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Borders and their red-headed stepchild, Waldenbooks, will give educators 25% off from September 26 through October 2. We realize this info probably would’ve been more helpful a couple days ago (especially on Friday, when they were giving away free food). Still, you can save a few bucks before Wednesday. This sale applies to both current and retired educators, too. Just bring proof of your educator status.

Instructify doesn’t endorse any one bookseller over another. But giving good deals to teachers will get a thumbs up from us any day of the week. -BILL FERRIS

Ever wanted to learn the language of love? How about getting ready for that “business” trip to Thailand? LiveMocha might be the perfect way to learn a new language. It has plenty of different languages to choose from, and allows you to set your own pace and goals. Whether you are learning for fun, business, or just want to exercise your brain by becoming bilingual, this site offers courses and resources for just about any language out there. Well, not Swahili, but all the major ones.

There are video components, audio snippets, and text based dialogue pieces, all arranged with simple drop down menus and easily searchable lessons assorted by language. Try out one of the online courses if you are invested in really learning something new, as most of them require upwards of 30 hours. The best part is that it’s free (for now), but the worst part is that it’s still in Beta, and full of bugs (I could not register easily). Still, this site is worth a browse, so go check it out, you romantic, you. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

LiveMocha

Paint your Masterpiece with ArtRage 2
Presenting ArtRage 2, a free paint simulation program that turns your computer into a canvas, and your meager supplies budget into something almost adequate

Forgot Your Years of Piano Lessons? Cure Your Amnesia with Synthesia
Free game-based piano lesson. Like Guitar Hero, except you might actually learn something.

At Long Last: Stop Googling for the Fundamental Theorem of Integrals of Derivatives
Organize all those mathematical formulas and theorems you’ve got lying around into one easy-to-access location.

Inspire Your Class with the Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century
Lend a sense of immediacy to your American history class by listening to FDR’s Pearl Harbor address. If you’re a speech teacher, having students recite King’s “I Have a Dream” or Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance would be a nice change of pace if you’re sick of hearing them give oral interpretations of Fall Out Boy lyrics.

Travel the World, Meet Interesting People, Pwn Them – Geosense
Exert some global aggression without resorting to violence. Geosense tests your knowledge of US, European and world geography by listing cities and challenging you to find them on a political map.

Exert some global aggression without resorting to violence. Geosense tests your knowledge of US, European and world geography by listing cities and challenging you to find them on a political map.

If that sounds too easy for you, you can play against strangers from around the world as you try to see who’s the fastest cartographer or navigator or whatever. There’s also an ongoing chat function, so you can pick up your opponent’s local dialect and learn words like, “telly,” “Francophone,” and “n00b.” -BILL FERRIS

Geosense

In this age of grammatical informality brought on by email, IM, texting, and yes, blogs, I cackled like a bitter old man when I read the headline to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger post, “Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb.”

Clark’s list isn’t comprehensive (he left out the “hear” vs. “here” mistake, for example), and this information can be found many places. But five is a manageable number to start with, and if you successfully eradicate just these from students’ research papers, you’ll probably sleep better at night.

After all, if you’re an English teacher, it’s your job to make sure kids know this stuff. If you ask me, which you didn’t, I’d say make every student read this article and mandate they can’t get an “A” if they break these rules. Yeah!

Sorry, I got a little worked up there.

Look, we all know there’s more to writing than knowing your Strunk and White. But grammar exists to improve communication. As a professor once said after writing the words “burro” and “burrow” on the chalk board: “One is an ass, the other is a hole in the ground. If you don’t know the difference, you won’t pass this class.” -BILL FERRIS

Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb

Watch your class go down the tubes. Wait, that came out wrong.

You love how sites like YouTube have made it easy to upload videos you want to show your class, right? But you’re a little nervous about telling your students to go there because, let’s face it, there’s a lot of crazy crap on there, also. Worse, what with all the alarmism about porn and internet predators, it’s very possible your administration has blocked sites like YouTube. Well, your homemade video demonstration of adiabatic heating and cooling isn’t going to broadcast itself, so you’ve got to find an alternative.

Submitted for your administrators’ approval: TeacherTube, an all-education video site that lets you upload your movies for free. You can also tune in to the various “Channels” featuring content like languages, math, phys. ed., writing, and professional development. Naturally, TeacherTube makes use of tags to further categorize videos. Whatever you need, you can probably find it, minus all the self-indulgent nincompoops giving their video response to the season premiere of The Office. -BILL FERRIS

TeacherTube

If you enjoy distractions and you enjoy learning, then a) you are in the right place, and b) you’ll love this fun little flash game as much as we do. Name That Bug is a simple quiz that is chock full of information about common and occasionally uncommon insects. Brought to you by Orkin—the folks who “remove” the very same bugs—this whole thing might just be part of a marketing scheme designed to help customers identify their tiny terrors and make more informed calls at the first sign of anything creepy and or crawly.

From an educational perspective, this quiz gets a lot of mileage from such a simple game. For instance, I had no idea until now that Goliath Beetles are the heaviest insects in the world. Be careful, though, as the quiz is never really challenging for anyone over the age of 8, and the voice and sound effects are a little annoying. Still, treat yourself to a little distraction, and learn something at the same time. Note: the bugs in the game are cartoon versions of the real thing, so if you are squeamish around little critters, leave your worries at the door. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Name That Bug

Spice up your boring well-used history lectures with the most stirring speeches of the last hundred-odd years. American Rhetoric has assembled a list of the Top 100 Speeches of the 20^th Century. Each speech includes the full text, and better yet, most have an accompanying .mp3 file.

Lend a sense of immediacy to your American history class by listening to FDR’s Pearl Harbor address. If you’re a speech teacher, having students recite King’s “I Have a Dream” or Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance would be a nice change of pace if you’re sick of hearing them give oral interpretations of Fall Out Boy lyrics.

The list’s one drawback: since the list was compiled by American Rhetoric, we’ll have to look elsewhere for non-American gems by folks like Ghandi and Winston Churchill. Not to mention one of the most incisive commentaries on rhetoric itself, “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” by the Police. -BILL FERRIS

Top 100 Speeches of the 20^th Century

Sure, you know Pythagoras and his famous theorem, but do you know Planck’s Quantized (Quantum) Energy Equation? Probably not. EquationSheet.com is a great resource for math and science equations, all in a searchable and simple database that allows you to collect and sort through all your favorite equations. Calm down, I know this is exciting, but there are more Algebraic, Geometrical, and Trigonomical expressions, definitions and theorems than you can shake a stick at here.

If you’re teaching any of these subjects, you probably know more about this stuff than I do, so you might know what to search for more easily. If you are a real equation aficionado, you can even register for your own free account and compile your favorites in one easy-to-find location. If you are longing for some constants, equations or SI units, you can visit this site for all sorts of fun. Hopefully, things might make a bit more sense to you than me – I was an English major. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

EquationSheet.com

With all due respect to Guitar Hero aficionados, it’s not like you need any musical talent to play it. This should be simple–kids like music and video games. Why can’t there be a game that actually teaches kids to play?

After reading that kind of intro paragraph, you’ve probably figured out that there is such a game – Synthesia, available for free, even. Notes fall from the sky over a keyboard at the bottom of the screen. Press the correct keys at the correct time to boost your score. Pretty simple. Tetris was simple, too, and that game was pretty successful.

Speaking of Tetris, one of Synthesia’s most fun features is that it comes bundled with MIDI files for classic video games like Super Mario Bros., Bubble Bobble, and the aforementioned Russian puzzle game. But you can play along with any MIDI file you can find. The game itself is pretty difficult if you’re not a pianist, but playing the left-hand part for the Tetris theme at low speed is a good choice for beginners. If you’ve got some piano training, you may want to tackle Dragon Warrior.

For best results, you’ll need a USB or MIDI musical keyboard. You can play Synthesia with a standard computer keyboard, but it’s pretty useless if your goal is to actually learn something. I know I learned something–piano is hard. But Synthesia makes it just a little bit easier, and more fun. -BILL FERRIS

Synthesia

Prevent your students from adding years to their student loan repayment schedule. Bankrate.com offers up some more good advice for your college-bound students. Cheryl Allebrand’s “13 Financial Aid Traps” is as much for parents as for their kids, and dispels several (thirteen, in fact) myths about getting more funding for college.

Allebrand lists mistakes ranging from withdrawing money from retirement accounts to using credit cards as a means of establishing credit to impress financial-aid types (and not running up credit card debt is darn good advice for anybody. Not that I’d know from experience or anything).

It’s all good advice, but I worry about the next generation if there are myths floating around like, “Get married to achieve independent status” for the FAFSA. -BILL FERRIS

13 Financial Aid Traps

We realize Instructify has neglected the art teachers out there (not on purpose, of course). To try to make peace, we’ll point you toward some software whose name implies hate and violence. Presenting ArtRage 2, a free paint simulation program that turns your computer into a canvas, and your meager supplies budget into something almost adequate.

After you select a canvas, you can choose from an array of brushes, pencils, chalk, crayons, or markers. All are adjustable for size, pressure, and for brushes, how much paint you load. Everything works like its real-life counterpart—smear paint over the canvas, and smudge chalk and pencil lines. Brushes run out of paint, and colors blend with each other. You can even see the definition in each brush stroke.

The image above is an example of what someone with actual artistic skills could do with ArtRage 2. Programs like Photoshop have tricked me into thinking I wasn’t a total artistic failure. How realistic is ArtRage 2? Just like real paint, whatever I make looks like crap. Consider the following masterpiece.

If you want to splurge on more features like a roller, or the ability to squeeze paint straight from the tube, you can purchase a full version for about twenty bucks. You also get an airbrush, in case you want to hone your t-shirt painting skills.

Students can use ArtRage 2 at home to practice technique. You might want to try it yourself, since it’s tough to afford those trips to art supply store on a teacher’s salary. Just don’t let your administration catch wind of ArtRage 2, or you can kiss your supplies budget goodbye. –BILL FERRIS

ArtRage 2

Are you one of those teachers that can’t get enough of the teaching profession? Teacher Lingo has recently launched, offering teachers the opportunity to create weblogs and categorize them according to grade level. Then, you can search for blogs of interest to you. There are also areas for special education blogs and administrator blogs.

We didn’t find a critical mass in any area when we checked out the site, but if you’re looking to connect with like-minded teachers, Teacher Lingo might be a tool to consider. They’ve set up some tutorials for first time bloggers, as well as discussion forums. –ROSS WHITE

Teacher Lingo

Tune In: Education Podcasting Network
Now you can do essentially the same thing – learn by osmosis – by utilizing that expensive iPod for something other than Amy Winehouse’s gentle crooning.

Mango: Rhymes with Lingo (Sort Of)
I’ve always loved hearing the rich tones of people speaking their native tongue. Probably because my high school Spanish class was so full of students (myself included) torturing words and botching the accent.

Monitor The Government As Avidly As It Monitors You. Well, Almost.
This is a great tool for showing students the legislative process inaction in action

Sticki Wiki: This Wiki Spreads as Easy as Peanut Butter
A wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich first sounded to me like building a car as light as an elephant.

Nothing beats good old fashioned flash cards for review. And there’s no better way to make good old fashioned flash cards than to customize them with HTML and make them instantly available through a large online network to teachers and students around the globe. Just like when you were a kid. You can do all that with cueFlash.

Create your own deck or use someone else’s. They’re perfect to use for test reviews on pretty much any subject (cueFlash lets you select the type of deck, from vocabulary to math to geography to most anything else). The interface is WYSIWYG simple. The system will keep track of your right or wrong answers, then reshuffle the deck to hit you again with questions you have trouble with.

CueFlash is a simple and powerful way for your students to get acquainted with information they should’ve kept up on for the last unit. Sadly, if you’re into doing things caveman-style, cueFlash doesn’t have a function to print the flash cards onto actual note cards. I can’t imagine why you’d want to, though, since cueFlash is actually easier, minus those nasty papercuts. –BILL FERRIS

cueFlash