Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

Before all these fancy-shmancy video games, folk used to play games on slabs of cardboard. “Board games” we called ‘em, and I don’t recall people getting bored playing them.

Now, a few of you creative types as like as not have games you play in your class. You think to yourself, “This is a pretty fun game, and my students actually learn something. I wish I could play this on an actual game board instead of drawing it on the blackboard like a caveman.” Well, you can make your game idea a reality with The Game Crafter.

(more…)

You can’t beat the power of democracy. It’s useful both as a system of government and a way to decide what time to schedule a meeting. As great as democracy is, though, you may have noticed that a lot of people don’t vote in elections. That’s probably because the democratic process isn’t as easy as Doodle.

Doodle lets you create polls in about 90 seconds. I created one to decide my dinner plans. You can help me make up my mind here. If you need to set up a staff meeting or plan the day for the music department bake sale, Doodle can do that, too. Just enter possible dates and times and forward the link to the poll to the folks you want there. They can then vote on the times that work best for them.

Unfortunately, you can vote more than once, so it’s not ideal for classroom use. What Doodle does do is help you wrangle dates and opinions from other people with a minimum of sweat. Isn’t democracy great? -BILL FERRIS

Doodle

Raid your pantry for snacks and educational funding. Since 1996, General Mills has raised more than $200 million for K-8 schools with their BoxTops4Education program. For every box top your school sends in, it will receive a dime. Hey, that adds up - a couple box tops each from faculty and parents can earn your school some serious cash. Cooler still, you can track your school’s progress at the BoxTops4Education Web site.

This is obviously a project that will work best with parental cooperation. Now you don’t want to come across as a shill for General Mills - if parents think they have to revamp their entire shopping list, they might lose interest. So instead of telling parents to run out and buy lots of Cheerios, remind them they’ve probably got a lot of these General Mills box tops in their homes already (click here to see a list of participating products).

Before you throw out that empty cereal box, take a peek at the top of the box. You might be throwing away free money. -BILL FERRIS

BoxTops4Education

What does your school do for fund raisers? Let us know in the comments.

Fund your class project idea with other people’s money. Or maybe help other teachers reach their classroom goals with just a small donation. DonorsChoose.org allows teachers to submit project proposals, complete with total cost, to their website. Web-savvy philanthropists can then peruse these proposals and look for a project they’d like to support. Projects are searchable, so if you need some chemicals for chemistry class, some deep-pocketed chemist can find it without sifting through art projects and field trip proposals.

Though teachers aren’t known for having lots of disposable cash, consider helping out your fellow educators by donating money yourself. You can sort projects by cost to complete, so if you’ve only got $100 lying around, you can supply the last few dollars to fund a Reading Skills project for special education students. Give a little, get a little. DonorsChoose.org leaves the choice to you. –BILL FERRIS

DonorsChoose.org

Stop lugging candy bars to the office. Stop soliciting cookie dough and tubs of three different flavors of popcorn to your neighbors. Instead, let the dance team earn their own money for the upcoming Florida trip. And let them do it the tech-savvy way, with ChipIn.com.ChipIn.com allows users to create an online widget to promote and monitor the target goal of their fundraiser. The widget is a flash application that is easily posted to any web page and/or social network such as MySpace.com. A button on the widget allows visitors to contribute to your cause via PayPal or any major credit card. The funds are then transferred to you through PayPal, direct deposit, or check.

You can monitor your progress with the widget itself, or by managing your free account. The widget tracks how much of your goal you have received as well as the number of contributors and the end date of the fundraiser. ChipIn is free to use for goals of up to $9,999 USD. ChipIn.com makes fundraising easy and secure, with no chalky generic chocolate needed. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

ChipIn