

You’ve finally gotten a laptop to work with, and maybe you’ve started to use it in the classroom. Now you’re going to conferences, and you’ve heard about people “blogging” and using laptops at conferencing, but you’re wondering how to do this, and why?

First, think of blogging as a more efficient and effective way to take and share notes from your conference experience. Next, you don’t have to have or keep a blog to more effectively share what you learn. Now that we have that out of the way let’s think about this some more. You are probably being sent to that conference so that you can learn lots of new stuff, and then come back and share what you learn with others. Traditionally, you’d take handwritten notes, but unless you take shorthand, even minimal touch typing skills (I’m only a 35-50 wpm gal myself) are much more efficient than hand-writing notes. Give up the note pad, and use your laptop. In electronic form your notes can go to the whole district, and save you the awkwardness of reading your chicken scratch notes at your department meeting.

Now for the how part. I recommend this great article on blogging conferences from the TED site. As they point out, “Even if you don’t blog, it’s worth reading before your next conference, for tips on getting the most out of your time in the audience.” Here are some highlights:

1. Set up your documents in advance, and type in background links (their website, blog, who they work for, etc.) and the name of the presenter before the session.
2. Arrive early and have your physical setup (the back or somewhere near an outlet. My tip is to bring a good surge protector with a long cord - mine is eight feet long). Keep your laptop fully charged and plugged in whenever possible, so that it is ready to go should you not have power access.
3. Check in with others who are blogging or using laptops, to share notes and fill in any gaps.

But what should you use to take notes? Start with your word processing software of choice. If you are not publishing on the Web but will be emailing the notes, what I often do at district meetings is take notes in Power Point. This forces you to summarize, because if it won’t fit on one slide without reducing the font below 24 point, you are probably writing too much. Whatever you use, save often (most blogging editors have a way to save without publishing).

How do you share the information if you don’t have a blog of your own? Use your school/district LMS, email it, put a wiki page up, or put it on a Pageflake.

Now, if you are working on a blog, and expecting wifi at your conference, you may be disappointed. Some convention centers like to charge for access, some conferences (especially education technology ones) have been having their wifi overwhelmed by all of us coming in with our spiffy new wifi laptops. Do not count on having online access all the time, be prepared to type in Word now, and post and share later. -ALICE MERCER

How to blog a confeence via TED

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Photo credit: Arbron on Flickr

Let’s face it, building a Web site from scratch is tough. You need Web space and design software and knowledge about HTML and stuff. And in general, it’s difficult for both students and teachers to get the hang of. However, the Internet is a lot easier than it used to be, and with programs like Webon, you don’t need any of that to, well, get your Web on.

Webon is a free online hosting site that integrates tools for creating, building and maintaining a completely free (and ad-free) Web site. The site offers different “kits” depending on the purpose of your site, including basic, photo album, travelogue and personal kits, which let you set up blogs and other pages for photos, links, maps, anything you want really.

Webon is a great tool to use in the classroom for both middle and high schoolers because its drag-and-drop interface is intuitive, so your students can easily add and remove elements from their personalized pages. You can use it for group projects and let your students build and maintain an informative Web site on a specific topic. Your students can even keep online journals or post their homework assignments to their Web site.

With lots of design templates and options to choose from, your students can express themselves and you can sidestep all of that complicated web development stuff. So go on, get your Web on! - LAUREN FROHNE

Webon

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If you’ve ever wanted to write a book, but you never thought about how it could possibly come to fruition, then you should know it’s easier than you think. With Blurb, you can create a book of just about any size or shape, with any number of pages, and a fully customized look and feel. The content is all up to you, though, so you’ll be responsible for the hard part.

Once you finish your masterpiece, you can download the easy-to-use editor software to arrange and layout the book the way you want it. After that, pricing per individual book starts at $12.95. You can order as few or many as you like, and your work can be featured on the site for purchase by others if you wish. You’ll retain the copyrights, and you can even set your price to determine your own profit level.

Blurb’s self-publishing platform could make for an awesome class project. Your students could be responsible for creating a collaborative project full of their own musings, pictures, stories and drawings. If you’ve got a web-savvy class, you can also take advantage of the blog-to-book feature and have them blog throughout the year, and then collect their works into a group project or individual books. The service and software are so easy to use, who knows, maybe you’ll see an Instructify book sometime soon. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Blurb

I don’t know how I’ve been living without Skitch. This Mac only (sorry Windows users!) application has loads of great features wrapped around a simple screen grabber. I use the built in screen capture function on my Mac (shift+apple+fn+3 (or 4) will copy it to your clipboard) all the time for blogging, but Skitch goes an extra mile and a half with all the extra bells and whistles you could ask for. For starters, it’s a free application that sits as a tiny heart icon in your top toolbar, and all you need to do to take a crosshair or full screen snapshot is click the drop-down menu.

Things just get easier from there, as you can then take advantage of the stuff that really makes Skitch stand out. You can resize, draw, add arrows and other shapes, add text, and easily upload your caps to your free account, which you have to set up in order to download the application. There’s even a sharp intro video that will get you started in minutes. I could go on about this amazing tool, but I really recommend grabbing it for yourself.

Windows users, fret not, we haven’t forgotten about you. While I can’t completely verify that any of the tools available are what you might get with Skitch, they at least sound comparable in usability. Try Screenshot Captor which has features like a deluxe thumbnail maker, or Jing, which is available for both Windows and Mac. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Wikis can be a useful tool in the classroom because they allow your students to not only create content, but maintain and edit it as well. With Wetpaint’s free Wiki creation tool, you can set up a specific type of wiki for whatever your subject matter might be. Students can then begin plugging in info based on your specifications. One of the most powerful aspects of creating a wiki is that they can be used for virtually any subject. If you’re reading The Sound and The Fury, students can add character descriptions, chapter and section summaries, or symbols used. If you’re an Algebra teacher, students can aggregate the wiki with their “favorite” proofs and theorems.

Wetpaint’s creation tool is simple and intuitive, and only requires a valid email address to sign up. It’s easy to set up and invite your students and set permissions on who is able to view your wiki. If you want to bridge the gap between the web and the classroom, this is a great place to start. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Wetpaint Free Wiki Websites

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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

Instructify will host the 171st edition of Carnival of Education on Wednesday, May 14. The Carnival will feature a cavalcade of articles from edubloggers chronicling what’s going on in the classroom, the ballpark, and even outer space.

This ride is almost full, but we might be able to sneak in a good post or two before 4 PM. You can submit articles here. We’ll see you tomorrow on the midway! -BILL FERRIS

Carnival of Education

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Open Education, a blog from the folks at GoCollege.com, has some great content to share with educators like yourself. The work is licensed under Creative Commons, so the information you find is meant to be shared further. Open Source is all about collaboration and sharing, so your comments can only add to the topics presented. The entry topics range from advances in education to interviews with notable educators and innovators. In a recent post, OE spoke with David Sherman - principal of South Park Elementary (no, not that South Park) in Deerfield, Illinois - about technology use in the classroom from a school leader’s perspective. Sherman explains here some of the things his school is doing to take advantage of technology on the web:

“We are very fortunate to work in a school district which places a high value on the use of educational technologies, so many valuable sites are not blocked including YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, del.icio.us, and other social networking sites.”

Sherman’s own blogs, The Principal and Interest and The Principal’s Page are both valuable resources in themselves. Check out what he has to say about a teacher’s responsibility and expectation:

“Teaching children how to organize their materials is our responsibility. Teaching children to tell the truth is our responsibility, and teaching them to use their words and not their fists when dealing with conflict is our responsibility as well.”

Take advantage of the conversations these blogs are starting and add your own thoughts in their comments. After all, as educators, we should know by now that education all begins with sharing. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Open Education
The Principal and Interest
The Principal’s Page

So you’ve gotten your blog off the ground and you’re diligently posting with some regularity. But how can you make your articles more substantive for your readers without resorting to the useful, yet sometimes inaccurate, Wikipedia link?

Well, Britannica has launched Britannica WebShare: a new program in which you, a professional or amateur Web publisher or blogger, can register your site with the encyclopedia and gain complimentary access to relevant articles in Britannica Online for you and your readers. It’s a reliable way to provide accurate background on the topics you’re writing about - no subscription necessary!

Once registered and approved, just link from your blog to the URL of the Britannica article you want to share, just as you would with any other Web page, and your readers will be able to view the entire article for free.

So how do you qualify for the service? First, you have to have a blog or Web site that you update with some regularity. Then, just fill out Britannica’s online application form, and they will review it to see if it would be a legitimate use of the service. From their site:

“This includes but isn’t limited to sites about news, education, sports, business, culture, academic disciplines, and general commentary. It includes most blogs. It does not include Web sites mainly dedicated to e-commerce or those whose postings are short and aphoristic by design.”

The way they see it:

“We have a great site with a lot of useful, reliable, and high-quality information, and we’d like more people to see it, use it, and talk about it. We’d like to see Britannica used more widely in discussions and conversations about important issues. Today Web publishers are among the foremost people driving public discussions, so we’d like to have our products in their hands.”

Also, it doesn’t take long - maybe 5 minutes - and they’ll get back to you in about a week or less. So go sign up and take advantage of Britannica’s offer to use their information to beef up your blog for absolutely free!-LAUREN FROHNE

Britannica WebShare

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Photo credit: Stewart on flickr

RSS, what does it mean anyway? Really Simple Syndication, Really Serious Stress-Relief, it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s a great way to get information to you and your students. If you subscribe to an RSS feed from a site you enjoy, whenever that site is updated, you’ll receive the update automatically. Yes, by itself (as if by magic - automagically. Or something). Just look for the orange button-thingy on your favorite Web page or blog so you can subscribe.

Last week I showed you how to use an RSS tool, Pageflakes, which had some great tools (called flakes) like news from CNN and the New York Times. You might have wondered, “Yeah, that looks nice, but what do I put on it for my elementary students?” Here, dear readers, are some suggestions…

Highlights Magazine Online
Discovery Science News
Scholastic News Election Coverage

If you need a list of cool, yet appropriate resources and activities, that are updated by others (so that you don’t have to), look no further. If you have some suggestions of your own, we’re always looking for new stuff, so leave a comment. -ALICE MERCER

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