I hate RealPlayer. HATE! When it’s not bombarding me with ads, it’s installing spyware on my machine or nagging me to upgrade to RealPlayer Pro despite the suckitude of the free version. I uninstalled it for good two years ago and haven’t missed it. Except, that is, when I find that one-in-a-hundred video that’s only [...]
Browsing Posts published in April, 2008
It wouldn’t be right to say goodbye to Poetry Month without devoting one more post to a positively precious poetry resource. One of my personal favorites is QuickMuse, where contemporary poets step up to the plate to write a poem in 15 minutes or less. Presenting your students with perfectly executed sonnets, masterpieces of Romantic [...]
I stumbled-upon this little gem of a game that is an awesome algebra teaching tool in the guise of the perfect online distraction game. The Algebra Puzzle uses a grid of symbols such as cars, stars and guitars in a 3×3 (beginner) or 4×4 (advanced) configuration, testing players on their ability to assign values based [...]
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 [...]
There are all kinds of flakes; the human kind (bad), and the food kind (pie crust, frosted, etc.) that are good. Pageflakes is a Web application that is in the second category. Pageflakes lets you create Web pages with a click of your mouse, and best of all, you can put up information that updates [...]
One of the neatest projects I ever did for a college literature class was to interpret a novel through a digital collage — and not just because it got me out of writing a paper. Creating a visual representation of the themes and motifs in the book let us tell a story through images rather [...]
“Curiosity killed the cat” – that’s one old saying I’d like to get rid of. Curiosity leads to advancement and discovery, and is the very foundation of science. Kids are naturally curious, so you may as well put it to scientific use with Cool Science for Curious Kids from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The [...]
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 [...]
Be a Smooth (Boolean) Operator with Boolify The Boolify Project is a piece of software that takes the concept of Boolean Operators — add “and” to narrow, “or” to broaden, etc. – and boils it down into a visual search engine that’s easy for kids (elementary to middle school level) to understand. Branch Out Your [...]
I used to think I was hot snot because I could type 70 words per minute. I found out the hard way how average I am when I played TypeRacer, a game where you race head-to-head against other typists to see who’s the swiftest. Unlike most typing tests, TypeRacer features lyrics to songs by Pink [...]
