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 available in RealPlayer format. Being a stubborn jerk, I do without the video, cutting off my brain to spite their software.

As a teacher, chances are you already have this nagware on your machine already, either installed by someone else, or because you don’t want to deprive your students of educational or insightful videos. I applaud such sacrifice. Fortunately, you don’t have to let RealPlayer run your computer into the ground anymore thanks to the free and functional Real Alternative.

It’s simple: install Real Alternative, and it’ll play any Real-formatted audio and video files. However, Real Alternative’s most impressive features are what it won’t do – namely install a bunch of spyware or bug you about upgrading. If you’ve got RealPlayer installed, it’s probably asked you three times to upgrade since you started reading this article. For your sanity, for your computer, and for the children, please uninstall RealPlayer right now and give RealAlternative a shot. -BILL FERRIS

Real Alternative

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 philosophy, and works of epic length certainly has its instructional value, but when you ask them to write their own pieces after spending a unit studying pristine finished products, I imagine for many of them the blank page is hard to approach.

Help your students to loosen up by giving them a peek into the creative process. The QuickMuse poets are given a prompt – your students will definitely identify with the stress of assigned time-writing, and the “play-back” feature, which allows you to see the poem come together in real time, is just cool!

Please note: poets under pressure do not always produce G-rated material; make sure you preview anything you promote! –MARIELLE PRINCE

QuickMuse

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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 on the sum of the symbols in each row and column. It’s basically a spreadsheet for beginners.

Nonetheless, the game is fun and addictive, and is a great way to work your algebraic skills at any learning level. Presented by Math Playground, this game is one of many activities on the site. If you and your students best the flowers and apples, there’s a similar Sudoku style game called Kakuro if you want something a little more time consuming. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Math Playground’s Algebra Puzzle

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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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 itself (ex. online calendars), without you having to type it all in.

Pageflakes is an RSS reader, which means that it pulls in information from other places (like news from CNN), but puts it in a small, easily formated form (flakes). It has lots of feeds, and other “flakes” (tools) that you can add. Pageflakes has recently added Pageflakes Teacher Edition, which quickly shows flakes geared towards education (class schedules, grade tracker, educational news feeds). Just click on the snowflake at the top right, and start adding tools (flakes) to your page.

If you’re a visual learner, and want to see it in action, here are some resources:

Video tutorials:
How to add a flake
What is Pageflakes

So, enjoy the flaky goodness of information on the Internet with Pageflakes! -ALICE MERCER

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 than words and made us think about how the story would look if it were, say, a painting (not to mention, we didn’t have to write another paper).

If you’ve wanted to integrate digital collages and photo editing and sharing into your classroom lesson plans, but can’t find room in your already tight budget to invest in one of those expensive software programs, then look no further than Splashup.

Splashup is a free, full-featured online image editor that allows users to create new images, edit existing images and manipulate layers with all kinds of filters and brushes. The interface is easy to use and resembles Photoshop, Illustrator and other familiar photo editors. It’s basic enough for novices to get the hang of, but has sophisticated features that even professionals can appreciate. And did I mention it’s FREE?

What also separates Splashup from its competitors is that it seamlessly integrates with photo sharing sites, including Picasa, Flickr, and Facebook; which means you can import photos from those sites, edit them, and then export them right back for immediate sharing capabilities. You can even save your work in Splashup and come back to it later to edit it some more from another computer — oh, the wonders of data portability!

So, get those new media assignments on your syllabus ASAP. I promise your students will appreciate the change of pace — and not just because they don’t have to write another paper! — LAUREN FROHNE

Splashup

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“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 Cool Science site is all about questions, whether they’re how caterpillars turn into butterflies or how snakes and lizards are related. The guiding principal is to keep things fun, practical and realistic. As such, the site designers advise parents and teachers to focus on the process more than the results.

“Use a question as a way to start a conversation—don’t just answer it directly. For example, if your child asks, “Why does a tree ‘bleed’ when you cut its branch?” you could just answer, “That’s the sap.” But it’s more powerful to start a discussion by relating the question to something the child may already know: For example: “Well, just like your body has blood, trees have sap. What exactly does your blood do, anyway?”

Asking questions is the basis of the scientific method. Cool Science for Curious Kids aims to reward that curiosity by showing young learners that asking the right questions can lead to the most fascinating answers. As for me, I’m most curious about who coined the phrase, “Curiosity killed the cat,” and what we can do to eliminate it from our lexicon. -BILL FERRIS

Cool Science for Curious Kids

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 exaggeration, but gas is seriously expensive right now. Here’s a great list from OpenTravelInfo.com, where they explore some easy and great ways to cut down on the amount of nickels you pour down your tank.

18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess – Let me guess, you “know where everything is,” right? Even so, it doesn’t make your work any easier. Who wants to come home from a cluttered desk to a cluttered desk? Zen Habits presents these 18 tips on where to begin.

8 Ways to be Ruthless With Your Time – Who knew that actually planning your day would save you time? Not me, I guess. Thanks to Lifehack, now I know that scheduling things before I do them can help me save some minutes. Read more about it and seven other tips here.

29 Healthiest Foods on the Planet – If Superman was a real dude, I imagine his menu might look a little something like this. This list via BellyBites.com boasts such delicious and nutritious foods such as Apricots, Bok Choy and Crab. (Not a suggested combination of ingredients, however.) –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: incurable_hippie on flickr.

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 Thinking with Exploratree
Not only does Exploratree offer a multitude of interactive thinking-guides, but they are also UK-based. Here in the States we call this sort of thing “mind-mapping,” so when you refer to these resources with Exploratree’s terminology you’ll ooze with intelligence and credibility.

Sight Words with Samson
I have always depended on the kindness of talking cartoon animals. That’s why, when teaching your elementary students their ABCs, let them have a look at Sight Words with Samson. The Samson in question is a dog wearing a track suit who speaks with a vaguely German accent and guides kids as they play games that strengthen their word-building.

Panwapa – Should I Ask for Some Fries with That?
There are lots of sites that are safe, and many that are interactive, but there are few safe, non-commercial sites for kids to meet other children in a social network. The folks at Children’s Television Workshop are neatly filling this void by providing Panwapa. Don’t worry about it, it’s all been designed with education in mind.

Sound Field Trip Advice from Kidcast
To make sure you maximize the educational value of your trips outside the classroom walls, read this Kidcast blog post about podcasting and field trips. It offers eight excellent suggestions on how to use podcasting to engage your students in the learning process before, during, and after the field trip.

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 Floyd and Bob Dylan, as well as quotes from books like A Clockwork Orange. All that pop culture soothed my bruised ego after getting crushed by people who can type more than 200 (!) words per minute.

Even if you’re not a typing or computer skills teacher, typing is a core skill required by most technology your students will use. TypeRacer provides a fun way to get better at it while exposing students to classics works like Star Wars. Maybe you’ll see your students’ names on the list of high scores. It’s doable, provided they reset the scores – personally, I think a speed of 210 words per minute has to be a typo. -BILL FERRIS

TypeRacer

The only specific memory I have of a field trip I took as a student was an elementary school trip to the local planetarium. Why? Because it was the first time I experienced astronaut ice cream. It tasted like regular ice cream…but…it was crunchy…??!! My mind was blown.

In retrospect, my teacher probably dreaded these trips at least a little bit – most of us students probably climbed back on the bus whirring with sugar buzzes. To reflect further, wouldn’t it be great it my most vivid school field trip memory wasn’t a fond reminiscence of something I’d encountered in a gift shop? Wouldn’t it be better if my mind had been blown by something that had actually happened inside the planetarium? Like, say, the notion of our lonely little planet spinning at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, perhaps one galaxy of millions in the universe? Shouldn’t that be more intriguing than the idea that some guy in a food lab figured out how to dehydrate ice cream?

Your students deserve better than this. To help make sure you maximize the educational value of your trips outside the classroom walls, you’d be wise to read this Kidcast blog post about podcasting and field trips. The post offers eight excellent suggestions on how to use podcasting to engage your students in the learning process before, during, and after the field trip. Each one is a great application of podcasting that uses the technology to scaffold learning: having students create a quiz show about the field trip location, for example, or recording a public service announcement to advertise the site.

Many thanks to Kidcast for reminding us there’s more to field trip preparation than permission slips. -EMILY JACK

Kidcast 53 – Podcasting and Fieldtrips

My sister once created a portrait of Albert Einstein for a high school art class. Instead of drawing traditionally, she wrote the phrase, “Knowledge is Power” over and over on the canvas until it took on an Einsteinian shape. As someone who couldn’t draw a recognizable picture of anybody even if I was tracing over a photograph, I was pretty impressed. And totally jealous. After all these years, though, I may have a way to do something just as impressive thanks to artist Robert Bosch of Domino Artwork.

At Domino Artwork, I can download instructions to create domino portraits of Abe Lincoln, the Mona Lisa, Martin Luther King or the Statue of Liberty. If you’d like to join in on the fun, you’ll have to spend a few bucks buying 12 sets of dominoes, as well as glue, and some vinyl panels to serve as your “canvas.”

If you’re looking for a fun elementary art project, Bosch encourages you to use his designs for class. All he asks in return is you credit him and his website, and send him a photo of the completed work. Me, I’ll be sending a photo to my sister. Your Einstein isn’t so cool now, is it, sis? -BILL FERRIS

Domino Artwork

When I was a kid, search engines like we know them today were nonexistent, and I would sift through Yahoo!’s web directory just like the rest of the mid-90’s nerds out there. These days, kids have vast quantities of information on every topic you can think of right at their fingertips — well, as long as they know how to effectively search for it.

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. By illustrating the logic of their search through puzzle pieces, your students can piece together their searches and see how each change to their search terms changes their results.

And the best part? The search results are presented through Google’s “Safe Search Strict” technology, so your students will get great search results and you don’t have to worry about them stumbling upon something that’s not so safe for the classroom.

Boolify also offers some basic lesson plans to help you understand Boolean Operators and effectively teach them to your students, as well as how to evaluate the credibility of a website. With these tools, you can not only help your students find information on the web, but also determine if it is actually valuable — a skill that proves more and more useful as the web expands.

Check out their instructional video on YouTube. Right now, it’s in beta and only offered in English, but their website indicates that they’re working to make it a multilingual tool.

Come to think of it, I think I know some grown-ups that could really benefit from Boolify… — LAUREN FROHNE

Boolify

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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

I have long held the belief that a British accent is the best way to sound intelligent and credible. The problem that I run into is that my impersonation of a British accent is so bad that I end up looking less intelligent and credible to people who hear my attempts. I need to think of a solution!

Exploratree is a great place to help me with my project. Not only do they offer a multitude of interactive thinking-guides, but they are also UK-based. Here in the States we call this sort of thing “mind-mapping,” so when you refer to these resources with Exploratree’s terminology you’ll ooze with intelligence and credibility.

The ability to share resources online lets students log in and contribute to a group project anytime, anywhere. Think about how much time you might set aside for your students to work on group projects during class time. Now think about what you can get done in all that time that Exploratree just helped you claim back. –NICK YINGLING

Exploratree

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