Instructify

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

Difference Between, despite its unfortunate favicon, is a fascinating site that explores the subtle distinctions that separate similar objects, processes, languages, and all manner of other stuff. Can’t keep mitosis and meiosis straight? How do steel and copper differ? Or white eggs and brown eggs? Difference Between will walk you through each of these and more. I particularly enjoyed the entry about a subject near and dear to my heart, the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero (basically, that Coke Zero tastes awesome, and Diet Coke needs a dozen different varieties of citrus to make it even halfway palatable).

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

What student doesn’t like to imagine what their life will be like in 25 years? Given the rate of technology advancements, it’s an interesting exercise in imagination to conceive the future. Amy Zuckerman and James Daly (along with illustrator John Manders) do just such an exercise in their picture book 2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids, a fascinating glimpse into how they envision the world. This is not all fantasy either, as Zuckerman and Daly consulted scientists, engineers, technology experts, and “futurists” about what might be possible in a few decades, given the world as it is right now.

Not surprisingly, concepts like climate change play a role in some of the devices in the book (such as clothes that convert energy back to the grid and school buildings that can be pieced together like Lego units). In fact, I was struck by how some of the ideas in this book coincide nicely with the vision put forth in Thomas Friedman‘s book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, which dealt with ways to change our thinking around energy.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Evoke is a alternate reality gaming (ARG) activity designed to help young people learn about global issues and take part in social action projects. Sponsored by the World Bank Institute and developed primarily by Jane McGonigal (well known in the ARG world), this simulation game seeks to collectively engage participants aged 13 and older in learning about issues affecting the world, and then moving them into social action in their own communities.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Stopmotion Animator is a freeware download that allows users of PC computers to use a webcam to easily and quickly create stop-motion movies. The software is set up to “grab” frames off the webcam, then gather them together into a single .AVI video file. Stopmotion Animator allows you to tweak some settings as well. For example, you can set the number of frames you want shot with each mouse click (a single frame per shot will make the video more fluid in motion but will take a lot longer to make, so I suggest that the setting be placed at three to five frames per shot).

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Looking to harness your student’s creative energy and possible have them win a college scholarship at the same time? Google is once again staging their Doodle 4 Google competition, letting K-12 students across the country take a crack at redesigning the iconic Google logo. We’ve plugged this competition in the past, but it’s worthy of a re-mention. The theme for this year’s competition is “If I Could Do Anything, I Would …” All of the details about how to register your school and submit entries can be found here.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Last year we reviewed Xtranormal Text-to-Movie, a free computer animation app that lets you create your own cartoons. The folks at Xtranormal have made an even more impressive program called State, which adds characters who can walk around, advanced camera movement, movies with multiple scenes, and the ability to record your own voiceovers to your movies for free.

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BY BILL FERRIS

It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Your elementary students can follow Santa Claus’ flight path on Christmas Eve through the magic of Google Earth.

The jolly elves at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (that’s NORAD to you and me) have been tracking Santa using a combination of satellites, radar, Santa Cams, and fighter jets (!) for years. Now they’ve joined forces with Google to better update kids on Santa’s whereabouts as he flies around the world.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As schools move away from rote memorization of facts, what happens to those kids who like to rattle off the state capitals or list all the presidents? They can put their knowledge of educational trivia to good use at Sporcle, a site filled with countless list-style quizzes that will exercise kids’ knowledge of…well, just about everything.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Just because all your students aren’t artists, that doesn’t mean they can’t create their own comic strips. ToonDoo makes it easy to create a comic by using stock characters and scenes. If kids would rather provide their own protagonists, ToonDoo makes that a snap, too.

Students can choose from a variety of characters and locales. They can also create their own characters with the TraitR function (the name refers to character traits, as in “trait-er” rather than someone who will tattle on kids for cutting in the lunch line). For more options, kids can use the DoodleR tool to draw directly on the comic panels, or import and manipulate images with the ImagineR function.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way — Get High Now has to do with optical and audio illusions. It in no way advocates getting hepped up on goofball. To quote from the site itself:

“Get High Now is an illustrated, mind-blowing magic carpet ride of more than 175 ways to alter human perception and consciousness—without drugs or alcohol” (emphasis added lest you think Instructify is promoting anything inappropriate for a school audience).

See? We’re still a family site, more or less.

Anyway, the Get High Now website is a companion to a book of the same name. Both catalog stunning illusions of sight and sound, explaining the biology and neuroscience that makes them possible.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Many years ago, Walt Disney drew a little cartoon mouse who in turn built a theme park with his own four-fingered hands. Or something. Today, your elementary students can create cartoons of their own, as well as stories, drawings, cards and more at Kerpoof, an online creativity site brought to you by Disney.

Kerpoof gets kids creating with a simple interface that has a surprising amount of options. The movie section is particularly impressive — you can have several characters onscreen at once, and direct their movement, actions and speech. Compared to online animation tool Xtranormal, Kerpoof gives you far more control over your characters — Xtranormal’s free version only allows two characters, and they can’t walk around. However, Kerpoof doesn’t allow you to switch camera angles, nor do the characters have voice simulation (which may be a positive, depending on your point of view). (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

As further proof that my pop-culture awareness stopped sometime in the mid-90s, this month’s random roundup features Indiana Jones, apparently Instructify’s go-to reference to convey that a history or archaeology tool is exciting or adventurous in some capacity.

Of course, now that they’re making a fifth Indiana Jones movie, I don’t feel quite so dated.

National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid: Archaeology with No Risk of Snakes or Nazis!
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and I dreamed about being on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sadly, I’m not currently exploring foreign lands for ancient artifacts and getting chased by Nazis, nor did I ever get the chance to be a Blue Barracuda. But with National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid, your students can have the opportunities that I never did, and learn while doing it!

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BY BILL FERRIS

In Escape from the Mummy’s Tomb! your elementary students must recover Egyptian artifacts from inside a pyramid. As the title of the game has no doubt alerted you, you’ll have to wrest these artifacts from an undead mummy’s cold, dead, bandaged fingers.

After your students have finished their archaeological adventure, they’ll find themselves in a museum, where they must put the artifacts in their proper display cases. (more…)