Instructify

BY JACKIE REGALES

If your students are anything like mine, then they will always salivate (figuratively, I hope) at the chance to make something, whether on poster board or a program like Photostory. In today’s classrooms, though, whipping out scissors and glue sticks can seem a little old-fashioned. Enter Smilebox, which offers slide-show and scrapbook-creation options, as well as the ability to make invitations, collages and greeting cards. Fair warning: on some of these pages, music will begin playing automatically, and it’s exactly the kind of digitized music you think it is.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Here’s a great example of a creative class project that you and your students can do. Some students in Japan used sticky notes to create a stop-motion version of Mario, the shorter, chubbier Mario brother, stomping goombas and collecting coins throughout their school. Watch the video and try to top this with your next group assignment.

(more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

If we really believe in the axiom of “learning by doing,” then teaching the concept of stopmotion moviemaking should begin with a program like Pivot Stickfigure Animator. Pivot is a freeware program for PCs (an alternative freeware program available for all platforms is called Stykz) that is deceptively simple to use. Users are given a stickfigure to start. By moving the figure and adjusting its various body parts, users create a stopmotion movie, frame by frame.

(more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Let me start off by saying InterroBang is both ambitious and potentially time-consuming, but it’s also a really cool idea. In a nutshell, InterroBang is a game that sends you on real-life missions of discovery and learning. Now I use the term mission because that’s what they refer to it as, but these really cover a wide range of activities, from basic — go somewhere you’ve never been before and observe who goes there and try and deduce why — to complex — go to both a supermarket and a farmers’ market and compare produce varieties and countries of origin. The more complex the mission, the more points you receive. You prove your team completed the mission by uploading pictures, video, and other documentation of your activities.

(more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Looking for something to spice up your physics class and let your students have a bit of fun at the same time? If so, check out the very cool OE-CAKE physics simulator, a sandbox-style physics program that allows you to see how different physics elements will interact with each other.

(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.

(more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

I’m convinced there’s a songwriter in everyone, if only we could lower the hurdles for creating the music to go with our songs. Not everyone has the dedication to put in years of practice to learn an instrument well enough to write a song on it. But what if we could lower that hurdle a bit? JamStudio is one such site that makes the song composition easier by allowing users to choose an instrument loop, plug in basic chord changes, and listen to what they have created — all within seconds.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Difference Between, despite its unfortunate favicon, is a fascinating site that explores the subtle distinctions that separate similar objects, processes, languages, and all manner of other stuff. Can’t keep mitosis and meiosis straight? How do steel and copper differ? Or white eggs and brown eggs? Difference Between will walk you through each of these and more. I particularly enjoyed the entry about a subject near and dear to my heart, the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero (basically, that Coke Zero tastes awesome, and Diet Coke needs a dozen different varieties of citrus to make it even halfway palatable).

(more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

What student doesn’t like to imagine what their life will be like in 25 years? Given the rate of technology advancements, it’s an interesting exercise in imagination to conceive the future. Amy Zuckerman and James Daly (along with illustrator John Manders) do just such an exercise in their picture book 2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids, a fascinating glimpse into how they envision the world. This is not all fantasy either, as Zuckerman and Daly consulted scientists, engineers, technology experts, and “futurists” about what might be possible in a few decades, given the world as it is right now.

Not surprisingly, concepts like climate change play a role in some of the devices in the book (such as clothes that convert energy back to the grid and school buildings that can be pieced together like Lego units). In fact, I was struck by how some of the ideas in this book coincide nicely with the vision put forth in Thomas Friedman’s book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, which dealt with ways to change our thinking around energy.

(more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Evoke is a alternate reality gaming (ARG) activity designed to help young people learn about global issues and take part in social action projects. Sponsored by the World Bank Institute and developed primarily by Jane McGonigal (well known in the ARG world), this simulation game seeks to collectively engage participants aged 13 and older in learning about issues affecting the world, and then moving them into social action in their own communities.

(more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Stopmotion Animator is a freeware download that allows users of PC computers to use a webcam to easily and quickly create stop-motion movies. The software is set up to “grab” frames off the webcam, then gather them together into a single .AVI video file. Stopmotion Animator allows you to tweak some settings as well. For example, you can set the number of frames you want shot with each mouse click (a single frame per shot will make the video more fluid in motion but will take a lot longer to make, so I suggest that the setting be placed at three to five frames per shot).

• Permalink
• Comments (0)
• Tags: animation, art, creativity, fun, writing