Instructify

3 Challenges to Wiki Use in Instruction
Every teacher’s got a wiki these days. So what do you do with it in class? Integrating a piece of technology doesn’t lend itself to flying by the seat of one’s pants. THE Journal presents 3 Challenges to Wiki Use in Instruction, discussing what factors must be overcome to get the most out of wikis in education.

The World of 100
Imagine if the world were condensed into a village of 100 people. Now imagine if these villagers’ lifestyles were documented in the form of snazzy-looking charts. Toby Ng Design has created The World of 100, an illustration project in which demographic information such as population, literacy and air quality are depicted in striking graphic representations.

Learn 35+ Languages for Free in iTunes
LifeClever presents this list of free language courses available on iTunes. Good for your language students, or for anyone who’d like to converse in another language.

100 Free Online Lectures that Will Make You a Better Teacher
As a dedicated teacher, you’re always looking to improve professionally, right? A good tip at the right time can make a world of difference. This list of online videos will give you knowledge and ideas for getting even better at what you do. These videos deal with instructional suggestions, technology demos, and rules of the road for new teachers. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: One Good Bumblebee on Flickr.

25 Item To-Do List Everyone Should be Doing – If you’re not already making to-do lists in order to be the most productive you can be, maybe now is the time to start. This list from BANDBMAMA’s Blog is a great place to start. Such helpful items as taking a walk to smiling at others can really make your day feel great and productive.

9 Things Every New Blogger Should Know -Blogging doesn’t have to be difficult. If you and your class aren’t blogging already, don’t get overwhelmed before you even start. There are a few things you should know before you get started, however. This list is a good place to start, as it illustrates a few of the crucial things to producing a blog that’s approachable and engaging. Check out these tips and more from Blogging Agenda.

10 Ways to Eat Natural - I’ve been doing my best to start eating more healthily lately. I’ve stopped eating fried foods and cut down on other processed items, and I’m honestly feeling a lot better already. Eating healthy and natural doesn’t mean you have to completely restructure your diet, however. If you abide by a few of these tips from Health.com, you’ll find that eating natural foods might be easier than you think.

10 Most Popular DIY Sites -  Do you like to get your hands dirty and create from scratch? Does the look and feel of something that you’ve made all by yourself give you a thrill? Do you simply just like to make things with your own hands? Well, there are plenty of resources on the web for you to find ways of doing-it-yourself when it comes to making projects with things at your disposal. This list of the 10 best resources might even lend you a great opportunity to do some fun projects with your students. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Arbron on Flickr.

50 Ways to Help the Planet – If you want to help the planet, and I’m talking about OUR planet, here (Earth), then you’ll find this list handy. By taking small steps and making seemingly insignificant lifestyle choices, you can make a significant difference when it comes to cutting down on your impact on the environment. Simple decisions like changing your light bulbs to  paying bills online can make a huge difference.

Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post - So you wrote an awesome blog post. Now, who is going to read it? Make sure you are getting the most exposure you can by using some of these methods from Mashable. Whether you want to bring people to your blog via Twitter or just telling a friend at the grocery store, you’ll need to get the word out there if you want anyone to know your brilliant musings.

10 Misconceptions About Common Sayings – If you’re fit as a fiddle, it doesn’t mean you’re in as good shape as a violin, but it does mean that you are as worthy as an expensive instrument. This and other phrases are commonly misused and butchered every day, so it might be important to know where these sayings come from. So don’t wait on tenterhooks anymore, and check out this list from ListVerse.

5 Traits of a Leader - As a teacher, it is important to know how to lead and stay in charge. Sometimes, though, it takes more than just THINKING you’re a leader to actually be one. Abide by these traits from YourLifeCoach and you’ll be fast on your way to strong leadership in no time. It takes a little confidence and vision to become someone others can really look up to. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Leonid Mamchenkov on Flickr

Top 100 Twitter Tools – I’ll be honest. There is a lot of Twitter abuse going on out there. One of the amazing things about Twitter is its ability to customize your experience. There are new tools being built all the time, but few of them are useful for anything other than gaining more followers. Fortunately, The Web Pitch has created a comprehensive list of the Top 100 Twitter Tools, with categories including Information Gathering, Organization & Productivity, and Business & Finance.

10 Job Listing Sites With Unique Opportunities – Times are uncertain. Therefore, it’s always good to be aware of ways you can access social resources and know how to use them if the economy continues down this slippery slope. Lifehack has a list of 10 job sites that will help you score a job if the need arises. Luckily, Craigslist isn’t on the list.

15 Simple Changes That Will Quickly Improve Your Health – It’s time to start seriously thinking about your health. You might already have it on your list, but it should really be at the top. There are simple ways you can start thinking more healthily right away. Dumb Little Man presents this list of changes to your eating and drinking regimens, as well as easy ways to exercise in a pinch.

Teach Creative Writing With These 5 Steps – Creativity is a difficult thing to teach. It is really more about nurturing creativity than instructing it, IMHO. Bloggeron brings us these five steps to help you teach things such as how to generate characters and share ideas. Creative writing can be a lot of fun for students who might be bored by the same old worksheets. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Wetsun on Flickr

7 Steps to Emotional Maturity – It’s easy to get wrapped up in your emotions sometimes, and that can lead to ineffective teaching. For students, getting wrapped up in their emotions can be a hindrance to progress. This list shows steps toward gaining emotional maturity, which doesn’t necessarily mean giving up your emotions. It just means taking the time to understand your feelings.

Top 10 Language Learning Blogs – Learning a new language doesn’t have to be difficult. Especially when you have the entire Internet at your fingertips. You might not even have to do too much research to find the right language to learn with these 10 language learning blogs from The Linguist. For all you foreign language teachers out there, this could be a great list for resources, too.

101 Interesting Human Body and Health Facts – Normally, I am wary of the word “interesting,” mainly because it is rather subjective, and also because it is one of those adjectives that doesn’t do much for its subject. However, this list from List Lovers encompasses a long list of uncommon medical facts, many of which are quite useful. For instance, did you know that one uses 200 muscles to take a single step?

Top 100 Novels of All Time – This list, compiled from other top 100 novels lists, including those on The Radcliffe List and Time, is a serious list for a serious reader. I don’t know how many of them I’ve actually read cover to cover, but many of them I read while I was in school. Hopefully, your students can do the same. I can’t say I totally agree with this list, as there’s no Fahrenheit 451 to be found. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: solar ikon on Flickr.

The 15 Strangest College Courses In America
“Underwater Basket Weaving” is apparently a real class. So is “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “The Science of Harry Potter,” and “Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular ‘Logic’ on TV Judge Shows.” These are actual courses that award actual credit, from universities you’d actually want to go to (Georgetown and UC-Berkley, for instance). Show these to your principal, and maybe your proposed syllabus for “A Study of Physics in Warner Bros. Cartoons” won’t sound so bad.

Top 50 Free Open Courseware Classes to Design Better Web Sites
Web design is a useful, highly marketable skill a lot of high schools don’t teach. Fortunately, you can help out some of your more web-savvy students with this guide to free courses that can develop their design skills. Maybe they’ll show their gratitude by redesigning your school’s website.

38 ways to find great edublogs
With so many educators out there who blog, how do you find the good stuff? Blog by Carol presents this list of 38 ways to find great edublogs, such as checking the Edublogs awards, using Technorati authority, and the time-honored method of asking people you already trust which blogs they read. Of course, if you need a place to start, Instructify isn’t too bad.

Top 5 Quiz Generators for Online Educators
Why do the grunt work of putting a quiz together yourself when you can find a handy piece of software to do it for you? Web 2.0 Teaching Tools brings you five time-saving methods for putting quizzes together online. Now you’ll have more time to read some of those great new edublogs you found. -BILL FERRIS

Five Best Note-Taking Tools
Back when I was a student, we had to take notes with a pen and paper. Today’s learners have a lot more options that take advantage of online technology. Lifehacker presents this list of the top five ways to take notes (don’t worry, my trust old pen and paper made the cut).

25 Tools every Learning Professional should have in their Toolbox
Another list of free tools teachers should use. Firefox, Skype, WordPress, all that stuff. You’re probably using a lot of these already. If not…well, this may not be the blog for you.

7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling
Anybody with a video camera and a computer can broadcast a movie to anyone thanks to YouTube. Not surprisingly, smart teachers want to harness this technology for educational purposes. This article from Educause Learning Initiative will give you a good introduction to various forms of digital storytelling and how to use them for teaching and learning.

5 Things We Learned About Teens at TOC
The Publishing Trends Blog presents a fascinating glimpse at how teens use technology, gleaned during the Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Among them, kids don’t care about mastering a piece of software — they won’t sign up for a training seminar on Excel or Photoshop, they just want to know how to use it for the project they’re working on. To quote the article, “they’re concentrated on the outcome, not the tool.” These five discoveries may help you better understand your students’ learning process. -BILL FERRIS

25 Books to Read Before Age 25 – So, I missed the boat on some of these; nonetheless, I think I knocked out most of the list during high school. If your students don’t already have to read the books on this list for their required summer reading, or if they are just avid readers, you might want to give them a head start before they hit 25. There are some surprising selections on this list from University of Washington’s The Daily, including Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters (a personal favorite).

100 Best Creative Writing Blogs – For your students who are interested in writing and blogging, here is a valuable resource from Best Colleges Online of 100 blogs to help them develop craft, get published, and practice editing. Personally, I wish I had this kind of resource available when I first started creative writing, so be sure to let your creative students know about these best o’ the best before they even get to college.

5 Unique and Inspiring Educational Nonprofits – I get excited to see insightful and original blog posts like this one from Razoo. Moreso, I get excited to see unique non-profit organizations doing great things for education. I’ve already mentioned one of the five, 826 National, but the others on this list are just as inspiring and original as Eggers’ efforts. Check out Spark and Soliya to explore things that your students might already be interested in, like foreign affairs and travel.

11 Tips on Setting Goals and Achieving Them – Goals are important no matter what stage in life you’re in. Dumb Little Man brings us this list of 11 simple ways you can get started on achieving what you set out to do. Goal setting starts as simply as “writing them down” and “making an action plan,” then stick-to-it-iveness will help you prevail.  -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Jo Jakeman on Flickr

Walden, and 99 other Free Online Books Every Student of Humanity Should Read
The Universities and Colleges blog presents this list of 100 classic works of literature in the public domain (that is to say, free). The books are available at Project Gutenberg, which has even more books, once you and your students get through these 100. Piece of cake, right?

100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better
A lot of your students have iPods. You may have even confiscated a few. Use those gadgets for education with this list from the Online Education Database. You’ll find study guides, tutorials, podcasting tools and more.

The 15 Clearest Benefits of Gaming
We all knew gaming developed hand-eye coordination. It can also help students develop empathy, assist in dealing with post-traumatic stress, and spark their imaginations. Kris Graft of Edge Online provides a thorough listing of the upside of video games, but the author unfortunately neglects obvious benefits such as saving Princess Toadstool or PWNING your friends.

10 Best Practices for using wikis in education
You’ve spent hours putting together a wiki that you know will allow students to learn and produce lots of valuable content. You send them the link and…nothing happens. Don’t let your wiki go to waste. Technology Teacher has 10 tips on how to use wikis to engage your students.

Well, it looks like Ol’ Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, so that means six more weeks of winter. Not to worry, though, as here’s a list of lists to keep you warm.

5 Steps to Becoming a Teacher – The Apple delivers this list of five things you need to do in order to get on the road toward becoming a teacher. Since most of you reading this are already teachers, feel free to pass these tips on to your friends and family members who want to know what it takes. Each step is further broken down into more detailed categories, such as “Characteristics teachers need” under the first and possibly most important step, “Decide if teaching is right for you.”

5 Online Tools to Help You Cite Your Research Papers – We’ve mentioned EasyBib before, but The Students’ Blog brings four more citation tools to help your students breeze through the often headache-inducing process of creating a research paper bibliography.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 -I know, I know, it’s 2009, but that doesn’t mean this list is totally irrelevant. With 100 tools on the list, there’s bound to be some things you’ve seen or possibly used before, like Firefox and Skype, but there are plenty of new toys to play with, too. This list comes to us from across the pond at C4LPT (Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies).

69 Free or Open Source Tools For Students – We don’t believe in having to pay for software, especially when it comes to tools that are useful for educators. That’s why lists like this one from “This is the OC (Online College)” are so useful. Again, you’ll probably see some old favorites here, but the list is divided by categories like “Learning & Brainstorming,” so you can discover new open source software no matter what your students need. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: curly_exp(l)osure on Flickr

List of Educational Web 2.0 Apps to Jumpstart Your Productivity – From DiplomaGuide.com comes this list of 25 Web 2.0 tools you can use to get more productive. The 25 items are divided into categories including Note Taking, Organization and Homework, so these apps all have students in mind. You’ll find some familiars here, like Google Docs and Facebook, but there are also some neat and simple tools like The Awesome Highlighter, which lets you highlight text on webpages.

10 Things You Shouldn’t Buy New – We’re all feeling the crunch these days, and tightening our belts doesn’t just mean buying the generic brand of Ramen noodles. From MSN Money comes a list of 10 things you shouldn’t buy new, whether it seems like a deal or not. Books, toys and jewelry are all on this list. Makes sense to me.

5 Ways to Avoid Change in 2009 – Okay, so you and I both probably said “whaaattt?” when we read the title of this post, but not to worry, this LifeHack article is a tongue-in-cheek list of ways you can fall victim to being stuck in your old and unproductive, unchallenging ways. ’09 seems to be a time when a lot of people are excited for something new, so get on the boat and figure out some things you might be doing to anchor yourself down.

100 Best DIY Sites on the Web – Here’s a list of some of the best do-it-yourself sites out there, courtesy of Bootstrapper. They’ve got everything from Arts & Crafts to Tech to the ever popular Lifehacking. This list has some good DIY tools and tips available, all amidst some of the sites you might already be enjoying, such as 43 Folders or Makezine. Who knows what fun class projects you might be able to find in this mega-list? -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Stewf on Flickr

100+ More Ways to Organize your Life – 2009 is going to be the year I get totally organized. I think I got a good start in ’08, but new years allow for new beginnings. So for me, you or anyone else who is interested in sorting out his/her life, Mashable has a great article full of tools you can use to make sure all your ducks are in a row. Some notable and cool looking apps on the list include these: WhatYah!, Listaculous, iProcrastinate and tons more.

10 Simple Things we Should All Say More Often – I try to say “please” and “thank you” and “yes ma’am” and even “hello” as often as I can, but I don’t know if it is just my personal upbringing or a regional Southern thing. Either way, I get funny looks when I say “you’re welcome” sometimes, as if people seem to think I am doing it unnecessarily. Dumb Little Man provides a list of some of the things we should all say more often, and why they are so important.

100 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts that will help you Work Faster - First of all, I’m pretty sure the whole point of a shortcut is to improve efficiency and speed, but nonetheless, here is a list of some quick keystrokes that will have you burning through lesson planning in no time. Brought to you by Gnoted.com, you should know most of them by now (Ctrl+C=Copy=duh) but there are plenty you might not know (NUM LOCK for five seconds=Switch the ToggleKeys either on or off).

10 Natural Ways to Gain More Energy – At the end of the day, it’s tough to find the last bit of energy you need to get the last of your list done. Here’s a few ideas to help you discover ways you can find and maintain your energy throughout the day. PlantMiracle recommends exercising (go figure), meditation, and aromatherapy, amongst others. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Leonid Mamchenkov on Flickr

Happy New Year from Instructify. At the risk of jumping the gun with a whole day left in the year, we’re rolling out this list of Instructify’s 10 most popular posts of 2008:

1. Add Flash, Widgets, All that Stuff to Your Website with Sprout
2. Missing the point: teacher confiscates free software
3. Johnny Lee: Interactive Whiteboard From a $40 Wii Remote
4. Have Students Take Your Tests Online with ClassMarker
5. Owl pellet dissection made easy
6. Access, Analyze, Act: Three cheers for representative democracy!
7. Learn Languages with LingQ
8. The new essentials: Top 10 school supplies for today’s students
9. Access Firewalled Videos with KeepVid
10. Ask the readers: Smart Boards for administrators

Thanks for reading, and we hope you’ll keep reading in 2009. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: holeymoon on Flickr.

Welcome to the last week of 2008. It’s been a fun year for us here at Instructify, and we hope that 2009 brings good tidings and an onslaught of (attainable) resolutions for you and your classroom. Here are a few lists to end the year right.

77 Colorful Words – Stop trying to think of another word for “red” and just use this handy reference guide to pick the right one. Not much here except for different words for all your favorite basic colors, but there are a few activities that might be great for some simple fun around the classroom. Via TeachersDesk.org.

Archaeology’s Top 10 Finds – While most of us are content not digging in the earth for relics of history, there are many who go in search of our world’s buried treasures to discover more about the past. The real life Indiana Joneses at Archaeology Magazine have compiled their top 10 finds for 2008, and amongst the list are such wonders as the Masked Mummy and, erm, “Brown Gold” in Oregon. Check out the rest at MSNBC’s CosmicBlog.

430 Best Books of 2008 – When your students aren’t busy reading all that “required” stuff, let them know about these books, courtesy of Goodreads. The rankings are based on user votes, so social media decides who’s who in the world of lit here. Which, I guess is why it is no surprise that Stephanie Meyer holds the #1 & #2 slots for books in her Twilight series.

50 Best Websites of 2008 – Time Magazine presents this list of helpful, fun, odd, and otherwise creative websites that hit the scene in 2008. These are the best that 2008 has to offer for the World Wide Web, and cover topics ranging from finding good gas prices to peer advice to celebrity gossip. Surprisingly, Instructify didn’t make the cut this year, but there’s always a chance to make the 2009 list, right? Happy New Year, everyone. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr

Happy Holidays, teachers and students. Here’s a little gift from us to you to of some lists upon which everything is nice, ne’er naughty. Hope you enjoy these numbers and have a wonderful holiday season.

10 Things They Need to Teach in High School – Most of my high school classes were there for the masses, and while I got a great dose of Spanish and traveled to a magnet school for a television production course, there are skills I had to wait until college to take. InstigatorBlog presents a list of 10 things they SHOULD teach in High School to help better prepare our students for the real world. For example, Personal Branding, Entrepreneurship, and my favorite Technology & Social Media.

7 Rules for Making a Good First Impression – With the new year upon us, we’re bound to make new relationships, have more conferences and makes more contacts. It is important that students as well as teachers know some of the basics to make sure they won’t be left in the dust when it comes to meeting new people and making a good first impression. Here’s a list from BusinessWeek that is mostly applicable for the office types, but can easily be altered to suit the needs of those in the field of education.

100 Words for Obama’s 100 First Days - With the inauguration right around the corner, Obama is going to have quite a lot on his hands in this troubled economy. What would you do if you were in his shoes? Wait, before you start talking, you should jot your ideas down for this essay contest and get a chance to be published on AlterNet. The rules are fairly simple, basically answer the question: What would you like Obama’s first 100 days in office to look like? in 100 words, and you could see your suggestions be published, and who knows, maybe even come to fruition.

6 Lessons You Learn by Playing Santa – My own dad was once a mall Santa, and despite the fake beard and lack of “bowl-full-of-jelly” belly, he really looked the part. More importantly, he earned a lot of respect from me (I was too old for Santa at the time, and while I was horribly embarrassed at the time, now I realized he did it because he volunteered to, not because someone made him do it). I’m sure having your lap pulverized by kids day after day is lesson enough to buy some thigh pads, there are other lessons to be learned. Dumb Little Man presents 6 of them here, including Appreciate the little things, and When in doubt, ho, ho, ho. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Wyscan on Flickr