Instructify

BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Ever watch Pop-Up Video? Or have you noticed the first-down line that magically appears when you watch football on TV? These are examples of augmented reality — adding information to enhance a real-world view. Thanks to efforts like the American Civil War Augmented Reality Project, the concept is making its way into education. A few Pennsylvania teachers plan to use this technology to help visitors understand Civil War battlefields.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

I often have to remind myself not to put all of my digital eggs in one basket. I think about this just about every time I open up Gmail, then check Google Reader before moving over to my Google Docs to write something. That’s a lot of Google in my life. If Google falls apart, so do I. So I am often on the lookout for sites that could supplement my Google-rich writing environment, either for my personal use or for school use. Crocodoc is an alternative to Google Docs that seems to have a lot of the same features, particularly around collaboration and storing of documents online that can be easily accessible from just about any computer.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Video conferencing is nothing new. It’s used by businesses and governments to conduct their meetings, and on a smaller scale, by grandmothers to say hi to their grandchildren via Skype. But in education, video conferencing has become more and more useful as a part of a blended or hybrid classroom. One only need look at Blackboard shelling out $100+ million to buy two of the biggest names in web conferencing, Elluminate and Wimba, to understand the growing importance of this method of interaction.

For those of you who use or are interested in using this type of communication, take a look at Big Blue Button. “Triple B,” as I like to call it, is an open-source, free-to-use web-conferencing tool that does pretty much everything that all the pay web-conferencing applications do. (more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Organization is often the key to collecting and sharing websites and web-based resources. Many of teachers have sites we want to share with colleagues or students, but printing out a sheet of URLs will likely motivate people to merely toss it in the recycle bin. A site like LiveBinders is one possible way to organize information and present it in an easy and user-friendly way. The metaphor that LiveBinders uses to explain its site is that of a “three-ring binder” that is stored on the internet.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Forty-one years ago today, man first set foot on the moon. Could Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have known that less than half a century later we’d all be living on cities on the moon, driving flying cars to work?

Until science catches up with science fiction, your students can still get excited about the space program and science with Moonbase Alpha, a 3-D multiplayer game from NASA. (more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

I am a big fan of Google Docs for collaborative writing, for storing my documents in the cloud, and for sharing documents, slide shows, spreadsheets, drawings and more. Having documents available through any internet connection is really convenient for me. If you are someone who wonders what Google Docs is all about, Google has just launched a Google Docs Demo Site that allows you to create a document, spreadsheet or drawing without registering for an account (you will need a Google Account to save Google Docs long-term, though).

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Now approaching its 200th show, the weekly Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast (and later podcast) is a wealth of interesting discussions and resources for teachers trying to navigate ways to use technology in the classroom. Hosts Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim invite guests each week to talk about an issue, or a technology tool, and then skillfully guide the discussions around teacher stories and reflections on the issue.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Several months ago, online writing collaboration tool EtherPad realized the dream of every 21st-century startup company — they got bought by Google. The search giant wanted to integrate EtherPad’s seamless multi-user collaboration into their much-ballyhooed Google Wave project. What they weren’t so interested in doing, however, was keeping EtherPad up and running, meaning that you can no longer create new documents at the EtherPad site.

If you’d planned a bunch of classroom writing activities based around EtherPad, fear not. Google has made the code base for EtherPad open source, meaning anybody can set up EtherPad on their own server for free. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

If you’re like me, you remember with fondness long nights with your friends, your trusty plastic icosahedron, pencils and paper, and junk food. I’m talking about Dungeons and Dragons of course, the game many of us geeks played when we were younger and had a lot more time on our hands. At one point blamed by pundits and media outlets as a bad influence on children, D&D is now making inroads in libraries and touting its value toward teaching children problem solving, teamwork, and mathematics and reading skills.

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This article also appears on LEARN NC.

BY CINDY PHTHISIC

A class of second-graders sits and waves to themselves on screen as the teacher tests the web camera. The students know they’re about to make a video call using Skype. This is the first time they have ever heard about Skype, so they are not sure exactly what’s going to happen. For now, they are fascinated with just seeing themselves on screen.

While waiting for word on the other end, the teacher pulls up a Google Map to show the caller will be speaking to them from many miles away in Louisiana. A message flashes at the bottom of the screen indicating the caller is ready. Students go quiet as they hear their teacher place the call.

When a familiar face appears on screen, the students whisper, “I know him.” “He was at our school.” The caller is author Mike Artell, who had visited their school just a week earlier. The rambunctious group becomes still and silent. The students sit completely captivated.

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

This article is also posted on LEARN NC.

As educators, most of us are familiar with the dreaded School Improvement Plan (SIP). Every few years each school is required to create an extensive, detailed document that outlines its plan for constant improvement until the next document is due. In the interim, success on reaching goals is evaluated, documented, and sent off to the central office. As any teacher who’s been involved in this process can attest, creating this document can be extremely labor intensive.

My personal experience participating in our school’s last SIP committee was no different: Reams of data had to be collected and analyzed. Goals had to be pinpointed, voted upon, and revised. Success indicators had to be determined and recorded. It took our committee of eight or so teachers nearly the entire school year to prepare this document. Not only was the process labor intensive, it used a tremendous amount of paper. Drafts, revisions, and submissions to the staff required new copies each time.

Several years ago, there weren’t a lot of options for streamlining the SIP process. But the recent explosion of Web 2.0 tools, thankfully, offers schools many time-saving options. No longer does the process need to be so time consuming. By using the following collaborative tools, schools can go through the SIP process much more efficiently and collaboratively, and with much less paper. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Let me just say it: I love PBS. From the documentaries, to the quality children’s programming, it’s one of my favorite channels to watch. But my love of Cookie Monster aside, did you know that PBS had developed a top-notch web resource for teachers? If the answer was no, then you owe it to yourself and your students to spend a planning period looking at the PBS Teachers website.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Dividing your class into teams is an activity fraught with peril. Friends cluster together, shy kids awkwardly ask if they can join a group, and all that jostling can eat up several minutes. You could pick teams yourself, but doing so makes things too complicated — you have to put Little Johnny and Little Suzie in separate teams or they’ll goof off the entire class period. Type-A Bobby will want to do all the work himself, and Steve and Vanessa will let him, so you’ve got to split them up. See? Nothing but headaches. If only you could turn this process over to random chance.

See what I did there? I set a problem to make you wonder if there was a solution. And there is. Team Maker randomly generates teams for your class’ group projects. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

A lot of schools and families shell out big money to Microsoft every year for MS Word. It’s my word processor of choice, but I’ve been lucky in that it came pre-installed on my computer. If I had to actually find a word processor on my own, I’d face a real dilemma: on one hand, I’ve gotten really used to Word’s format, as well as the level of formatting I can do on documents. On the other hand, I’m a cheapskate.

Longtime Instructify readers know there are a bevy of free and web-based word processors out there. Only a few of them, however, are powerful enough that I wouldn’t miss Word. I dare say that Zoho Writer is one of those few.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Scribblar makes student collaboration really easy. It presents users a large white canvas and arms them with an array of pencils, line and shape tools, and colors. Students can add images easily as well, either by uploading photos or by inserting snapshots of websites. These functions are all very intuitive, even for folks without a lot of graphics experience.

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