35 Scholarships Anyone Can Get - CollegeDegree.com has put this list of scholarships together that just about anyone is eligible for. The list includes scholarships in various amounts, as well as essay writing contests and some unorthodox contests like the Duct Tape Stuck at Prom Scholarship.

50 Things from Ben Jones - Ben Jones blogs for the M.I. T. admissions department. This letter, addressed to the incoming freshman, is a quick and dirty “here are the things I wish I’d known” list, with such advice as: All nighters are highly overrated. You said it, Ben.

101 Tips to Help You Make Money Doing What You Love - If you love teaching, don’t ever stop. But if your students have no idea what to do with their lives, then point them towards continuing to do the things they love. These tips from InspiredMoneyMaker.com should do the trick.

No Takebacks! Five Playground Rules to Live By - When the kids are at recess, you might do yourself some good by paying attention to what they’re yelling at one another. As it turns out, those tried and true rules like: No cutting and No do-overs might be more applicable to your adult life than you thought. From Dumb Little Man. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo by: HeavyWeightGeek on Flickr)

Teachers have a lot to do on any given day, and it can be difficult to find time to sit down and create nice, simple worksheets that perfectly complement your lesson plans or design calendars to help organize both you and your students. Butthanks to the Internet, there are tons of resources you can take advantage of to make your tough job a little bit easier.

The Worksheet Library is an online resource full of worksheets, calendars, planners, newsletter templates, bookmarks and tons of other useful materials on subjects like math, science, and language arts to use in your kindergarten through sixth grade classroom. You can check out more than 500 materials available on the site for free (all the free worksheets are designated with the little “free” icon next to them), and you can sign up for their free weekly worksheet which is conveniently sent directly to your e-mail.

As an added bonus, the site also offers free teaching tip articles for grades K through 6 on topics like report card comments, time-saving advice, and icebreaker exercises, which are useful to both novice and experienced teachers alike.

To reap all the benefits of the site, you do need a membership, though you should be able to find enough free stuff to be worth your while. And they add new materials each week, so there’s always something new to check out!

We know you’re busy, so let the Internet do a little bit of the work now and again. Really, it doesn’t mind! - LAUREN FROHNE

Worksheet Library

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8 Tips to Help You Think Like a Genius - I don’t need these tips, personally, because me am already genius. You might find them useful, though. ZME Lifetips recommends visualization, being productive, and thinking metaphorically amongst others. Start using these tips and you’ll be a geinus in no time.

5 Questions That Will Save You Time and Money - Lifehack presents this list of questions you should ask yourself to tell if you are being productive or actually wasting time. There are a lot of do-it-yourself-ers out there who think they can do-it-themselves but they end up not-doing-it-right so they end-up-paying-for-it-later. The first of these five questions sums it up nicely: Do I have the skills necessary for the task?

6 Best Ways to Learn Physics… For Free - I don’t know much about physics, but I do know it is easier to understand if you see it in action. Blog Learn Out Loud has compiled this list of a few good video demonstrations you can find on the web. Included on the list is a great video we mentioned before about the 10th dimension.

List of Educational Web 2.0 Apps to Jumpstart Your Productivity - There are a lot of Web 2.0 applications out there, but only a few are catered toward becoming a better learner. DiplomaGuide has found some of the better ones available. These 25 applications are divided into categories like ‘organization’ and ‘note taking’. There seems like a good mix here, so sort your way through to find what you can recommend to your students. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Szagi 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.

Counting your Blessings: 5 Ways to Increase Happiness - I know that this probably doesn’t apply to you, but if you are the least bit unhappy, there might be some info here that will turn your frown upside down. Via Goodlife Zen (I know, what a wretch-worthy great title for a blog), this list will help you realize how important gratitude is in both giving and receiving.

The Top 10 Qualities Of A Good Teacher - Here’s something wonderfully relevant and perfect for you. Sure, there are probably hundreds off qualities that make a good teacher, but the blog Ripples of Improvement has boiled it down to the top 10. How many do you exhibit? (Also, surprisingly not on the list: a sense of humor. Hmm.)

100 Best First Lines from Novels - Not that I’ve read 100 novels, but someone surely has. Check out American Book Review’s list of the best of the initiations in fiction. If nothing else, these might inspire you to think of some of your own, and they might prove to be great prompts for students. Anything’s better than “It was a dark and stormy night…” (My personal fav: “All this happened, more or less.” -KV)

Top 100 Tools for Learning Spring 2008 - Again, a very topical and appropriate list for you teachers and learners. There might not be much new on here that you aren’t already using or have at least heard of, but maybe now is the time you start to use them to your advantage. Courtesy of Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.

Alas, this might be my last MBTN for a little while, but I’m confident in my co-authors to bring you the best of the web in numbered list form at the beginning of each week. If they don’t you let me know, friends. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo via: solar ikon on flickr.)

Top Ten Things Parents Can Do to Help Their Children Succeed in School (and in Life) - Lisa is a teacher. She is also a blogger. She seems to know what she is talking about. Check out this list on her page: Letters from Lisa. After you’re done perusing this list, check out some of her other entries. Lisa is one smart cookie.

9 Things to Stop Worrying About Right Now - Put down that glass of water, people! As it turns out, you don’t really NEED 8 glasses a day, so there is no sense in wasting precious space in the stomach for Mountain Dew. MSNBC’s Today Show puts some rumors and myths to bed so you too can sleep easy.

Picasso’s Top 7 Tips for Creating an Exciting Life - If you think “unabashed creativity” and “exciting” go hand in hand, then who better to take advice from than Pablo Picasso? The Positivity Blog brings us this interesting and fun list.

10 Practical Uses For Psychological Research in Everyday Life - Do you know when someone is lying to you? If you answered “yes,” then good, you’ve recognized that a lot of people are probably liars. If you said “no,” then you are also right. In fact, you are the most right. Yep… no one lies. Not ever. Check out PsyBlog’s list of ways you can use the findings of psychological research in your daily life. You might even figure out how to use reverse psychology to outwit your students, but then again… you probably won’t. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo credit: misocrazy on Flickr.)

How to Proof Your Paper Like a Pro – 8 Proofreading Tips
If you’re sick of students turning in assignments with spelling errors and confusion among there, their and they’re, this post from studenthacks.org is a must. Drop what you’re doing and send your students there. Or should I say “they’re”?

101 Web 2.0 Teaching Tools
Pretty much what it sounds like, which I guess means you won’t need us anymore. Tomorrow on Instructify: best chicken soup recipes.

Vermont’s 23 Things
Every once in a while, it’s important to review the basics of Web 2.0 tools for folks who came in late. Vermont’s 23 Things gives you a rundown on blogs, wikis, RSS, all that stuff, so you can begin using it in your classroom.

Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
Just in time for April Fools Day, Lifehacker has a few computer-based practical jokes you can play on friends and coworkers. Who knows? If you get your printer to say “Insert Coin,” it may be the impetus for your administration to pony up some more dough for supplies. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: jurek d. on flickr

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

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

Zotero may sound like a futuristic adventure series starring, say, a precocious eleven year old who deftly maneuvers spam filters to keep suspicious supplement offers corralled in the bulk mail folders of upstanding citizens everywhere, but this free Firefox extension is very much a hero of the present.

Ideal for research assignments, Zotero is a tool that helps you keep track of your online sources. It seeks out and automatically collects citation information from an extensive list of web pages commonly used for research (many university, library, and periodical sites, JSTOR, Amazon, etc.)

Not having to worry about forgetting to note the copyright date is nice enough, but Zotero’s not a one trick pony. You can also use it to take notes on the sources you’re viewing, store PDFs, images, or web pages, and export your citations to Word.

This tool is ever-evolving. In 2008 Zotero plans to get on the bandwagon of web collaboration, so familiarize yourself with it now, and soon you’ll be able to exchange research advice with your e-colleagues (and browse off into the sunset). -MARIELLE PRINCE

Zotero

How do you get people to agree on meeting times? Unless you bribe people with food, getting meeting commitments is next to impossible. If scheduling headaches plague your staff meetings, consider using TimeBridge.

TimeBridge lets you suggest several potential meeting times. Attendees then respond, selecting which times work best for them (and they don’t have to sign up for TimeBridge to do so). Once that’s done, TimeBridge schedules your meeting for you. No fuss, and no wading through a swamp of emails trying to figure out everyone’s availability.

Two features that set TimeBridge apart: you can sync TimeBridge with your Outlook or Google calendar, and TimeBridge can provide free conference call numbers. That means you can easily consult your schedule when setting or accepting meetings. Also, everyone can participate, even if you’re traveling that day.

TimeBridge is also an ideal tool for students juggling extracurricular activities. If you assign a group project and Mary has play rehearsal, but Johnny can only meet after football practice but before Lost comes on his scheduled homework time, TimeBridge is the way to go. So no more excuses, no more grumbling about bad meeting times, and no bribes. Though bringing a snack for the meeting still wouldn’t hurt. -BILL FERRIS

TimeBridge

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Stop Ducking Me: Schedule Meetings with TimeToMeet

Who doesn’t need more calendar templates? The aptly-named Free Printable Calendar Templates allows you to download Microsoft Word templates for monthly, weekly, and yearly calendars, as well as HTML calendars.Since it’s free, you can only get calendars for dates within the next month, but hey, if you’re looking for weekly calendar templates to help students plan their time, these should do quite nicely. –ROSS WHITE

Free Printable Calendar Templates

They say the best teachers are usually the best learners. Or perhaps I just made that up. Either way, it stands to reason that a lifelong learner will have more knowledge to pass along to students–not the least of which is the art of learning itself.

If you’re an aspiring Renaissance man or woman, the Online Education Database has compiled a great list of learning methods in the article, “Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better.”

The ideas range from the obvious (brainstorming ideas to promote creativity) to the practical (using mnemonic devices to recall new information) to the hippie-dippy (taking ginkgo biloba to boost memory). There are several teacher- and student-specific ideas as well, such as keeping students engaged with dialogue-style lessons rather than lectures. With 77 strategies, some are more useful than others, but you’re bound to find some that will help you in the classroom. And the more you knowledge you have, the more you can pass along to your students. You may even want to mention some of these ideas to your students. Just don’t tell them about number 76: “Party Before an Exam.” –BILL FERRIS

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better

Back in my day we didn’t have palm pilots and electronic do-dads to keep us on schedule. We used our noggins and good old fashioned fear to help us keep our appointments.

But I can live with these free, downloadable, no-frills organizational templates from organizedhome.com. Print daily planners for students to keep track of their assignments. Use a calendar to schedule tests and quizzes. Maybe keep a parent contact list handy in case Flick sticks his tongue to the flagpole this winter.

For bite-sized organization, check out the all-in-one, note card-sized “Hipster PDA” from diyplanner.com. It’s packed with daily and monthly planners, shopping lists, finance sheets, story boards for creative work, and a bevy of other paper-based productivity pieces. You can find a template to organize virtually any facet of your hectic, stressed-out life.

Check out both sites to see which one is for you. Because even if you’re a Luddite, you can stay organized. -BILL FERRIS

Printable Planner Pages via Organized Home
Hipster PDA via D*I*Y Planner

The semester will end soon. That means you’ll be bombarded with questions about grades, make-up assignments, and the rigors of grading itself. If these thoughts give you a headache, consider Engrade your aspirin.

Engrade is basically an online grade book that lets you record and share grades. You can set up a grade book in just a few minutes. Best of all, it’s totally free.
Engrade also keeps track of attendance with an online attendance book feature. Even better, Engrade can fight truancy electronically by automatically emailing the parents of absent students. You can also set up homework calendar, so parents and students will know what’s coming up.

If students (and their parents) can track their grades at any time, it may motivate them to stay on task throughout the class. Come parent-teacher conference time, you won’t have to deal with parents who are angry about little Johnny’s surprise “D.” -BILL FERRIS