MBTN last week was a straight up embarrassment. Bill called in to Instructify headquarters and handed down two options: I should commit seppuku immediately OR I should make certain that MTBN for 8/24/09 is a slam dunk. Did I choose the razor-sharp samurai sword or rapier-like witticisms? Find out after the jump.
Six Ways to Transform your Presentation
I’m still learning the whole presentation thing. I’ve probably made every classic presentation mistake, from mumbling to mistaking my PowerPoint slide show for an outline. Stepcase Lifehack has a great list of presentation tips for n00bs like me. Number one: ditch PowerPoint. I tried this for my last presentation and found it very liberating. This info will help you prepare a conference presentation, make your daily teaching more engaging, or come in handy for the forensics team.
26 Must-Have Free Fonts
Have you deleted Comic Sans from your computer yet? If not, I’ll wait here while you do that. Good. Now that that overused typeface is out of your life forever, what will you use for your bulletin boards and newsletters? Presidia Creative brings you 26 free fonts that will make your art projects and handouts look more slick. You’ll never need Comic Sans again.
Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools
Nothing places hard drives in more peril than finals week. At this time of year, the vengeful god Murphy inflicts horrible maladies upon the data of students and teachers worldwide for not heeding his law. Fortunately, atonement is within reach. Lifehacker has a rundown of five data-recovery tools that can bring Little Johnny’s term paper back to life just in time for him to print it out so his dog can eat it. -BILL FERRIS
Photo credit: Photocapy on Flickr.
I’ve always preferred the bumbling around method to learning, whether I’m using a new piece of software or I’ve just bought a new gadget. However, sometimes you’re faced with the choice of reading the manual or causing irreparable harm to yourself or your new toy. By this point, though, you’ve relegated the manual to a shoebox at the bottom of your closet underneath the boxes containing your camping gear and your winter wardrobe. You could try to track down the manual on the company website, or you could simply go to The Manuals, a website containing more than 5 million free owners manuals for everything you own.
Want to try out the advanced features of your SMART Board? Download the instructions and get going. Struggling to hook up your fancy new digital projector for class? No problem. Whatever you need to know, there’s a manual for that. Well, probably. There’s 5 million of them, and I haven’t had time to look through them all. But with that many, your odds of finding what you need are pretty good. -BILL FERRIS
Discover how to open mystery file extensions at OpenWith.org
Photo credit: Telstar Logistics on Flickr.
Every once in a while, I’ll hit “Save” on one of these here Instructify posts, only to have a glitch somewhere in the system log me out, thereby destroying my eight-paragraph screed about how cool Android phones are. Refusing to take the cosmic hint that the world doesn’t care what I have to say, I now copy all my text before saving. Just Ctrl-A to select everything in my text window, then Ctrl-C to copy it (of course, the right-click menu can accomplish the same thing). If things go awry, I can just start a new post and paste my post (Ctrl-V) into the window verbatim.
If you’ve given blogging assignments to your students, this little trick could save you a lot of cries that the cloud ate a student’s homework. This is also good to remember if your school’s internet connection is less than reliable. Four keystrokes and about one second of time could save you and your students a lot of time and effort rewriting. -BILL FERRIS
Photo credit: Jamison on Flickr.
Still hanging on to your dusty old tape collection? If you haven’t digitized your cassettes yet, you might want to get started. CBS News contributor David Pogue wrote an interesting piece on data rot, which is what happens when you have information that’s either too decayed to use, or relies on technology that no longer exists.
If you’ve moved all your important data to the digital realm, don’t act all smug just yet. Digital media isn’t the indestructible storage option we thought it was. Today we have more ways to store information than ever before — and that’s not always a good thing. According to Pogue, new formats pop up faster than ever, which means they also go obsolete much more quickly. What good is a digital document if no one makes the software that reads it anymore? This means we have to choose carefully how we save our important files, and remember to update them to newer formats (that is, once every few years, for the rest of your life).
Even fairly stable formats like TIFF files can fall victim to the relatively frail storage objects that house them. Pogue quotes Dag Spicer, senior curator at the Computer History Museum, who said:
“A hard drive lasts about five years…The low range of CDs’ and DVDs’ longevity is five years. So the basic lesson is: Look after your own data and make sure that you take steps to keep it moving onto new formats about once every ten years.”
Where to begin? Your school’s collection of VHS tapes of science experiments and school plays might be a good place to start. Pogue tells the sad tale of filmmaker Lydia Robertson, who has never even seen a film she made in high school because the machines that play it aren’t around anymore. I too made a movie in high school, shot on VHS tape. How long until data rot claims the VCR? In the case of my film, not soon enough. For everyone else, it’s probably time to convert those videos to Quicktime. -BILL FERRIS
Bye, Tech: Dealing With Data Rot via CBS News
Digitize! Bring Back Those Cassettes
Box your important files online
Send really big files over the Internet
Get 1GB of storage for free with OpenDrive
Photo credit: pollas on Flickr.
I really got my hopes up when I heard about Bad Science. I figured it would be filled with death rays, time machines and laser beams. Alas (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), Bad Science actually deals with the misconceptions and bogus scientific “facts” many people harbor. This site debunks misguided ideas such as the notion that raindrops are shaped like teardrops, or that the Apollo moon landing was faked.
Bad Science consists of several branch sites like Bad Chemistry and Bad Astronomy, which are pretty much what they sound like. According to Alistair B. Fraser, the site’s creator, “When I created this page, in January, 1995, I naïvely expected that other frustrated teachers would rush to build sites devoted to, say, Bad Archeology and Bad Biology. It has not happened. Apparently, most teachers believe everything they teach.” [EDITOR'S NOTE: He didn't mean Instructify readers, of course.]
If you’re wondering if you or your students have any scientific misconceptions, hop on over to Bad Science and take a look. Just let me know if you see any entries for time machines. -BILL FERRIS
Watch Out for Common Science Misconceptions
Photo credit: Dunechaser on Flickr
According to BoostUp.org, every school day, 7,000 students drop out. Boost is a campaign by the AdCouncil designed to help encourage teens to make it through and graduate on time. The premise is simple, by sending a “boost,” you’re sending a motivating word via email or text message to encourage a student to stick out and make it to graduation. The site has some examples of students who have given thought to dropping out, and you can click on any of their profiles to lend a hand in letting them know you’re in support of them continuing to go to class. With 4 of 10 students not graduating each year due to family troubles, learning disabilities, teenage pregnancy, or various other reasons, this kind of campaign might just help teens in need.
Sure, those numbers are dismal and plenty depressing, but educators can get involved and just let their students know that there are people, strangers even, who care enough to give these Boosts. The AdCouncil is working in tandem with the U.S. Army to support this campaign, and the site itself (while wobbly and a but wonky) is easy to navigate and the call to action is even easier to do. Just click on the “Send Boost” button and you can send your words of encouragement to one of the teens on the site, or to someone you know personally. There’s also a Facebook fan page with more information and embeddable widgets that you can share on your own blog or website. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
It seems that the news lately has been full of teachers running afoul of technology. There’s the case (ably covered by Instructify editor Bill Ferris) of the Austin teacher who incurred the Wrath of the Internet by writing, very mistakenly indeed, that “No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.” There’s the case of the “Drunken Pirate” student teacher who posted a rollicking picture to her MySpace page, was denied her degree in Education just before her graduation from Millersville University, and then sued — and lost.
And then there’s the case of Julie Amero. In 2004, Amero was substituting in a seventh-grade classroom when inappropriate, possibly pornographic pop-ups began appearing on the computer. Amero was arrested and then convicted in January 2007 of four counts of child endangerment, and she was facing up to 40 years in prison until her conviction was vacated a few months later and a new trial ordered.
When I first heard the case described on the radio, it was immediately obvious to me that the computer had been hijacked by malware. I’ve only had a computer hijacked once, but once was more than enough, believe me. No one who has been startled by the appearance of multiple pop-up windows that spawn yet more pop-up windows when you try to close them would be likely to doubt Amero’s protestations that she hadn’t been deliberately visiting porn sites in class. Since my own hijacking, I’ve been very careful about installing and automating programs like the free Ad-Aware on my own computers. Ad-Aware updates itself and scans my system automatically, but every once in awhile I look at it, and it’s catching some nasty stuff every time, let me tell you. All the major web browsers now also allow pop-up blocking, and I make darn sure that it’s turned on, especially since I can grant pop-up exceptions when I need to. Your school’s IT staff almost certainly puts such protections in place for your classroom’s computer(s), but it might be worth a delicate inquiry — especially since evidence shows that the IT staff at Julie Amero’s school weren’t taking basic precautions.
It’s widely agreed in the tech community that the Julie Amero case was a tragedy and a travesty and a farce and just, well, extremely frustrating. At least it’s now over: on November 21st, 2008, Julie Amero chose to end a four-year court battle by pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, paying a fine of $100, and having her Connecticut teaching credentials revoked. What does she think about computers, after all this trouble? She doesn’t “touch them except for e-mail.” — AMANDA FRENCH
State of Connecticut vs. Julie Amero (Wikipedia)
Missing the point: Teacher confiscates free software
Happy Holidays, teachers and students. Here’s a little gift from us to you to of some lists upon which everything is nice, ne’er naughty. Hope you enjoy these numbers and have a wonderful holiday season.
10 Things They Need to Teach in High School - Most of my high school classes were there for the masses, and while I got a great dose of Spanish and traveled to a magnet school for a television production course, there are skills I had to wait until college to take. InstigatorBlog presents a list of 10 things they SHOULD teach in High School to help better prepare our students for the real world. For example, Personal Branding, Entrepreneurship, and my favorite Technology & Social Media.
7 Rules for Making a Good First Impression - With the new year upon us, we’re bound to make new relationships, have more conferences and makes more contacts. It is important that students as well as teachers know some of the basics to make sure they won’t be left in the dust when it comes to meeting new people and making a good first impression. Here’s a list from BusinessWeek that is mostly applicable for the office types, but can easily be altered to suit the needs of those in the field of education.
100 Words for Obama’s 100 First Days - With the inauguration right around the corner, Obama is going to have quite a lot on his hands in this troubled economy. What would you do if you were in his shoes? Wait, before you start talking, you should jot your ideas down for this essay contest and get a chance to be published on AlterNet. The rules are fairly simple, basically answer the question: What would you like Obama’s first 100 days in office to look like? in 100 words, and you could see your suggestions be published, and who knows, maybe even come to fruition.
6 Lessons You Learn by Playing Santa - My own dad was once a mall Santa, and despite the fake beard and lack of “bowl-full-of-jelly” belly, he really looked the part. More importantly, he earned a lot of respect from me (I was too old for Santa at the time, and while I was horribly embarrassed at the time, now I realized he did it because he volunteered to, not because someone made him do it). I’m sure having your lap pulverized by kids day after day is lesson enough to buy some thigh pads, there are other lessons to be learned. Dumb Little Man presents 6 of them here, including Appreciate the little things, and When in doubt, ho, ho, ho. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: Wyscan on Flickr
Here at Instructify, we comb the web for free or open-source software, sites and gadgets that can save teachers time, money, or allow them to teach in new and exciting ways. We believe in the value of these sorts of tools — that’s why stories like this one are so alarming.
A teacher in the Austin, Texas school district, upon seeing a student distributing disc-based copies of the free Linux operating system, confiscated the discs, had a conference with the student, and sent an angry letter to the nonprofit company distributing the software in which she said, “No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful…This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all.” The teacher also vowed, “if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.”
It’s good to remember that, even in this enlightened age where teachers can access more free resources than ever, many educators believe that students need to use the “right” kind of technology, as if computer productivity were the exclusive domain of a select few providers. Ken Starks of HeliOS Solutions, the company in question, sent a strongly worded reply to the teacher. While Starks’ rebuttal is awash in self-importance, he exposes the central fallacy in the teacher’s letter — that the technology itself is what’s most important, when it’s merely a means to an end.
The world isn’t interested in whether kids use Windows or Mac or Linux, IE or Firefox, Word or OpenOffice. If you’re a carpenter, nobody cares if you use a Skil circular saw or a Black & Decker (nor will getting used to one mean you’ll be lost figuring out the other). All that matters is whether you can build a table with it. Technology is no different. We teach students to use technology to enable them to make remarkable things with it — a cutting edge website, a work of art, a movie. Anybody can learn MS Office. The folks who can crunch the numbers to find where a company is wasting money are the ones who’ll get hired. This teacher lost sight of the fact that tools are only as necessary as the jobs we use them for. It’s the end, not the means, that matters. -BILL FERRIS
P.S. Starks and the teacher were able to reach an understanding and patch things up.
Teacher Confiscates Linux Discs, Chides Charitable Computer Group, “No Software Is Free” via Consumerist
Linux - Stop holding our kids back via Blog of Helios
Photo credit: RaeA on flickr
It’s getting cold out there, but that doesn’t mean Instructify is freezing over. Here are some educational lists to keep you nice and warm.
21 Online Student Tools to Help With Research, Communication, and Organization - EduChoices brings us this list of some essential tools to aide in researching and staying on top of things. Your students probably need all the help they can get at this point in the year, as the thought of holiday breaks are distracting them left and right. Check out Grademate for your own grade organization as well as Studeous for online course management.
75 Questions to Ask Yourself - Did I leave the iron on? might be at the top of your list, but for some more insightful self-queries, check out this list from Lyved. Your students might not consider themselves masters of their own egos yet, but some of the questions on this list might help them get some direction in getting there. Questions like What are my talents? might seem easy enough, but provide some inner understanding nonetheless.
Help Your Children Set Goals for Success - Top Ten Tips - These tips, designed for parents, are applicable for teacher use, too, but if you want to share some with parents, then by all means, I say go for it. One of the more important tips here is to set achievable goals, because Goals need to be set at a level that is more advanced than the level the child is currently working at, but not so advanced that it is unachievable or beyond reach. Well said, via Oxford Learning.
Teach Creative Writing With These 5 Steps - Since I’ve been bitten by the NaNoWriMo bug, I’ve really managed to rediscover my love of writing in a purely creative and uninhibited atmosphere. Though it was my major in college, creative writing was something I never got enough of in school. Do your students a favor and prod them a little using these 5 steps from Bloggeron.
10 Things to Do When You only Have Five Minutes Left in Class - Ack! You’ve come to a stopping point, the kids are restless, and yet there’s no time to start something new! Or is there? The Apple provides these 10 things you can do to keep your students engaged and learning without starting something you can’t finish. Included on the list are great activities like Journal Writing and something called the Toilet Paper Game, which isn’t as weird or gross as it sounds.
- JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: HeavyWeightGeek on Flickr)
Oh, what was that you say? Your third laptop was stolen from you for the third time in a row!? How terribly unfortunate for you… Maybe someone is trying to gaslight you, make you go insane and swindle you out of your rightful inheritance! This whole affair reminds me of a similar crime I once solved. I was summoned to the grim moor outside of the manor of Sit Charles Baskerville…no, wait, that was The Hound of the Baskervilles. No, the mystery I’m thinking of was when I was visiting Hong Kong…no, wait, that one was Rush Hour 2. Okay the point I’m trying to make is that next time your laptop is missing or stolen we can solve the mystery quickly and easily.
Adeona, named for the Roman goddess of safe returns, is an open source system for tracking the location of your missing laptop. Created from research at The University of Washington, Adeona FREE to use. By storing location updates and continually monitoring the location, Adeona amounts to a LoJack for your laptop.
It was also built with keeping users’ privacy in mind: there is no commercial entity involved, the location data is encrypted & anonymous and the location information is available only to the owner. So you don’t have to worry that any secret shadow organizations are covertly tracking your movements. (You should still be concerned about MOLEMEN, however).
As if this weren’t cool and useful enough, Mac users get the bonus of utilizing their Mac’s iSight camera along with some freeware tools provided on the Adeona website. A picture is taken if the dastardly villain uses the laptop! Now you have all the evidence for what criminal prosecutors call a “slam dunk,” or, what NBA players call “the legal system’s equivalent to a particularly powerful, crowd-pleasing method of scoring points.”
This is helpful for students on their own laptops, personal or school-issued. But it might be even more valuable for an instructor—my keen detective instincts suspect that a teacher might keep valuable lesson plans and grades stored on that laptop.
So here we are at last, it is time to solve our mystery and unmask the culprit of who stole your laptops: IT WAS YOU! You stole your own laptop and you’ve been giving me misleading testimony this whole time! No, wait, that was The Ususal Suspects. Ugh, alright, I quit. You should’ve just been using Adeona the whole time. –NICK YINGLING
Email abuse. No one is immune. Every one of us has committed or been victimized by some form of email crime, whether we’ve forwarded chain letters that promise a digital camera if enough people respond, typing messages in ALL CAPS, or writing on e-stationery with a dancing kitten graphic. Marketing guru Seth Godin wants each of us to do our part to stop these abuses by following his handy Email checklist.
Godin’s specialty is marketing, but his advice applies to anyone who uses email on a regular basis (which is pretty much everyone). Most of the reasons are common sense stuff (always include your contact information, write in a font that’s easy to read, don’t make it any longer than it has to be, don’t email when angry, and consider whether a phone call might be more appropriate instead). Godin’s implied golden rule is to only send emails that people actually want or need to get, are in a format that’s easy to read and understand, and that don’t waste the reader’s valuable time.
It wouldn’t hurt to pass this on to your students, too, before they start forwarding emails about how Bubble Yum gum contains spider eggs. If we can teach tomorrow’s generation proper email etiquette, we may stamp out email abuse in our lifetime. -BILL FERRIS
Email checklist via Seth’s Godin’s Blog
How to register students for Web 2.0 tools without an email address
emailSTRIPPER – Not at All What it Sounds Like, Yet Still Cool
Back that Thing Up: Backup to Email
Photo credit: idogcow on flickr
We’ve all heard the urban legend of Mrs. O’Leary, who carelessly left a kerosene lantern in the barn on October8, 1871 after an evening milking. A cow kicked it over and ignited the hay on the floor. Due to dry conditions and a strong dry southwesterly wind the fire quickly spread throughout the city of Chicago, and burned for two days. When The Great Chicago Fire finally died out thanks to soaking rains, a path four miles long and two-thirds of a mile wide had been burned through the city. To commemorate this historical event, Fire Prevention Week was established during the Sunday through Saturday of week where October 9th falls.
This year’s fire prevention theme is “Prevent Home Fires.” As you work with your local fire department and plan activities for your students, don’t neglect to visit the Davis Fire Department. Here you will find some great interactive activities for your students. They can take a virtual Firefighter Protective Clothing Tour or a virtual tour of a Fire Engine complete with sirens.
Whether you believe in the legend of Mrs. O’Leary and her cow or not, let’s not let history repeat itself. Help prevent future fires through fire prevention education.-MONIQUE ST.LOUIS
Davis, California Fire Department
120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power
Some of the best ways to boost your brainpower have nothing to do with studying. Brainteasers and puzzles, critical thinking, and the occasional nap all work as the equivalent of mental calisthenics to keep you thinking faster and more creatively. I’ve started doing #22, learning to juggle, and I feel it’s made me think better on my feet. Plus I can impress friends and loved ones. I’m also intrigued by the title of #14, SCAMPER!
10 Tips for Immediate Productivity Results
Ever feel like you’re working hard but not meeting your goals? This list will help you get organized and get things done. Tips like not confusing “urgent” with “important,” and batching small jobs together and doing them at once are great ways to boost your productivity.
10 Most Common Passwords
It’s a fine line between creating a memorable password and making things too easy for hackers and identity thieves. PC Magazine lists the 10 most common passwords on the Internet. Suffice it to say, if the password to your bank account is on this list, you’d best change it ASAP. -BILL FERRIS
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk on flickr
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