Before you start trick-or-treating tonight, check out some of our best posts from October: More information than you’ll ever need about every country: CIA World Factbook Grab students’ attention before class with PowerPoint. Yeah, that’s right, with PowerPoint. Keep track of elections with Gallup Make screencasts with free CamStudio software Easy-to-do experiments for the science [...]
Browsing Posts published in October, 2008
Electoral Insanity at USDemocrazy.net Clicking on a particular state will reveal relevant state facts, such as the percentage of votes cast for or against George W. Bush in the prior two elections, famous and infamous natives, as well as the state’s overall political climate. Each state is also rated on a scale of one to [...]
Many teachers worry about their students’ reliance on Google as a way of finding information. If you can’t get them to become library junkies, you can at least prove to them that how they do research affects what information they find. A neat little visualization tool called Thumbshots.com Ranking can help.The Ranking tool allows you [...]
Jon White is an artist. Not only is he skilled in the ways of character animation, drawing, CSS and HTML, he also knows a thing or two about education. From his bio: But beyond everything else, what gets my blood pumping are the lightbulb moments. The episodes of clarity, of understanding, and of fun when [...]
Have you ever seen the words “embed” or “embed code” on a web site, and wondered what that meant? Embed refers to code that you can use to create a small version of a multimedia (visual and/or audio based) Web application on another Web page outside the service that it resides on. For example, you [...]
We like to post grants for educators here on Instructify. Here are three we’ve mentioned that are still accepting applications, plus their deadlines: Target Field Trip Grants – November 1 (that’s this Saturday, folks) Toyota Tapestry Grant for Science Teachers – January 21, 2009 NEA Foundation Grants – February 1, 2009 Photo credit: Cayusa on [...]
When I attended school there was a big push for whole language instruction and very little emphasis was placed on phonics. Now in education the pendulum has swung the other way and we are seeing that phonics instruction is crucial, not only in reading but spelling as well. The English language with all its rules is [...]
Sometimes you have to take a step back and look at the big picture to fully appreciate something. When that picture is as big as, say, the solar system, you may need to take more than a few more steps backward. Or you could visit the Solar System Visualizer and see everything on your monitor. [...]
“Is there any e-mail in your inbox right now that you’ve read but you haven’t done anything about?” When writer and speaker Merlin Mann asks this question of a packed-to-overflowing audience of Google employees, the world’s most prestigious knowledge workers laugh, ashamed (but relieved) that their dark secret has been brought into the light. You [...]
Even if you love what you do, work can be a serious drag. Every once in a while, everyone finds themselves in a place where work feels too much like… well, work. Especially when it comes to teaching, it can be all-too-easy to over-think, get distracted or get bogged down with things that don’t actually [...]
