Instructify

Do your students need to study more? Okay, probably a dumb question. How about this one - do you have students who need to learn how to study? Some kids are better at studying than others. Fortunately, by imparting study skills, you can teach kids more effective ways to learn. A great place to start? How-to-Study.com.

Note: make sure to include the hyphens, as howtostudy.com is a much different site (I haven’t reviewed it, so I couldn’t tell you if it’s better or worse).

At How-to-Study.com you can find strategies for overcoming the most tricky subjects students face, including word problems in math, long spelling words, writing research papers, as well as abstract skills like setting goals, time management, and good listening skills. All the study strategies are thorough and free.

With How-to-Study.com, your students can learn to take more effective notes  so they’ll be ready for your upcoming multiple choice test (the site has strategies for those, too). -BILL FERRIS

How-to-Study.com

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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

Bubble sheets are so last century. Now you can create and grade tests completely online with ClassMarker. ClassMarker lets you create multiple choice, free text or punctuation tests and administer them online. The system will record student answers and, if you’re giving a multiple choice test, grade them for you.

ClassMarker gives you many options for free. If you spend 25 bucks and upgrade to to the Professional level, you can add features like automatically giving answer-specific feedback for correct or incorrect answers, as well as removing advertising and having quiz results emailed to you. That said, the free options should do pretty much everything you need.

A small complaint: ClassMarker doesn’t allow you to create a test with multiple choice and free response. You’ll have to create separate tests for each type of question you want. That’s only a minor headache, especially considering the potential headaches you can avoid (poor student handwriting, bubble sheets, rounding up #2 pencils) by conducting tests online. -BILL FERRIS

ClassMarker

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The Root of the Issue: Review Word Roots with this SAT Word Game

Are your students freaking out about their SAT scores? Before they spend a bundle on SAT preparation materials, have them frequent the College Board’s SAT Question of the Day. Every day they’ll get hit with questions just like they’ll see on the tests. If they create a free user account on the College Board site, they can keep track of their results. To make things even easier, RSS feeds and email can deliver the questions directly to their computers, so they won’t have to muck about with filters and firewalls.

For more review, check out their SAT Practice Questions in Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing. Note: on the main page, they’ll see a lot of products with price tags. Though more review never hurts, they can still get some practice with the freebies listed above. And when in doubt, their local library will probably have SAT review books available. So while the SAT test is expensive, studying for it doesn’t have to be. -BILL FERRIS

SAT Question of the Day

SAT Practice Questions

They say time is money. In a school, time is knowledge. For example, the time you spend getting your students to calm down after recess is time you no longer have to teach them their vocabulary words this week. To keep your class on track, whip out this handy dandy Class Timer.

Class Timer can do exactly two things: it can track how long an activity takes, or count down from a predetermined time. But its uses are practically limitless. If you’re giving a test, Class Timer can let them know exactly how long they have left to finish. Once the science lesson is done, tell your kids they’ve got exactly two minutes to get their social studies homework out. Or see who has the fastest time in a math race.

With Class Timer, time won’t slip away from you, and your students will have more time to expand their knowledge. -BILL FERRIS

Class Timer

Words… I love them! I’ll take crosswords or curse words, word play or word-of-the-day; in lines, on lists, or out of lips, I just get a kick out of them. For this reason, a good friend of mine, who has recently started student teaching, thought I might be a good person to ask about fun ways to teach word roots to her high school classes. She was wrong. At first my answer was, “aren’t word roots like inherently fun?” Thinking I owed her something more useful, I figured I’d turn to one of my other great loves (the Internet).

The coolest thing I found was an SAT prep game at Quia.com. This game has Jeopardy-style, one- or two-player games for an impressive array of subjects – one of them being word roots. The game is actually quite difficult if you attempt it unprepared, but if your students are studying the roots that the game uses, then it would be about right. -MARIELLE PRINCE

SAT Word Game via Quia

Judgment is at hand–prepare thyself!

Like the apocalypse, the SAT, ACT and GRE tests seem like far-away tribulations we all prefer not to think about. But each of us must face the trials of standardized testing. Therefore, brothers and sisters, prepare your mind for the ordeal to come with free test preparation from Number2.com.

When you sign up at Number2, you can access their SAT, ACT, Vocab, and GRE prep materials–great news if you’re thinking about a Masters or PhD. The Vocab section starts pretty basic, but gets progressively harder. For the individual tests, Number2 covers all the sections of each, going so far as to discuss the reasoning behind concepts such as grammar and algebra. They do so in a friendly, conversational, and sometimes funny style that makes cynical jerks like myself feel right at home.

The folks at Number2 appear genuinely concerned with your well-being, to a frightening degree. I signed up to check out the site’s features, got distracted by something shiny, then forgot about it. Number2 soon sent emails nudging me to finish my set of grammar questions. Then to remind me I hadn’t logged in lately, and where had I been? I finally went to the site’s control panel and turned off emails before Number2 started calling hospitals to see if I’d been injured.

Email irritation aside, Number2 is an invaluable tool for both students and teachers. So the next time you or your students sacrifice a precious Saturday morning to the gods of college-readiness testing, put your faith in Number2. –BILL FERRIS

Number2