Instructify

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Usually, teachers aren’t known for encouraging students to shout. We tend to be more of a “shush” kind of crowd. However, if you’re going to shout about something, why not make it about solving an environmental issue? While it doesn’t condone disrupting class with loud vocalizations, Shout does encourage students to collaborate and get excited about helping the environment.

Shout provides an online arena for teachers and students to connect with environmental experts, collaborate with people around the world, and share ideas. The central scaffold for learning is called a “Shout.” This year’s theme is “land,” and the first Shout is “Live with the Land.” This Shout was live in November, and like all Shouts, contains three components: Explore, connect, and act. To explore, there are three one-hour sessions from a Smithsonian virtual conference, which are archived and available for viewing. To connect, Shout encourages educators to use the MIcrosoft Partners in Learning Educator’s Network in order to collaborate with other teachers on their effective implementation of the Shout into their classrooms. Finally, to act, students and teachers are encouraged to join TakingItGlobal to collaborate worldwide.

Of course, Shout has a teacher’s guide that gives more specific ideas on how to incorporate Shout into your classroom. Live sessions are planned every three months, with the next session scheduled for January 26, 2011.  This session’s theme will be “Study the Land” featuring the following sessions: A Natural History Approach to Plant Study and Conservation; Climate, Classrooms and Trees; and Charles Darwin in the Islands: Evolution, Adaptation, and Sustaining our Natural Heritage.

In the classroom, I can see several uses for Shout. If you were teaching an AP Environmental Science class for example, and you wanted students to work on some kind of action project, you could send them to Shout to get started. Another use could be with an environmental student club. The site has its first global challenge posted — DeforestACTION. The environmental issue behind this challenge is obviously deforestation, and the challenge to students is to take some kind of local action against deforestation.  To me, this sounds perfect for an after school club project.

If you’re a teacher who wants to develop globally thinking and compassionate students, and especially if you teach environmental science, take a look at SHOUT.  And shout out your joy at having such a well organized site. Just don’t disrupt the math teacher next door.

Shout

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BY BILL FERRIS

To solve engineering problems, the aviation industry has turned to the time-honored solution of child labor. Via the Real World Design Challenge, teams of 3-7 high school students will tackle an aviation problem using the software real engineers use. The contest is completely free, and has some pretty cool prizes and benefits.

The gauntlet, which has been thrown down:

Design the exterior geometry and internal structure of an airliner wing using aeroelastic tailoring methods to minimize the objective function by varying specified design variables without violating constraints. (Full challenge details here.)

Being an English major, I’ve no idea what that means. What I do know, however, is that teachers who partcipate get free access to more than $1 million (!) worth of engineering software. Your students will also get expert mentorship from engineers. Winning teams from each state get an all-expenses-paid trip to the RWDC national finals Washington, DC.

The registration deadline is November 19, and design solutions must be received by January 31, 2011. FYI, submitting an entry is a pretty involved process, so be sure to read the instructions page.

Real World Design Challenge

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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

All writers need editors. Lots of writers have their own editors inside their heads. Some of these editors enjoy telling writers they’re no good, and that they’re wasting their time. The National Novel Writing Month Young Writers Program lets kids tell that internal editor to shut up so they can get some work done.

First, a little background: National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) occurs every November, challenging authors of all skill levels to pen a novel of 50,000 words in only 30 days. The exercise is designed to get people to start creating for the fun of it without the pressure of trying to craft the next great literary classic. Last year 119,000 writers took the challenge. I did this myself in 2002 and found it to be a fun (and exhausting) exercise.

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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

According to BoostUp.org, every school day, 7,000 students drop out. Boost is a campaign by the AdCouncil designed to help encourage teens to make it through and graduate on time. The premise is simple, by sending a “boost,” you’re sending a motivating word via email or text message to encourage a student to stick out and make it to graduation. The site has some examples of students who have given thought to dropping out, and you can click on any of their profiles to lend a hand in letting them know you’re in support of them continuing to go to class. With 4 of 10 students not graduating each year due to family troubles, learning disabilities, teenage pregnancy, or various other reasons, this kind of campaign might just help teens in need.

Sure, those numbers are dismal and plenty depressing, but educators can get involved and just let their students know that there are people, strangers even, who care enough to give these Boosts. The AdCouncil is working in tandem with the U.S. Army to support this campaign, and the site itself (while wobbly and a but wonky) is easy to navigate and the call to action is even easier to do. Just click on the “Send Boost” button and you can send your words of encouragement to one of the teens on the site, or to someone you know personally. There’s also a Facebook fan page with more information and embeddable widgets that you can share on your own blog or website. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

BoostUp

Ah, water rocketry, that age old pastime as American as apple pie and baseball. Okay, I kid, but seriously, water rockets are pretty freaking cool. What better way to explore physics than by shooting a plastic bottle high into the stratosphere above a football field? I’ve written about water rockets before, but I recently stumbled across a site that takes water rocketry to the next level.

The Water Rocket Achievement World Record Association examines the practice of building rockets out of plastic bottles and H2O and puts it in the able hands of the social masses. The result is a site with a user forum populated with a bevy of helpful water rocket building information. Judging by some of the forum topic titles, some people out there take this sort of thing very seriously. What’s more is that there is a bit of a race to get folks at home (and students in the classroom) to build a rocket that will break 1000 ft. The world record is just begging to be smashed, so give that to your students as an even bigger incentive other than just getting a day outside. Even if you don’t want to be involved for the competition aspect, water rocketry is a fun way to learn about physics and rocketry in general. You can find a full list of rules and regulations on the page, as well as instructions on how you can get involved. This seems like a great way for a class to collaborate in small groups and compete with one another and those around the world to build one (or many) awesome water rockets. To infinity and beyond! -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

 The Water Rocket Achievement World Record Association

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It’s Not Like This is Rocket Science… Oh, Wait… It Is

The holidays are nearly upon us, and so is all the stress that accompanies them. I don’t just mean the stress from exploding turkey fryers or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with other holiday shoppers. I’m talking about midterms, research papers, and presentations—and you get to grade them!

SlideRocket isn’t really going to help you with the midterms or papers, but it will go great lengths towards making your students’ presentations look awesome. Delivering professional quality design through a web-based application, SlideRocket makes PowerPoint look like a joke. Since it’s a web app you won’t have to use up space on your hard drive and you won’t have to mess around with all that payment and registration business. Boasting an impressive library of image effects and stylish options for representing data, SlideRocket also lets you import media from Flickr, YouTube and other sites with ease. That’s World Wide Internet interconnectivity.

How many times have you thought to yourself, “If I watch one more PowerPoint, I’m going to claw my eyes out”? How many times have you taught from a clunky, outdated PowerPoint slide show? I’m certain you felt a sneaking suspicion that people were about to claw their eyes out.  Its not always what you’re saying so much as how you’re saying it. Add a little style with SlideRocket. -NICK YINGLING

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5 Sources for Free and Legal Images -If you blog or use any sort of photography in your presentations, you might want to start thinking about making sure those photos and images are legal for you to use. If you want to skip that step, try using one of these five sources from The Blog Herald. The best part is that they are free, so you won’t have to dole out any hard-earned cash, and you’ll still feel fine about using the images copyright free. Of course, there is always Creative Commons Flickr if all else fails.

Classroom Survival Kit: 25 Items You Need to Have on Hand In Your Classroom – From TeachingChildren.ca, this list includes all of the essentials for teachers, not  necessarily students. Though some of the items sound more like things you might need if you were going to commit a crime (tool box, dice, metal nail file, duct tape), most of the items here are crucially handy to have around. I personally would have never thought of keeping “thank you” cards around until the last minute, but I guess preparation helps.

11 Things You Shouldn’t Leave for School Without- This article from Dumb Little Man is meant for the college-bound, and it is never too early for seniors to start thinking about preparing themselves for success. These are all online resources, so if nothing else, sites like Ottobib.com — an online bibliography — provide resources students of all ages can use.

10 Quick Lesson Ideas for Substitute Teachers – Substitutes have it tough. My own mother substitute taught many classes in my school system, and though she had it pretty easy because many people loved her, most other subs didn’t top the list of people students respected.  These tips from Work Sheet Library should come in handy for any subs out there who might otherwise spend their whole day asking students to “settle down.” My favorite on the list: magic tricks. Nobody can make fun of a substitute teacher who does magic tricks…right?  -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: curly_exp(l)osure on Flickr

Ah, the science fair: a chance for your brainy students to match their mettle against other students around the county. For me, my only project involved agar, bacteria, and a weak hypothesis. I did find out that my dog’s mouth was just as clean as mine was, much to my chagrin. As stunning as this project seemed, it was shoddy and thrown together at best. I guess that is the price I paid for waiting for the last minute to start. Had I had web access like today’s youth, I could have used the site Easy Science Fair Projects.net to find something more fun and simple.

Easy Science Fair Projects has projects “anyone can do,” so if there are students in your class hanging on to the excuse of “I can’t think of anything good,” then point them here. The projects are divided into sections for kindergarten, primary, and elementary projects, with a handful of projects for each. There’s even a project blog so you can subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on newly added projects.  As promised, all of the projects are simple to accomplish, with few materials needed. You can also get all the information you might need to complete these projects, including the length of time needed to complete and what “stuff” you might need. Check out this balloon experiment for a good example of what you can expect.

Instructify would love to hear any other tips you might like to share about what you’re doing to influence your students to enter (and hopefully win) this year’s science fair. Let us know in the comments. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Easy Science Fair Projects

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If you were jonesing for a list of lists to better your edification skills yesterday, I apologize. Nonetheless, Instructify is happy to present Tuesday by the Numbers, the day-late version of its sister column, Monday by the Numbers.

100 Free Online Ivy League Courses You Should Take Just for Fun – I know it says “for fun,” but come on, the real reason to take any class is to get some sort of betterment or education, right? Whatever your motive, Eduk8 delivers this great list of online course offerings from places like Johns Hopkins and MIT. The courses themselves range in subject from Child Development and Psychology to Foreign Culture, and the list is chock full of such unique offerings as The Anthropology of Computing and Hip Hop.

100 Awesome, Free Web Tools for Elementary Teachers – It can be tough sometimes to filter out the things on the web that are truly valuable, especially when it comes to things that are useful in teaching children. Here’s a list from SmartTeaching.org that will help you be a better researcher and educator to the youngins. With 100 here, you’ll find something you didn’t know for sure.

101 Ideas for a Great Start – Though the school year has technically already begun, it isn’t too late to start things out right by setting yourself and your students up for success. Iowa State offers these tips in establishing some great methods for students and teachers to start things off on the right foot. The list is set up in categories such as ‘creating a welcoming atmosphere’ and ‘encourage active learning.’

7 tips to top sleep, 3 tips for staying awake – Though it should just be as easy as ‘get to bed earlier, wake up later,’ sleeping is not always as easy a task as it seems to accomplish. The University Blog gives us these tips to help you zonk out at night, and pep up during the day. Stop yawning and read these now. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit:  zen on flickr

Pencils? Check.

Notebooks? Check.

Online word processor application? Check.

In addition to standbys like pens, pads, and the ever-popular Trapper Keeper, today’s learners need a new set of school supplies, too.  These tools enable students to take advantage of the new learning possibilities the Web has to offer, such as making research easier, or finding better, cheaper ways of doing what they’re already doing.

In that spirit, here’s my top 10 new-school school supplies (all of which, by the way, are completely free).

1. OpenOffice — Why pay a bunch of money to Microsoft when you can get top-quality, MS-compatible programs for free? The OpenOffice suite packs a word processor, spreadsheets, presentation software, graphics software, and a database program. The open-source OpenOffice can do pretty much anything Microsoft Office can do, except drain your bank account.
2. A Cell phone — Whether it’s for podcasting, conducting surveys, or staying organized, the cellular phone has a huge amount of educational potential for those who know how to use it.
3. Remember the Milk –Back in my day, I wrote inky scribbles on my palm to stay organized. Today’s kids have Remember the Milk, which can keep track of assignments, activities, chores, and all applicable due dates and priorities. It also has fewer smudges.
4. Diigo — Invaluable for research, Diigo lets students bookmark and annotate webpages so they won’t forget why they bookmarked a page in the first place. They can also read other folks’ notes or annotations for further insight. Like any good Web 2.0 tool, Diigo lets them share their bookmarks and annotations with friends, too.
5. BibMe — Once students have found some great sources on Diigo, how do they cite them? Nobody has the time or energy to leaf through their MLA style manual to find the proper citation format for a newspaper article or whatever. If your students can muster the effort to enter a title, author, or ISBN number, BibMe will do the hard part and churn out a citation pre-formatted for the bibliography. If only the entire research paper process was this simple.
6. Google Docs — Does many of the things OpenOffice does. Google Docs also adds a collaborative element, as multiple students will be able to edit a document, spreadsheet or presentation.
7. OpenDrive – No more excuses about hard drive crashes. OpenDrive offers 1GB of storage online. Students can sync it with files on their hard drive for backups, collaborate with friends on projects, or use it to store their ever-expanding music collection. And for the time being at least, it’s free.
8. VoiceThread — A slideshow with a soundtrack, VoiceThread lets students tell stories visually as well as textually. Easily upload video, audio, even record narration via their cell phone (I told you those things were handy), with any luck VoiceThread will replace PowerPoint.
9. Adobe Photoshop Express Beta — If you thought Microsoft Office was expensive, check out the price tag for Adobe Photoshop. Fortunately, Photoshop Express Beta performs most of the photo editing functions students will need without costing a cent. They don’t even have to download anything. Now that’s express!
10. PB Wiki — Wikis are great for class projects and to cross-reference other pieces of information. And PB Wiki makes setting up a wiki a breeze, even if you don’t know a wiki from a blog.

As with any top 10 list, I had to exclude other worthy applications. Now’s your chance to tout your favorites (or to tell me what a jerk I am) in the comments. -BILL FERRIS

UPDATE: Okay, so cell phones aren’t exactly free. However, your students probably own them already, and most of the educational uses for them won’t cost you anything to implement.

Photo credit: jgodsey on flickr

Tired of teaching from the text book? Having a hard time fitting environmental science instruction into the school day? Well EcoKids can change all of that!

EcoKids is a Canadian interactive website created to engage students in environmental activities. This site is full of resources for teachers such as lesson plans, printable resources, and helpful links. It even has specifically designed lessons for ESL (English as a Second Language) students using the different environmental themes. Teachers can access information on Wildlife, Climate Change, Energy, The North, Waste, Land Use, and Earth Day to initiate any environmental or science lesson, or provided a great follow up to an end-of-unit study. This site even has a Fact of the Day that teachers can use to initiate classroom discussions or writing activities about the environment. Looking for an environmental project for your classroom or school? You can visit different links on the site that show different types of environmental projects students and schools are involved in for ideas.

Students can access the site and engage in games to practice what they have learned in the different areas of Wildlife, Climate Change, Energy, the North Pole, and Land Use. The games integrate the environmental themes with reading, math, science, problem solving, and social studies. Students can work on their writing skills by responding to questions posted periodically on the site, or commenting on the blog. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

EcoKids

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Lights, camera, video…in the classroom? You betcha! If you think kids like watching videos, wait until they start making them. Creating stuff is at a higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy than bubbling in a test sheet. But where to begin?

This handy and easy-to-understand guide from Education.com on producing an educational video is a great place to start. It breaks the process down into pre-production, production, and post production, step-by-step. You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment, as most digital cameras today have a video mode on them (my experience with Flip has been fantastic). I would add only one point to this otherwise superb article – for editing there is a free resource for Windows users in Movie Maker. It is not the most stable program (in the interest of disclosure, I have had Adobe Premiere Elements lock on me too, just not as often), but I’ll share a resource that should help you with these problems, PapaJohn – Movie Maker 2 – Issues-1.

A few other resources to help you out are Mathew Needleman’s excellent Video in the Classroom.com site. If you think your kids are too young, wait till you see what he’s done with 2nd graders. If there is an NYU Film school for videos in education it’s the AFI (American Film Institute) which does a lot of workshops teaching educators how to effectively help students make interesting, high-quality videos. -ALICE MERCER

Producting an Educational Video via Education.com
PapaJohn – Movie Maker 2 – Issues-1
AFI ScreenNation
Video in the Classroom.com — Integrating Video Production in the Elementary Classroom and Beyond

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Photo Credit: Stacy Lynn Baum on flickr

If you’ve ever wanted to write a book, but you never thought about how it could possibly come to fruition, then you should know it’s easier than you think. With Blurb, you can create a book of just about any size or shape, with any number of pages, and a fully customized look and feel. The content is all up to you, though, so you’ll be responsible for the hard part.

Once you finish your masterpiece, you can download the easy-to-use editor software to arrange and layout the book the way you want it. After that, pricing per individual book starts at $12.95. You can order as few or many as you like, and your work can be featured on the site for purchase by others if you wish. You’ll retain the copyrights, and you can even set your price to determine your own profit level.

Blurb‘s self-publishing platform could make for an awesome class project. Your students could be responsible for creating a collaborative project full of their own musings, pictures, stories and drawings. If you’ve got a web-savvy class, you can also take advantage of the blog-to-book feature and have them blog throughout the year, and then collect their works into a group project or individual books. The service and software are so easy to use, who knows, maybe you’ll see an Instructify book sometime soon. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Blurb