Instructify

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

Johnny Lee, a YouTube personality and “human-computer interaction researcher” is changing the way we use existing technology through simple modifications, and he’s sharing it with everyone. This amazing demo proves that using something as inexpensive and highly obtainable as the Wii Remote, he can create an interactive whiteboard. Lee explains that while the whiteboard isn’t exactly the quality of it’s $3000 likeness, you’ll still get “80% there for about 1% of the cost.” He notes that teachers are able to access this technology for use in their classrooms, and many already are.

Lee makes no qualms about making this sort of technology available for anyone who wants it. He’s put the software on his website, and at the time of this demo, it had been downloaded half a million times. View the demo for the full extent of what other uses Lee is finding for the technology, and visit his website if you want to learn more. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Johnny Lee’s $40 Interactive Whiteboard

Johnny Lee Computer-Human Interaction Researcher

Back in February, Jeremy blogged about Doodle 4 Google, a contest where students redesigned the Google logo based around the question, “What if…?”. The entries are in, and you can now vote for your favorites. The winning drawing will replace the usual Google logo on May 22.

If you missed the contest deadline, you can still take advantage of the lesson plans Google has made available for the project. The contest’s central question, “What if…?” can be a springboard for lots of creative ideas beyond just the Google logo. For example, I think the Instructify banner at the top of this page would be a great choice. -BILL FERRIS

Doodle 4 Google - Vote

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I always thought that college was the time for experimentation, but as it turns out, there’s a lot of experimenting you can do in elementary school, too. Hunkin’s Experiments are a collection of simple cartoons that explain how to do simple experiments. Their drawings are rudimentary and playful, but luckily, so are the experiments themselves.

Hunkin has divided them into several categories like Food Experiments, Math, Sound, and even Clothes. Here’s an example from the “Food Experiments” category:

How To Write Your Name on an Apple - Cut the shapes of the letters out of strips of plastic insulating tape. Stick these on a growing apple and wait a week. Areas of the apple covered by the tape will have become bleached and the name will be clearly visible when you remove the tape.

None of the experiments get much more difficult than that, and the science behind each is never really explained. If you just want some easy and fun experiments and tricks to have fun in the classroom, then Hunkin has something for you. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Hunkin’s Experiments

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The last movie I watched about British schoolchildren was over 2 hours long and didn’t make a lot of sense to me. My main trouble was trying to figure out why an organization such as the Department of Mysteries would store rather valuable information in crystal ball format, which were then stacked precariously on high shelves where they could easily fall and shatter. If you ask me that’s just inviting disaster.

Plot holes aside, terrific strides are being made by other British schoolchildren when it comes to film-making. Check out the Me and My Movie feature on Children’s BBC. This interactive site offers the amateur filmmaker in your classroom all kinds of videos and written instructions—plotting advice, camera techniques, lighting, etc. Trying all these short tutorials together is the Movie-Making Guide, which helps the student to plan out the entire process. -NICK YINGLING

Me and My Movie

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I recently had to create a time line for a project. Not knowing what else to do, I cobbled one together in Excel like a caveman. Literally three days later, I heard about Mnemograph, which would have made my time line look a lot better, and would have required a lot less effort.

Mnemograph makes creating a time line easy. Your time line can cover any duration, from a couple of hours to several hundred years (great for history projects). To add an entry, just add the date or time and the event description, and you’re all set. You can also import images to give your time line a more historic flair.

Mnemograph is kind of a one-trick pony, but that single trick is pretty valuable if you need to plan a project or illustrate some historical milestones. One milestone I’ve hit is that, thanks to Mnemograph, I won’t have to hack these things together in Excel anymore. -BILL FERRIS

Mnemograph

Do you struggle to explain Web 2.0 to interested but clueless administrators? Social networking, blogging and podcasting can be tough to describe to the uninitiated. If you need succinct explanations of social media to convince your principal to open the school’s firewall for you, show him or her a video by Common Craft.

Common Craft videos are free mini-tutorials on everything from wikis to RSS, and even what to do in case of a Zombie attack (that was a Halloween video, but zombies probably don’t know what day it is, so it’s good advice to heed year-round). Each video discusses a topic in plain English using a white board and simple paper drawings for visual aids. The simplicity of the production is Common Craft’s greatest asset - nebulous concepts like social bookmarking don’t look so daunting in a paper doll context.

Watching Common Craft videos may give you a few ideas for some class projects. Your class can make this type of video without much more than a white board and a Web cam. Making your videos as engaging and pithy as Common Craft, however, may take some practice. -BILL FERRIS

Common Craft

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I can’t say that I have seen the show Surfing Scientist, but he has some pretty fun and educational experiments you can use to entertain and keep your students interested in science. Most of the experiments here are almost more about logic than science, but I’m sure you can find a way to spin them both ways. There are 20 “conundrums” to choose from and download, so you can then print copies to hand out to your students. Surfing Scientist also has some other content at the site that could prove to be educational and maybe even “cool” at this site, so feel free to scavenge for some ideas. This could be the perfect way to stave off the approaching summer and keep kids in their seats and thinking. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

The Surfing Scientist’s Conundrums 

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.)

Making movies is a great way to harness students’ creativity for good instead of evil. It’s also a good way for students to goof around and get lost in the many steps of the film making process. Good planning is key to any successful video project. You can help them make the process go as smoothly as possible by using resources like Kids’ Vid.

Kids’ Vid will guide you and your class through every facet of making movies, including scripting, shooting, editing, and showing off their hard work on DVD or online (the site has been around since 2000, so they also mention something called “videotape,” whatever that is). Take advantage of their surprisingly advanced storyboarding tools, pick up a few camera tips, and heed their advice on not overdoing effects - even the awesome star wipe can be used too much. -BILL FERRIS

Kids’ Vid

University of St. Louis - Missouri has a great resource for science teachers and science fair participants compiled at their Science in the Real World: Microbes in Action website. There are experiments here for just about every grade level, so whether you’re teaching youngsters about fungus and bacteria, or if you want your teens to do a hands on experiment that doesn’t involve dry ice, there’s something here for you.

The collection of PDFs has oodles of classroom activities, as well as articles, troubleshooting tips, and outside links for further research. My only qualm is that there aren’t many (if any) photos to populate the files, but I suppose you’ll just have to go by the guide and let the results surprise you. Either way, the instructions are nicely compiled and you should be growing your own mold spores in no time. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Science in the Real World: Microbes in Action

No, not that Apple, this is The Apple - a place for teachers to get together and share online. The Apple is a wonderful resource that I’m sorry I haven’t found before, but there’s no time like the present, I guess. Here, you can get all kinds of useful teaching information including lesson plans, news, videos, and photos. You’ll need to register for a free account, but once you do, you can not only peruse the forums and interact with teachers from all over the globe, but you’ll have the ability to share your own teaching secrets as well. Not only that, but you can stay up to date on the latest in education news and read stories directly related to teaching and teaching methods.

Interested in becoming a teacher? Looking for relocation opportunities? Check out The Apple’s jobs section and post your resume or search for employment. There’s a guide for those of you looking to break into the teaching field, and a School Finder to locate the best places to get accredited for the subject areas you want to teach. There’s more content here than I have words to write about, so chances are likely that you can find something interesting about teaching that you didn’t know already. Take a bite of The Apple, you deserve it. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

The Apple

Unless you have never seen a computer in your entire life or have never heard of the Internet, you know all about Google and what a wonderful tool it is. Heck, I bet you’ve even used the word “Google” as a verb in the the past twelve hours. If you’ve used the search engine on any given special day, chances are likely that you’ve seen those cool sketches that surround the logo, giving you the reminder of what holiday it is (hmm… brb, gtg get flowers) while giving you a smile at the same time.

Now its your school’s turn to show the world what you’ve got. Doodle for Google invites K - 12 Schools and their students to an compete for a chance to have their very own doodles featured on the front page of the #1 search engine in the world. This year’s theme is “What if…” - which might be the broadest topic imaginable - but it encourages students to use their imaginations in a very big way. All the details and materials are available via Google - all you need to do is register your school before March 28th, and get those entries in by April 12th. Google has even gone an extra step to create lesson plans and templates for you to integrate the project right in with your lesson plan, no matter what the grade level.

For further inspiration, check out this video featuring Dennis Hwang, Google’s resident doodler. You can also read an interview with the 29-year-old artist here, in which he offers some great tips to get you started. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Doodle 4 Google

With all the hubbub about the One Laptop per Child initiative, it’s nice to see how these little gadgets affect children’s lives. Our Stories lets you see children using their new laptops, and in the process, gives you a glimpse of their lives, and the conditions that make OLPC necessary in the first place.

No less a figure than Queen Rania of Jordan bids you welcome, and invites you to listen to the oral histories of children from around the world. Go to the Our Stories world map and click on one of those cute OLPC icons. Each icon hovers over a country that has received a laptop. Once there, school children tell a brief story about their countries and the issues affecting them. Verow, a young boy in Tanzania, discusses the dangers of malaria to children. In Venezuela, Kimberly talks about how the government could do more to help children living on the street.

Our Stories is a great opportunity to discuss cultural differences with your students. It’s also a great jumping-off point to conducting oral history projects of your own. Communication is one of the best paths to learning. Our Stories shows just how powerful Communication can be. -BILL FERRIS

Our Stories