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Millions of children (and adults!) have enjoyed the classic children’s book of Eric Carle at home, in the library, and at school. The author and illustrator has a website that includes biographical information, a bibliography with summaries and links to reviews, a photo and video gallery, and a frequently asked questions page that contains the answers to many questions your students might wonder about Carle’s work.

One of the most helpful areas of the site for K-6 teachers is the Caterpillar Exchange, a bulletin board where parents, teachers, and librarians can share their own creative ideas for using these books to enrich children’s learning experiences. Organized by book, the bulletin board includes ideas for using more than two dozen of Carle’s books, including classics like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug, Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? and A House for Hermit Crab. The submitted ideas and activities include Carle-inspired art projects, literacy activities, snack ideas, math integration, science projects, and even foreign language study. For example, in the section on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, you’ll find ideas for student writing projects, bulletin boards and hallway decorations, graphing activities for 2nd grade math, board games for kindergarten language lessons, science lessons about the butterfly life cycle, and vocabulary practice for high school foreign language, as well as ideas for birthday parties, snacks, and craft activities based on the book.

Keep the ideas flowing by submitting your own ideas for incorporating Carle’s colorful books into your classroom teaching! -KATHRYN WALBERT

Caterpillar Exchange

The Official Eric Carle Web Site

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Writers need readers. For validation, for feedback, for community — there is no substitute for an extra set of eyes and ears. It sounds like a simple concept, but when it comes to teens and poetry it gets a little tricky. Last summer, I led a poetry workshop for high schoolers. Even though all the participants were there because they had chosen to be, it was still like pulling teeth trying to get many of them to read their work aloud. The emotional and physical trials of adolescence give teens a lot of writing material, but who wants to open up to a bunch of strangers about the inner conditions of their soul?

Luckily, there’s a wiki for that: The Teen Poetry Wiki from the Internet Public Library for Teens. With a strict policy of anonymity, users have an anxiety-free outlet to post confessional verses and get comments (which seem to be well-moderated). In addition to the Open Mic feature, the wiki also gives writers forms and exercises to try out, Poets of the Week to aspire to, and links to other sites where they can read and be read. -MARIELLE PRINCE

The Teen Poetry Wiki

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If there’s a bright side to America’s energy crunch (and that’s a big “if”), it’s that it’s a fine reason to teach about energy. And those lessons might be worth some serious cash. Progress Energy will dish out up to $75,000 for projects dealing with energy education.

Potential topics include solar power, recycling programs, energy audits, a lab excercise about electricity, or whatever plans you can think of that don’t involve a hamster wheel. For more ideas, visit Progress Energy’s blog entry on DonorsChoose.

If you’d like some of this free money, apply by October 15. You’ll need to sign up for a free DonorsChoose.org account. Then, just submit your project ideas, including the tools you’ll need to help your students learn a thing or two about energy. -BILL FERRIS

North & South Carolina Teachers: Progress Energy to fund up to $75,000 in hands-on energy education projects this year!

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The problem with crystal balls is that it’s really hard to see the future in them unless you’re a wizard, fortune teller, or some other type of prophecy professional. If only the future were clearly laid out for us on a digital, interactive map…

Non-clairvoyant teachers rejoice!
The Map of Future Forces Affecting Education provides a fascinating look into the next decade of public education in the United States. The map allows you to navigate through an assortment of color-coded boxes, each representing a particular social trend or dilemma. Clicking on any box will provide a short description of the trend along with the option to “dive deeper into this trend.” At this point, a more detailed explanation of the issue is given, along with related videos and the opportunity to join the discussion by leaving a comment. I highly recommend watching the videos, as they present each topic in a way that is both straightforward and engaging.

It is a compliment to the folks at the Knowledgeworks Foundation that this site asks more questions than it answers. Rather than plotting a direct course, this map will point teachers down a multi-layered road, encouraging new ideas to address tomorrow’s problems. So now if you’d like to know where education in this country is headed, all you have to do is look at a map. –JIMI RADABAUGH

The Map of Future Forces Affecting Education

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We all know games are fun, but can they be used for learning? In a word, “YES!”

Games for Educators is a web site provided by the Chicago Toy & Game Fair and Live Oak Games to promote using games in education. Well, they are game sellers, but why would you, as a teacher, want to use games in your classroom? I’ll crib shamelessly from their website:

1. They help students learn
2. They’re fun
3. They help break down barriers between students and others

Games involve strategic and tactical thinking (improving students’ cognition), and bring engagement so they’ll want to learn.

Games for Educators provides resources for Teachers, Homeschooling families, and Librarians. The sections have articles on resources, strategies, and theory ranging from how to set up games for a lunchtime period, to how playing games helps students with math knowledge.

Don’t wait for rain and snow season to check out this fantastic resource. -ALICE MERCER

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“Objection your honor! Badgering the witness with boring judicial system lessons!” Prevent this from happening in your classroom by taking your class to the heart of our judicial system with a trip to Kids Court.

Kids Court is an interactive site from the US District Court of North Carolina’s Western District. It’s designed to help teachers teach their students about the judicial system in a fun, real-world environment. Do your students know the importance of the roles of each court employee in the court room? Students can read biographies on some of their United District Court Judges, learn about court facts, and why we observe certain federal holidays. Have your students take on the role of a judge, attorney, or defendant as they participate in a mock trial.

Engage your students in an interactive history lesson where colorful diagrams and illustrations help explain the complex makeup of our judicial branch of government in terms that your students can understand. The activities are broken up into two age groups, K-5 and 6-12. Students can continue to construct their knowledge of the court system or put into practice what they’ve learned with the many games such as Jeopardy, Court TV, and many more.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for on this site, just access the many links that are provided for additional ideas. Don’t be held in contempt by not taking advantage of this useful site. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

Kids Court

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One chill Novembor afternoon, a fourth grader (let’s call him Jasper) and I stood bundled up in hats and coats on the basketball court behind the school. I threw the ball towards the basket shouting out the letter “G” for gigantic, the next word on Jasper’s spelling list for the week. Rebounding the ball in-stride, Jasper dribbled while he floundered to stretch the letter sounds in the word and figure out what came next. It was our third game of H-O-R-S-E and we had only managed to get through three words for his spelling test the next day, but slowly and surely, my jumpshot became on par with NBA greats and Jasper strengthened his reading skills.

For generations, teachers have tackled the problem of getting children to not only learn to read but to love to read. In his Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine article, The Mystery of the Struggling Reader, Mike Knight cites studies that suggest that the kids who are going to be strong readers will learn to read whether they are left to their own devices or diligently nurtured in the language arts from a very young age. This theory (though thoroughly contested by teachers unions everywhere) is quite probably accurate. Although reading should be encouraged for the big and small, and a little helpful literacy boost never hurt anyone, it is the struggling readers who may benefit most from the perseverant minstrations of the dedicated teacher, who is bound and determined to get their pupil to make reading a priority in their lives (often by whatever means necessary, including team sports).

Knight’s article serves as a fantastic resource which teachers can send to parents to clue them in to the plight of their struggling readers. It highlights the five key skills good readers need to master, suggests ways to diagnose and solve reading problems specific to each individual child, and offers a good list of literature and other resources that might motivate children to pick up a book rather than a Wii controller. Some children might be born good readers, but Knight’s accessible and informative article gives a basic introduction to any parent looking to help their the child who struggled his way through “gigantic” to come home gleeful at being able to finally read any word in the book. -TUA CHAUDHURI

The Mystery of the Struggling Reader

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Do you teach high school biology? Are you in need of some fresh material, or  do you want to incorporate online resources in your class, but don’t know where to start? Well, lucky for you, we’ve hit the biology motherload for you this time.

Biology Corner is a teacher-maintained website chock full of high school-level biology activities, labs, worksheets, and other online resources. It’s created by a teacher for her own classes and she is kind enough to share it with all of you — for free!

Included in the many useful materials you can find at Biology Corner are online worksheets to enhance your lessons on anatomy, genetics, the scientific method, cellular biology and more. Plus, she’s created “web lessons” that guide students through links to external websites with relevant information, and larger “web quest” projects. Not to mention, she has informational graphics illustrating biological concepts like cells, solutions and DNA — so you can avoid showing off your artistic skills (or lack thereof!) for your class — and quizzes that your students can take online and receive their scores immediately.

I wasn’t kidding when I said we’ve hit the biological motherload! You can even check out the course plans for her Biology, Anatomy and Physics classes to get an idea of how you can best use these online resources in your own class. Also, all the materials can be customized to suit your own classroom. What more could you want? — LAUREN FROHNE

Biology Corner

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Just wanted to remind everyone of our comments policy here at Instructify. We moderate comments for all first-time posters. Once you’ve been approved, we’ll remember your email address, and you can skip the moderation stage for all future comments.

FYI, we’ve actually hired some of our writers because of their participation in the comments section. So now’s a great chance to get involved and make that first post.

Have you ever needed to show a YouTube video at an inservice where there is no Internet service, or there’s a firewall that makes the Great Wall of China look like a picket fence? Have you ever needed to convert a word document to PDF? Have you ever needed to convert JPG image files to TGA format to show them on the Jumbotron at a local ball park? Have you have ever had a WAV audio file you recorded to MP3?

At one point, I’ve need to do all of these tasks, and although you can pay money for some really spiffy conversion programs, there is a free, online alternative, Zamzar. Zamzar converts most image, audio, and video format within a day (I have been getting my files done within a couple hours recently).

This service is particularly useful for getting YouTube videos for use in the classroom, or professional development. YouTube and most other video services store those files in flash (FLV) format. Since Zamar is not blocked, I can even do this from my school site behind the fire wall. Here are the steps I took recently to locate a video for our staff meeting:

1. The principal asks me if I can get the video of Dalton Sherman addressing the Dallas ISD from YouTube for staff meeting after school;
2. I Google “Do You Believe AND Dalton Sherman AND YouTube“. The first link is for the YouTube page. I copy the URL at the end of the entry. You don’t even have to go to the YouTube page.
3. I go to Zamzar – Free online file conversion by URL, which lets you put in a URL for a YouTube video (or BlipTV, TeachersTube, Revver, etc.) and convert it.
4. I paste in the URL I copied in step 2, specify which format I want (.wmv or .avi works for Windows Media Player), enter my email address, and click on convert.
5. I get an email within an hour. I click on the link in the email, then click on download converted file. Voila! -ALICE MERCER

Zamzar – Free online file conversion by URL

Zamzar – Free online file conversion

Videos I’ve recently gotten for staff meetings:

Dalton Sherman, “Do You Believe in Me?”

Taylor Mali, “What Do Teachers Make?”

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Just when I begin to think that a social network has been created for just about everything that could possibly be socially networked, I come across Quiz School, the self-proclaimed “YouTube of Quizzes.” Okay, ignore my cynicism. This site is actually a cool tool that could come in extremely handy in your classroom — and it’s free!

Quiz School is an online quiz-making site that lets you create quizzes in all kinds of formats — multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, essay, etc — and share them in all kinds of ways — e-mail, print, embed in your blog or website. And if you make your quiz public, your colleagues and other users can take, rate and comment on your quiz, and maybe offer some helpful feedback on your quiz style.

The really neat part, though, is that you can create a secure online test or quiz using your own theme and colors, have only your students take it, and Quiz School does all the grading for you! And, it’ll also give you stats and analytic information about all of your questions, like what percentage of your class missed each question.

So the next time you make a quiz or test for your class, try using Quiz School. It may make your job a little bit easier! — LAUREN FROHNE

Quiz School

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How does your candidate stand on scientific issues? Like it or not (and my guess you do not), science has become A heavily politicized topic. With a presidential election coming up, our nation’s scientific policies may change drastically. Before you head to the voting booth, it’s important to know how each guy will handle science during the next four-to-eight years.

That’s why Sciencedebate 2008 has asked both McCain and Obama the tough questions on how their respective administrations would handle scientific issues. From an initial pool of 3400 questions from 38,000 scientists, Nobel laureates, elected officials, and regular folks, Sciencedebate whittled it down to 14 questions to ask each candidate. The questions deal with innovation, climate change, energy, stem cell research, genetics and more. Sciencedebate cleverly posted each candidate’s answers side-by-side for easier comparison, though you can view a single candidate’s answers, too.

Your students who are of voting age will want to read up on these issues, whether they’re in a biology or a civics class. Scientific policy will affect America’s health, the environment, as well as national pride in good old American ingenuity and innovation. No matter which man you support, get to know the sort of science he advocates. -BILL FERRIS

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“Class, take out your reading books, paper, and a pencil,” you say.

The next thing you hear will be a series of groans about another boring literacy lesson. Fortunately, you can engage all your students in learning language, learning about language, and learning through language with Read-Write-Think.

Read-Write-Think offers a plethora of resources in the Language Arts. The site has something for all students from kindergarten through twelfth grade, whether they are just learning to read, a proficient reader ready to be challenged, or a high school student looking to create digital presentations of their readings.

All resources are designed with the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language in mind. Teachers will find activities from a variety of types of reading genres. Your students can really apply what they have comprehended from their reading by interacting with the many interactive resources this site has to offer. There are also tons of teacher lessons and web resources to help bring your lessons to life, and save you from searching through your libraries for resources.

When your students are actively engaged using interactive resource tools, printable activities, or working on independent projects for their literacy studies, You’ll never hear the groans again. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

Read-Write-Think

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Now they’ve done it. They’ve ruined my ability to forget stuff. That trusty companion—from so many Friday and Saturday nights (and Saturday and Sunday mornings, too), from so many ex-girlfriends’ birthdays/anniversaries/other clichéd relationship obligations, from so many work/school obligations—is gone for good. Now, thanks to Evernote, I have to say goodbye to my ability to forget stuff.

Its going to be a tough loss for me to handle, but I’ll just have to cope by filling the void with my new FRIGGIN’ AWESOME ABILITY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING! Evernote lets you grab whatever you want on a website for easy reference later. While Evernote still lets you grab whole pages, why bookmark the entire page when you just want that one chunk of info? See an image, video, link, snippet of text, or whatever that you like? Highlight it and with the click of a button you’ve sent it to your Evernote.

I think it was LifeHacker where I picked up the tip to use my camera phone to take quick snapshots of business hours, ads, etc. so that I had them for easy reference, plus I’d save valuable seconds by not actually having to write things down. And I saved paper, so there’s a green spin for my personal PR, too. It’s a nice tip, but it gets annoying when I start to max out the memory on my phone. So eventually I have to waste time deciding which pics get zapped, so then I might just have to actually jot down the info somewhere after all. Someone on the Internet must have been paying attention to my plight because now I can use Evernote mobile.

With a mobile version of Evernote, I can send in those all the snapshots on my phone to have them sync up with the rest of my notes. They’ll even be searchable, as Evernote’s recognition technology can recognize the words in images. That’s some pretty next level Internetwebs technology right there.

The mobile version of Evernote is only available for your iPhone and other phones with internet capabilities, but don’t worry—in a few short years all phones will be internet ready…and shortly thereafter the machines will probably rise up against humanity. But everything will be alright. You’ll be able to easily look back and remember the full life you’ve led, all thanks to this new tool! -NICK YINGLING

Evernote

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High school teachers work very hard to make sure their students are ready to take the next academic step and enter college with the content knowledge, academic skills, and eagerness to learn that will help them succeed.  Still, even the most successful high school students sometimes struggle, at least initially, as they make the transition to more independent learning as post-secondary students, especially since they may not know where to turn for help in a new academic environment.

By pointing your students to the helpful web-based advice of academic skills departments, writing centers, and tutoring programs at various colleges and universities, you can give them access to a lot of great information without having to reinvent the wheel yourself.  If you have a student who has trouble with commas in their essays, why not steer them toward a handout from UNC’s Writing Center on that very topic?   If one of your students has trouble juggling school, work and extracurricular activities, Harvard has created a list of handouts and links on time management that might be helpful. If tests seem to be the trouble, Duke University’s Academic Resource Center has several PDF handouts on strategies for preparing for, taking, and learning from tests that could make a difference.

Searching the websites of several colleges and universities can help you see what kinds of materials are available, and then you can bookmark the ones that you find most useful to your students.  Letting students know about these types of resources can also raise awareness of the kinds of academic support services that are available on most college campuses, helping your students get a head-start on making the most of their own collegiate learning experiences. -KATHRYN WALBERT

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