Have you ever needed the answer to some pressing question, but found yourself no where near a computer and yielded only a cell phone to get your answer? I know I’ve been there many times, especially when traveling, and while you can sometimes text message search engines (or call a web-savvy friend), you can’t always get the answer you need. After being in such a predicament, I’ve often resolved to finally getting a smart phone, but now I don’t have to!

ChaCha  is a service that allows anyone with a mobile phone to text 242 242 (CHACHA) or call 1-800-2CHACHA and ask any question in conversational English and receive an accurate answer as a text message within a few minutes. It basically makes any cell phone a “smart phone,” and the idea is genius really: they don’t use a search engine algorithm with automatically generated responses, but rather a network of knowledgeable human “guides.” And since ChaCha uses people to respond with answers, you can easily reply with follow-up questions as if you are exchanging messages with a friend.

So let’s say you can’t remember who Gabriel falls in love with in Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd (it’s Bathsheba Everdene, by the way), or you need a quick weather update, or you just need to find the closest vegetarian restaurant to your current location, you can just call or text ChaCha and get a great answer quickly.

The service is totally free, too (except for any text message or minute fees  that may apply based on your cell phone plan), so you don’t have to worry about encountering any hidden costs when you get your phone bill. So make your cell phone a bit smarter, and maybe make yourself a little smarter while you’re at it!

ChaCha

Related Stuff:
How to use your cell phone for education: Mobile podcasting
Power up Your Phone with gWhiz

I hope you’re all enjoying your summer vacation. Maybe you’ve got some plans for the Independence Day weekend. Then again, with gas prices shooting into the stratosphere, maybe you don’t.

In these days of pricey petrol, you’ve got to get a little creative to save money on gas. That’s why you should head over to SmartPlanet and read their post, Top 10 eco driving tips to beat fuel rises. These tips include common sense (car pooling), hypermiling (get into second and fourth gear quickly), and some tips that are actually more convenient than conventional wisdom (at high speeds, crank the A/C and keep those windows rolled up to reduce drag).

The list is packed with useful advice and charming Britishisms like motorway, lift, and complaints about how “unleaded’s now 112.6 pence per litre,” whatever that means. So don’t let high fuel prices keep you cooped up this holiday. Read this advice and hit the road! -BILL FERRIS

Top 10 eco driving tips to beat fuel rises via SmartPlanet

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Turn Your Dirty Car into a Canvas: Scott Wade’s Dirty Car Art Gallery

50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do - Do you know how to build a fire? How about CPR, do you know it? Or give directions? All of these things are essential life skills that you should know if you don’t already. This list from Marc and Angel covers everything from swimming to changing a tire in order for you to be more self-reliant.

6 Things Money Cannot Help You Achieve - Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs still have to deal with the same time that you and I do, even if they could buy and sell you and me in a heartbeat. Surely there are other things than the ones presented on this list by Dumb Little Man, but these 6 make good sense. Money can’t buy you self-esteem, unfortunately, nor will it buy happiness.

52 Character Building Thoughts for Children - These might not be great tips for your older students, but the elementary crowd could really benefit from them. Leah Davies, M. Ed. brings us these great quotes on KellyBear.com. There are some real gems here, like this: When I am sad, I help myself feel better by thinking of things that are good in my life.

9 Ways to Save At The Movies - I know this isn’t completely related to teaching, but since school is out for most of us, we might have some more free time on our hands. Unfortunately, free time allows you to spend more money. If you plan to see any of the awesome, or not awesome movies this summer, here are some ways you can save from The Consumerist. My favorite on the list: Be careful with the concessions. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo by Jo Jakeman on Flickr)

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

In a May 4 article titled “I Know What You Did Last Math Class,” the New York Times explores one unfortunate side effect of technology in schools. The article examines how parents are taking advantage of services that connect them with student progress reports, including attendance and grading information. And though no one can deny that better-informed parents can be tremendous allies for teachers, the Times notes that parents who take this information to extremes can end up causing significant stress in their children’s lives:

Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer who consults with secondary schools, worries that these programs can aggravate student anxiety. “When the focus is on the grade so much, you’re saying to kids, ‘It’s more important to get the grade, by hook or by crook, than learn the material,’” she said. “And that leads to the rise in rampant cheating.”

The article raises interesting questions about the ethical use of tools that allow parents more access to the classroom, but may provide less context than an actual visit or conversation. According to the article, ” Many districts do not educate parents about how to use the programs in a measured, judicious fashion with their children.”

Is your school or school system using a service like Edline, ParentConnect, or PowerSchool to connect parents to classrooms? If so, drop us a note in the comments section and let us know how it’s working. –ROSS WHITE

I Know What You Did Last Math Class via The New York Times

Get Smarter: 12 Hacks That Will Amp Up Your Brainpower
Exercise your mind with these 12 strategies from Wired designed to max out your brainpower. Tips include exercising wisely, putting the right kinds of information in your brain, and even finding out the optimum dosages of caffeine.

40 Ways to Spice Up Your Spelling Words
Who doesn’t love memorizing spelling words? Your students, probably. Plenty of adults have trouble with spelling, meaning it’s probably even tougher for kids. Help them out by making your spelling words more interesting with these ideas.

50 Handy Tricks
File this under “Grab Bag.” Instructables presents this list of 50 Handy Tricks encompassing nothing in particular. You’ll learn how to do everything from taking blink-free photos to making a bow-and-arrow out of skis. Not necessarily teaching-related, but a creative soul like you can certainly figure out a way to build a lesson plan around reupholstering your couch with duct tape, can’t you?

10 virtually instant ways to improve your life
Want to add some quality to your quality of life? The folks at Stepcase Lifehack have some ideas, most of which can be summarized by the word, “relax.” Avoiding drama, not being a perfectionist, and not taking things personally will all help you make a fitter, happier and more productive life for yourself. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: Kaptain Kobold on flickr

How to Save Money on Gas - 29 Tips – I now own a car for the first time in ages. In fact, the last time I had to fill up a tank it barely cost me a nickel. And back then there were only 14 cars, period. Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but gas is seriously expensive right now. Here’s a great list from OpenTravelInfo.com, where they explore some easy and great ways to cut down on the amount of nickels you pour down your tank.

18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess – Let me guess, you “know where everything is,” right? Even so, it doesn’t make your work any easier. Who wants to come home from a cluttered desk to a cluttered desk? Zen Habits presents these 18 tips on where to begin.

8 Ways to be Ruthless With Your Time – Who knew that actually planning your day would save you time? Not me, I guess. Thanks to Lifehack, now I know that scheduling things before I do them can help me save some minutes. Read more about it and seven other tips here.

29 Healthiest Foods on the Planet – If Superman was a real dude, I imagine his menu might look a little something like this. This list via BellyBites.com boasts such delicious and nutritious foods such as Apricots, Bok Choy and Crab. (Not a suggested combination of ingredients, however.) –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: incurable_hippie on flickr.

11 Odd but Simple Ways to Improve Your Health
There’s nothing like a good nasal rinse. Or how about a fast to detoxify your body? These offbeat health tips can keep your body running smoothly. After all the stress you put it through every day in class, you at least owe yourself a skin brushing.

1001 Books You Have to Read Before You Die
Need a good book to read? Check out this exhaustive (and exhausting) list of great books. You’ll find everything from Oscar Wilde to Douglas Adams, plus lots, lots, lots more. If you want to read all 1001 of these before you croak, you’d best get started soon.

George Orwell: 6 Questions/6 Rules
The author of 1984 and Animal Farm presents these rules for writers to live by. My favorite: “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” What a stupdendous idea!

16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School

A lot of life skills don’t fall within the scope of science, math or English class. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to squeeze in some valuable real-world lessons into your teaching, though. The Positivity Blog presents this list of lessons the author had to learn the hard way. By imparting concepts like the 80/20 Rule (we get 80% of the value we receive from only 20% of the things we do) and the value of making mistakes to your students, you can help them be productive members of society.

How to Ace Your Job Interview: 88 Surefire Tips and Tricks
Your students are about to head out into the world, and that means they’re going to need to get a job soon. Make sure you pass along these tips from the Online Education Database about how to secure employment. The list addresses everything from cover letters to grooming. A lot of it seems like common knowledge, but you know people don’t make lists like these unless there were a bunch of clueless applicants out there. These tactics will give your students an advantage over the competition, and they might even come in handy for your own future job search.

Photo credit: lagiuspo on flickr.

From what I can tell, Mind Mapping is all the rage right now, and I should probably learn how to do it. In fact, you should, too. Lucky for us both, that information is made available at Brain Dance’s Meta Learning Handbook. The online walk-through is based on the information in Patrick T. McGee’s Brain Dancing handbook. Ideal for students, Mind Mapping is a great visual way of processing input and doling out clean, organized output. It’s a tool that can be used to help you read more efficiently and retain more information on what you’ve read.

Using this visual-based way of thinking, “Brain Dancing” will help you also improve your memory and learning skills. We’d love to hear from anyone who has given this a try, or if you want to be a guinea pig and test it out. Let us know if this site has your gray matter doing the cha-cha. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Brain Dancing for Students

Spring is conference season. That means getting out of class, baked chicken hotel luncheons, and another free tote bag to stuff into your closet. If it turns out the conference was overbooked and the chicken overdone, take solace that the event won’t be a total wash if you convert your tote into a messenger bag.

Flickr user duganj has created a step-by-step photo tutorial on how to transform those ubiquitous canvas bags from swag into swank. You’ll need a tote bag (you’ve probably got hundreds from various conferences) and sewing skills and supplies, or at least access to the home ec room. It’s a great way to carry around homework or your laptop, and you’ll know you at least got something useful out of your latest conference. -BILL FERRIS

HOW TO - Tote Bag to Messenger bag via Make
Convert a tote to a messenger bag via Lifehacker

Online tools have greatly increased social and political awareness. Friends can now readily share news, petitions, photographs, meeting information, corporate investment information, and much more with one another.

Scyrve enables those interested in conservation to check out companies’ environmental consciousness via a searchable interface for company profiles that are broken into two areas, Environment and Community. Each area then explains an organization’s environmental ideals in its industry. Each area includes the most important positive and negative aspects of their policies and records. Environmental questions include the extent to which that company recycles, and whether office supplies from are sustainable sources. Community questions such as if employees receive a living wage and health insurance help determine ratings.

A particularly nice feature of Scryve is their downloadable tool lets you know the environmental ratings of companies in real time, displayed discreetly on your desktop. So next time you’re thinking of buying that oil tanker online, check out Shell Oil’s environmental track record, see if they’re worth your support.

Scryve lets you put your green behind companies that take green initiatives seriously! -DAVID BARGER

Scyrve

Educators (that’s you!) can get 25% off books, music, movies, and whatever else you can find at Borders until April 8. If you’re a current or retired teacher, bring a proof of your educator status to your nearest Borders and save some cash. By the way, your purchases can be for classroom or personal use, so you won’t have to scheme ways to use your new LOST Season 3 DVDs for a lesson plan.

Also, on Friday, April 4, there will be receptions replete with food and prizes. If you’ve got any books you’ve been wanting to buy, now’s the time to do it. -BILL FERRIS

Borders Educator Savings

Borders teachers’ week starts today via the News & Observer

8 Firefox Extensions Towards Safer Browsing - Personally, I HATE pop-up ads, (and most banner ads) so I do whatever I can to avoid them. Firefox already does a nice job of keeping pop-ups from occurring, but there is a lot of things that slip by Firefox by itself. Luckily, ts/sci Security (a nice, clean, ad-free blog) presents this list of some helpful add-ons that can help give you some peace-of-mind when it comes to web browsing.

30 Tips to Rejuvenate Your Creativity - Lifehack does it again with this list of 30 ways to chop your creative block right in twain. As it turns out “start somewhere” isn’t really as hard as you might think. Also one of my favorites, “Don’t judge your ideas until you have plenty to judge.”

10 Extraordinarily Different Uses for Potatoes - Sorry folks, those delicious tubers aren’t just for mashing and au gratin-ing anymore. Gomestic offers this list of some unorthodox ways of using potatoes other than just eating them. I don’t know if any of the tips could be qualified as being “extraordinarily different” per-se, but they sure are neat. Surprisingly not on the list: make a battery.

100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English - I’m expecially critical when it comes to people misusing grammar. Whether I’m enjoying an expresso or just reading in the libary, there is always an abundance of people mispronouncing words, mispellling them, excetera. Here’s a list from YourDictionary.com of words people all-too-often mispronounce. I’d love to see a list of phrases people misuse in context, but that would be a whole nother post.

When Wikipedia Won’t Cut It: 25 Online Sources for Reliable, Researched Facts - I blogged about some other alternative-to-Wikipedia resources not too long ago, but here are some more. Students are going to use the internet to do their research, so they might as well have an abundance of reliable places to find information, right? Check out this list of 25 from CollegeDegree.com. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo credit: jaycoxfilm on Flickr.)

I’ve been waiting my whole life for this: USA Today says it’s now cool to be a cheapskate.

Simplicity is apparently the new black. Folks are cutting back on simple luxuries like dining out, and are getting rid of stuff they no longer use via Goodwill, Freecycle or Zwaggle.

What does this mean for teachers? You’re already familiar with pinching pennies and making do with what you have. Hey, on the new less-is-more coolness scale, you’re Miles Davis. But as trend-setters it’s always a good idea to try and push the envelope. That could mean anything from clearing out obsolete test from your files to organizing your storage closet to using fewer pens by keeping better track of the ones you have.

This philosophy can apply to life outside the classroom, too. Everybody has creature comforts they say they can’t do without. Some folks go to Starbucks every day for a mocha frappa something. For others it’s clothes. Me, I required four cans of Coke Zero every day (yeah, I’m a junkie). But do we really need that stuff? I’ve switched to buying whatever soda is on sale, or chugging 2-liter bottles of generic stuff like a 17-year-old. I’m sure some brave souls have abandoned Starbucks for whatever’s brewing in the teachers lounge.

There are many ways we can cut out excesses in our lives, whether through adjusting our spending habits to eliminating unnecessary junk. Striving for simplicity can lead to fatter wallets and a calmer lifestyle–not to mention that it now makes you the coolest kids on the block. -BILL FERRIS

What’s your reaction to the article? What do you do to simplify your life? Let us know in the comments!

USA Today: Simple living ‘trendy’ via Unclutterer

Related Stuff:
Swap your Stuff at Zwaggle
Keep Useful Items Out of the Landfill With Freecycle

Photo credit: MelvinSchlubman on flickr

I still haven’t gotten my iPhone yet, but it will happen soon. Until then, I’ve been using a highly useful piece of technology to keep my notes and ideas organized. The problem is that I don’t always have a working pen or I am not in a place that is conducive to writing. I do, however, always carry my phone. Kwiry is an easy to use service that allows you to text whatever you want to a standard number, and that message will be delivered to your inbox. It’s not unlike Jott, which we’ve written about before, but this service is for those of you who prefer texting to speaking.

Simply sign up for a free account, and you’re ready to begin. Just text whatever info you want to KWIRY (59479) and it will automatically arrive at the email of your choosing, as well as your account inbox. Be careful, though, as the service itself might be free, but normal texting rates apply. Kwiry seems like a highly useful tool for the forgetful or the organizationally obsessed, but is really about as helpful as tying a string around your finger. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Kwiry