Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

What’s your bookprint? Scholastic wants readers to connect with each other based on their favorite books at their site, You Are What You Read.

At YAWYR, readers share the five books that most influenced their lives (their bookprint). After they create their bookprints, they can find other users who like the same books, and interact with them (or, in social networking parlance, “friend” them). You can also browse various celebrities’ bookprints — getting a recommendation for, say, Charlotte’s Web from Taylor Swift might carry more weight than a recommendation from you (no offense).

For more ideas on how to use YAWYR in class, there’s a teachers guide with activities like Pass it On, in which students pair up, ask questions about what books they like, and find books for each other at the library. There’s also a sample letter to parents designed to get Mom and Dad on board and support reading activities at home.

You Are What You Read

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BY AARON FOWLES

July 27 is the UN’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Google has partnered with Yad Vashem to further digitize and index its extensive archive of Holocaust photographs and documents.

The archive, which contains almost 14,000 items, is a visual journey through the Holocaust, showing authentic pictures of life in the ghettos, extermination camps, and postwar reconstructions and memorial services.

Clearly, this is a powerful collection of imagery that can be leveraged in the teaching of WWII history.  Some of the photos are extremely graphic, so I wouldn’t suggest letting younger students explore the site freely.  Each photo is accompanied by a short description, which should allow students to contextualize what they are looking at.

Moving forward, Google’s plans are to deploy their optical character recognition software on the archives, which will make searching for documents from family members much easier. Enter in a name, and you’ll be presented with an assortment of materials connected with that person. The possibilities for research are endless.

Yad Vashem

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

These two teachers are on to something. In the age of video parodies, History for Music Lovers on YouTube is a place to learn and to laugh. Listen in as the lyrics to popular songs (current and old) are transformed from karaoke into focused history lessons with a humorous twist. Topics as diverse as The Black Plague (sung to Gwen Stefani), the French Revolution (Lady Gaga), Men of the Renaissance (The Violent Femmes) and The Crusades (Billy Idol) are featured in this collection of homemade videos by teachers Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona, from a school in Oauhu, Hawaii.

I imagine you could easily get the attention of every high school student in the classroom with a few of these videos, and why not turn the tables by letting students then write and produce their own history music videos.

Just be ready to help with the singing.

History for Music Lovers

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

Do you ever sit around and think to yourself, “Gosh, those people in the government sure don’t know what they’re doing! I could do so much better”? Well, Challenge.gov gives you a chance to take a crack at solving some issues, and even winning prizes.

The premise of the site is to get the public involved as a partner with the government to work on current issues like healthier school lunches, disaster preparedness, and helping the environment. There are tons of challenges you can browse, but here are a few of particular interest to educators:

1. Balloonsat High Altitude Flight Student Competition — This is a challenge for high school students to design a flight experiment or technology demonstration that, if chosen, will be sent to the stratosphere by NASA in a High Altitude Balloon. This competition is almost over, but if students can work quickly, there is still time for a submission.  NASA’s details on the guidelines for the competition can be found here. Submissions due February 11, 2011.
2. Calendar Cover Contest for womenshealth.gov — This challenge requests submissions of art for the 2012 Women’s Health calendar. High school art students may be an appropriate audience for this challenge. Giving students a real-world reason for doing a project usually motivates them to do a good job, and the prize of having nationally published art may just inspire them. Submissions due February 28, 2011.
3. It’s My Environment Video Project — This challenge, sponsored by the EPA, requests 10-second videos of people taking action to help the environment where they live. In your video, you must say or put up a sign that says “It’s My Environment,” and the best of the video submissions will be stitched together into more lengthy compilations. This one would definitely be fun for your students to do! Not only would they be submitting a video for the competition, in order to do so, they’d have to be out in the community serving the environment. Submissions due April 15, 2011.

If none of these current competitions strikes your fancy, keep checking the website. More challenges will be posted as various government agencies come up with problems for which they’d like public input.

Challenge.gov

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Gone are the days when teachers have to rely on the limited selection of paper-bound “readers” for supplementary material like primary documents or scholarly articles. There’s a plethora of sources on the web, and Google’s specialized searches make it easier than ever to find what you want.

If you’re looking for past news articles, Google News Timeline provides a fun and intuitive way to search. Simply enter a year, month, and even day to see news articles published on that date. You can then refine your search by entering a subject and clicking “add more queries” to select a type of media like newspapers or magazines. The best thing about News Timeline, however, is the easy-to-use display that arranges the results chronologically. The example above is the result of searching Time Magazine exactly 30 years ago. Clicking an issue took me to Time’s page where the full articles were available. Using News Timeline I’ve found articles as far back as the early 1800s, and in some ways the older ones are the best because you get an image of the original print!

Another source for high-quality readings is Google Scholar. It searches publications like academic journals, public domain books, and court opinions. The options give you the same ability as News Timeline to refine your search by subject, author, and date. For some of the results, only an abstract is available, but for many you can read the full text. My Scholar search for works about Emily Dickinson published since 2000 yielded an entire book of academic reviews and several journal abstracts.

These search engines can open more options for you and your students as alternatives to textbook readings. Historical articles from News Timeline can give a perspective from a different time period, while Scholar can ensure that you keep up with recent developments.

Google News Timeline

Google Scholar

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BY BILL FERRIS

Want to make your computer do your bidding? You or your students can pick up programming skills in your spare time via Lifehacker’s new week-long series on how to code. The lessons will come via a series of web videos and articles designed to be digested in about 15 minutes.

The sessions will focus on JavaScript, a relatively simple language that’s open to anyone with a web browser and a text editor — basically anybody with a computer. The first lesson is already posted, and three additional lessons will go live this week at 6 p.m. Eastern.

Learn How to Code Part I: Variables and Basic Data Types

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

For years now, the talk in many technology circles has been the coming of the so-called semantic web, where information and data from many sources would be gathered and collated and, hopefully, interpreted across a wide range of topics. We may not be there yet but there are signs that more and more data is being transformed into useful information for learning. Gapminder World has the potential to be a very valuable research site for students learning about global trends through data visualization. The software that runs the site is a variation of Trendalyzer (developed by the Gapminder folks and sold to Google).

The aim of Trendalyzer and Gapminder World “….is to unveil the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics.”

It succeeds, I think.

For example, given the focus on CO2 emissions and Global Warming, I checked out the data map on that topic at Gapminder World. Using information from as far back as 1820, I clicked the “play” button for the data grid, and watched as the world’s CO2 emissions began to unfold, region by region. I could then isolate the United States and China, or any other country, and do some direct comparisons. While that particular data set only goes back to the year 2000, a project that comes to mind is for students to gather data and continue the graph into 2010. Other topics include child mortality rates, impacts of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the age that people get married.

Gapminder also has a special section for teachers, where a long list of downloadable resources are available (including a beta version of a desktop Gapminder platform). The data, the graphs, and all of its resources can be used freely under a Creative Commons licence, so students can incorporate information into reports and projects.

Gapminder World

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Here are some recent Twitter updates from the last week or so:

• Who owns your data? http://on.mash.to/hfWwZk
• Generate your own newspaper clippings with this nifty app: http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp
• A big list of environmental education grants: http://web.eenorthcarolina.org/core/item/topic.aspx?s=0.0.108.37430&tid=85010&ran=294065
• A big list of environmental education contests and awards: http://web.eenorthcarolina.org/core/item/topic.aspx?s=0.0.108.37430&tid=85050
• 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
• Write On! Wetlands Challenge…well, challenges youth to write and illustrate a children’s book about wetlands: http://www.wetland.org/education_writeon.htm
• Tired of lab explosions? Check out Flinn Scientific’s free safety training course for science teachers: http://labsafety.flinnsci.com/Home.aspx
• Educators can register for the Discovery Education Network SCIcon 2011 for free: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2011/01/12/den-scicon-2011/
• A new study by Princeton says ugly fonts may boost reading comprehension. Is this why teachers love Comic Sans? http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/01/18/hideous_fonts
• A World without Polymers – An Essay and Video Contest: http://www.iupac.org/polyedu/page30/page40/page40.html
• Cookie Monster teaches science on YouTube: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/13/cookie-monster-teach.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+boingboing/iBag+%28Boing+Boing%29
• Check out the Food Museum online: http://www.foodmuseum.com

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Google Docs just got a bit more interesting, as you can now upload and share videos in Google Docs as well as documents, spreadsheets and drawings. It’s easy enough to do — just click “upload,” as if you were uploading a document, and the video goes into your Docs Home. There are some limits (no videos larger than 1 GB for example) but the addition of video allows a user to create folders on topics with all sorts of media.

So why host a video on Google Docs instead of YouTube? For teachers, it is an issue of access and privacy (you can share the link to your Google Doc with a select group of people or make it public or invite collaborators into the video file) and organization along subject areas (the Google Doc folder system). As with other platforms in Google Docs, you can toggle between various versions of your uploaded videos. Plus, if students are working on a video project together, Google Docs might be a more secure way of sharing video segments and final projects.

One thing you don’t seem to be able to do is to embed the video in other websites, so if that is your aim for video, then you may want to use Youtube or Vimeo or some other video-hosting service that is out there.

These are the video files you can upload into Google Docs:

• WebM files (Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codec)
• .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files – (h264 and mpeg4 video codecs and AAC audio codec)
• .AVI (many cameras use this format – typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM)
• .MPEGPS (MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio)
• .WMV
• .FLV (Adobe – FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio)

Learn More about Video in Google Docs

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Script writing can be challenging for many students, as the formatting is as much a learning process as the actual story writing. Raw Scripts is a browser-based platform that allows aspiring playwrights and screenwriters to to write a perfectly formatted script via a simple interface. For example, choose the “character” option, and when you write, your character’s name will be centered and in capital letters, and the next line will be automatically set up for dialogue. The site also provides you with character name options, saving names you have used and suggesting them as you type, so that with a simple click of the “enter” key on your keyboard, you can reuse names. It also lets you make notes in the margins.

You can try out Raw Scripts without registering, although you can’t save or re-title the plays in this mode. You can, however, write the play at the site and then cut and paste it to a Word document at the end. If you do create an account (which can be done with either a Google or Yahoo login), you have more options, such as saving, emailing the script, or exporting it as a PDF file. Also, with a login, you can invite collaborators for group play writing, which is an interesting possibility. In fact, many of the options in Raw Scripts resemble other collaborative word processing sites, except that here, the formatting issues are put into place with a click of the mouse.

Raw Scripts

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

I would not consider myself a hardcore tech nerd, but as a “younger” teacher who is not averse to computers, I am frequently called upon to help out other teachers as they implement technology in their classrooms. Some of you who read this blog probably also fill this role at your school. Well, a former colleague of mine, T.J. Wolfe, now an NC State PhD student, found himself in this position a lot, too. That’s why he developed the CATCHsystem, a website and a system to help teachers easily integrate technology so they can “catch” their students and help them prepare for the future.

So, let’s be up front here — like I said, the developer is a former colleague of mine, and he does also offer his services as a technology coach, for a fee. However, his idea is really good, and there are several free resources on his site as well. First of all, the CATCHsystem — it streamlines and categorizes pretty much everything you can use technology for into five categories. The categories are: Messaging, Productivity, Sites, Documents, and Media. Working with five categories of internet technology should be much less daunting to a technology novice than continually attempting to integrate single sites or web tools. As you look through each category, you may say to yourself, none of these are particularly difficult skills — I mean, who doesn’t know how to use and filter email? Then again, I’ve worked with teachers — smart ones, even — who print every email they receive. It’s easy to forget that not every educator is comfortable with technology.

On the website you can find video tutorials for different components of the CATCHSystem, as well as for some basic tasks that you might want your students to be able to do — download, edit, and share photos, for example. Additionally, on the front page, there is a free eBook, Web 2.0 for the LA Classroom.

In sum, I think the CATCHsystem is a really logical and streamlined way to introduce many of the important uses for technology in education. It can help reluctant teachers as well as students more efficiently use all of the tools that are out there.

CATCHsystem

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Music and science come together in a refreshing way with the Symphony of Science, as video clips from the old PBS show, Cosmos,  and other assorted public lectures are transformed into music videos. John Boswell, the site’s curator, explains at the site that his intention is to merge the two mediums together.

“The goal of the project is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Science and music are two passions of mine that I aim to combine, in a way that is intended to bring a meaningful message to listeners, while simultaneously providing an enjoyable musical experience.” — John Boswell

Using a variation of the auto-tune software (just turn on the radio these days and you can hear it in just about every pop song), Boswell recreates the video lectures by scientists such as Carl Sagan into interesting musical takes on science. Boswell also has links for downloading the video and audio tracks, and provides a transcript of the “lyrics” as well.

For high school or college students studying Astronomy, the Symphony of Science site might provide a nice alternative. Just imagine students walking out of school, with Carl Sagan in their ears instead of Lady Gaga. Or consider how students themselves might transform lectures into music videos themselves, taking ownership in the mash-up process.

The Symphony of Science.

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BY AARON FOWLES

This year, I started a chess club at my school. It has been a great time seeing kids from north Memphis give up one afternoon per week to play chess at school. In order to make the club a little more competitive, I rated the players according to their wins and losses. I wanted to make this match the United States Chess Federation as closely as possible, so I used a rating program.

ELO Rater, now in version 2.0, was my program of choice. I tried several others, but this was the only one that combined ease of use with simple design. Most chess rating programs are tournament organizing programs, which are quite complex and not well suited to casual club play. This program allows users to enter in-game data in real time and receive ratings adjustments on the spot.

I can’t understate how much of a change this program has made in the club. It allows me to get a quick idea of how well each student is playing, and it allows me to make fair match-ups for casual play. There are still free tournament programs out there that are better for larger tournaments. The program, which runs on Windows and Linux using Wine, can keep track of different groups of people, so you can use one copy of the program to manage different groups of students.

ELO Rater