Instructify

If you read Instructify every day, it’s safe to say you like finding nifty tools for your classroom. Believe it or not, there are more places than this one to find out about these resources (wait, don’t leave! Come back!).

Vicki Davis, owner of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, is one such teacher who enjoys spreading the word about useful ed-technology. This Thursday, August 28 at 8 p.m., you can talk to her live and sort-of-in-person via Second Life in her presentation, “New School Year: Cool Tools Here.” Davis will share some of the tools and tips she (and hopefully you too) will use this coming year.

Davis’ session is part of “The Future Is Already Here,” a series of interactive professional development sessions from USDLC (you might remember their session, “BANNED in the Bookhenge” from earlier this year). The series is designed to give teachers a chance to hear from and talk with outstanding teachers who integrate technology such as Web 2.0, 1:1 computing, robotics, or serious gaming / 3D Web into their everyday teaching.

If you’re not sure about this whole social networking through Second Life thing, you can still take part through Internet radio and chat at  www.Literacy2Learn.org. USDLC plans more of these events throughout the year, so keep checking back. Isn’t it nice to know there are so many places to find out about great tech resources for teachers? All I ask is that you don’t forget about Instructify. -BILL FERRIS

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

The Future Is Already Here

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The English Fale Fail Blog might be just the thing if you love those silly LOLCats as much as I do, but get a kick out of that other undying meme known only as FAIL. The idea is simple, a photo or video that captures a moment of utter failure in an attempt to do something commonplace. For instance, a photo of a semi truck taking out a sign that says Clearance 16′ needs only the caption FAIL to let us know that some dummy thought he could do something that was clearly impossible, or at the very least, implausible. There’s also the caption EPIC FAIL, which denotes a failure on a much higher level.

There are examples all over the ‘Net, but one special blog has decided to concentrate on the moments in which the English language is marred, bastardized and downright butchered. The occurrences are more often than not found on handwritten signs and notes, but occasionally, the English language is damaged more thoroughly on a fixed structure such as a menu or a tattoo.

All of the pictures on EnglishFailBlog.com are user-submitted, so if you see an instance that you know is a travesty of English misuse, you could find your find on the site. Though some of the submissions are of gross translations, there are still plenty of examples of why being a good teacher now can prevent this kind of ridiculousness in the future. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

English Fail Blog

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Ever see those motivation posters (you know the ones I’m talking about), and wanted make one of your own? Whether your vision was serious, sarcastic, or just silly, your dream can come true with Big Huge Labs Motivator poster generator.

Okay, so you can express your inner angel or devil with this toy, but how is it useful in the classroom? It’s a chance for your students to express their creativity. If they are doing a unit on persuasive writing (my sixth graders have a unit on perseverance),  this is a great  for projects on that theme.  However you use it, for good or ill, it’ll look great, plus you can order up posters to tack up on your walls. -ALICE MERCER

Motivator: Create your own customized motivational poster

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15 Awesome Tutorial Websites You Probably Don’t Know About
A couple weeks ago I decided to take up juggling. Right away I was amazed at the high quality tutorials I found online. If you have a random hobby you’d like to try, or you’re looking for a project during these summer months, check out this list of sites.

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of
Here’s a great big list of sites you can use to find everything from literature to library references to health care. You can also find fun stuff like the Dialectizer, which can translate your text to sound like Elmer Fudd. Who doesn’t need that?

10 Brain Training Tips To Teach and Learn
Keep your brain fit for optimum learning potential. The folks at SharpBrains have these ten tips to turn you and your students into efficient thinking and learning machines.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
Need to edit a class video project? Want some advice on how to create a video podcast? Or do you need to convert video to a different file format? Mashable has all that and more in this great post. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit:  zen on flickr

Whenever I have trouble wrapping my head around a difficult concept, I turn to cartoons to explain them (note: that said, I would not recommend turning to Wile E. Coyote for demonstrations on the laws of gravity).

Being an English major, I need all the help I can get when it comes to biology. That’s why I couldn’t pass up Biology in Motion, an online collection of demonstrations and interactive activities that make learning biology easy and fun.

Check out activities that explain evolution, or demonstrations of digestion and the cardiovascular system. For the kid who always has to go to the bathroom, have a look at an explanation of how kidneys affect the solute concentration in urine. You can find these and lots more at Biology in Motion, and the site itself can do a lot better job of explaining what it offers than I can. Maybe there’s a cartoon for that, too? -BILL FERRIS

Biology in Motion

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I hope you’re all enjoying your summer vacation. Maybe you’ve got some plans for the Independence Day weekend. Then again, with gas prices shooting into the stratosphere, maybe you don’t.

In these days of pricey petrol, you’ve got to get a little creative to save money on gas. That’s why you should head over to SmartPlanet and read their post, Top 10 eco driving tips to beat fuel rises. These tips include common sense (car pooling), hypermiling (get into second and fourth gear quickly), and some tips that are actually more convenient than conventional wisdom (at high speeds, crank the A/C and keep those windows rolled up to reduce drag).

The list is packed with useful advice and charming Britishisms like motorway, lift, and complaints about how “unleaded’s now 112.6 pence per litre,” whatever that means. So don’t let high fuel prices keep you cooped up this holiday. Read this advice and hit the road! -BILL FERRIS

Top 10 eco driving tips to beat fuel rises via SmartPlanet

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I loved playing with Legos as a kid. Trouble was, I was always a brick or two short of creating the perfect fort for my G.I. Joes, thus leaving them vulnerable to Cobra attack.

If only I’d had Lego Digital Designer back then, I could’ve designed the forts, plus helicopters and tanks for good measure. With Lego Digital Designer, you have access to hundreds of virtual Lego blocks of all shapes, sizes and colors (plus a wide assortment of little Lego people, too).

Lego Digital Designer lets you build from scratch as well as with pre-loaded kits. LDD will also walk you through the more difficult designs. The download is free, but if you’re willing to spend a few dollars, it lets you order a custom set of blocks to make your digital masterpiece a reality.

This is a great re-creation of a classic childhood toy, and is a good way to prime your students’ creative juices. Now that I’m an adult, I won’t be using Lego Digital Designer for childish pursuits like designing G.I. Joe fortresses. I’ll be using it to design my next house instead. -BILL FERRIS

Lego Digital Designer

Not everyone is a wizard of the qwerty keyboard. Your students may be able to thumb their way around a cell phone keypad, but still can’t find the home keys on a computer keyboard. Here are some resources for you (or your students) to work on typing speed and accuracy while having fun. I love doing them even with a solid 50+ wpm speed.

1. Aunt Lee Dot Com is a collection of different typing games (some of which are featured below). My favorite is under Typing words that has Type, Type, Revolution (yep, just like the dancing game, only with typing).
2. Dance Mat Typing is probably the most well-known online interactive typing program, and is brought to us by the BBC. The narrator (a goat) does have a pretty heavy Scots burr, but it just adds to the flavor of the place.
3. TypingTest.com and Online Typing Games - Bubbles Game let you assess yourself, then play a really great game of typing letter bubbles. I’m addicted.
4. Custom Typing Training has a training module, and a fun soccer typing game. You need to sign up to get the full version, but it’s still free.

Add fun - and more words per minute - to your typing repertoire with these online typing games. -ALICE MERCER

Aunt Lee Dot Com
Dance Mat Typing
TypingTest.com
Online Typing Games - Bubbles Game
Custom Typing Training
Best sites to learn typing skills via Larry Ferlazzo

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Go Type Racer, Go

Photo credit: ollily on flickr

I’m terrible at Risk, which probably has something to do with the fact that I’m terrible at geography. My main problem, though, is that I end up with terrible territories:

Opponent: “I’m sending an army into Irkutsk.”

Me: “Meh. You can have it, Nanook.”

Perhaps I’d do better if I got to defend a place I actually cared about, or could at least locate on a map. The New York Times reports a few Ivy Leaguers apparently felt the same way when they created GoCrossCampus.

Like Risk, the goal in GCC is to recruit and position your armies to take over your opponents’ territory. Unlike Risk, the territory consists of college campuses, or U.S. cities and states, and your armies consist of you and your friends. Working as a team with people within your social network, dormitory, whatever, you coordinate your movements to defeat your rival, as well as develop teamwork, collaboration and leadership skills. You can also nominate commanders, and remove nefarious spies from your ranks.

The game’s creators - a small group of Yale students - designed the game to be compatible with existing social networks, both online and face-to-face. They also play up the game’s small time-commitment - only a few minutes every day.

GoCrossCampus isn’t available to the general public just yet, but the founders plan to expand into high schools, as well as corporate team-building exercises. If you can’t wait that long and you’d like to participate at your school ASAP, you can contact them via the GoCrossCampus website. It’s a good way to bolster school spirit, as well as inject a little energy into your next geography lesson. -BILL FERRIS

Storming the Campuses via the New York Times
GoCrossCampus

If you’ve ever wanted to write a book, but you never thought about how it could possibly come to fruition, then you should know it’s easier than you think. With Blurb, you can create a book of just about any size or shape, with any number of pages, and a fully customized look and feel. The content is all up to you, though, so you’ll be responsible for the hard part.

Once you finish your masterpiece, you can download the easy-to-use editor software to arrange and layout the book the way you want it. After that, pricing per individual book starts at $12.95. You can order as few or many as you like, and your work can be featured on the site for purchase by others if you wish. You’ll retain the copyrights, and you can even set your price to determine your own profit level.

Blurb’s self-publishing platform could make for an awesome class project. Your students could be responsible for creating a collaborative project full of their own musings, pictures, stories and drawings. If you’ve got a web-savvy class, you can also take advantage of the blog-to-book feature and have them blog throughout the year, and then collect their works into a group project or individual books. The service and software are so easy to use, who knows, maybe you’ll see an Instructify book sometime soon. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Blurb

Way at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is the often ignored task of creation. Now the Ad Council along with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation is working to “inspire invention.” You certainly have a couple kids in need of a project like this, the bored, the kids who are already inventing mayhem in your classroom, albeit in an unfocused way. Give them a chance to use that inventiveness for the forces of creativity and good, instead of dropping stink bombs during class.

First, there is the InventNow.org - World which is an interactive online cartoon environment where kids can learn about inventors, and invention and get a creative spark to get the brain cells going. Then go to InventNow.org - Invent, and have kids start to put their ideas together. The website has had a redesign since I first used it last Fall, so if you haven’t seen it recently, or have never been there, check it out. -ALICE MERCER

InventNow.org
Ad Council : Inspiring Invention

If you watch Lost, you’ll be familiar with some of the references I’m about to throw your way. Who wouldn’t want to explore an island, all the while hanging out with Kate (or Jack, ladies) and solving mysteries? First thing I’d do would be to [Spoiler Alert] and then [Spoiler Alert], because, really, what was up with [Spoiler Alert]? We might never know!

One thing I do know for sure is that its not really a place for kids, as most of them end up getting kidnapped once or twice per season. There has got to be a kid-friendly island out there that they can explore… someplace like, oh I don’t know, BBC’s Adventure Rock. Adventure Rock is an online 3D island that includes games and creative studios where children can get immersed.

According to this article from BBC News, virtual worlds are a stimulating way for kids practice what they might do in real life. For as much escapism as a virtual world like Second Life provides for people who already lead real lives, something like Adventure Rock would exist on the opposite side of things. Kids can practice social skills and figure out their identities in a consequence-free environment all before leading their own lives in the real world. –NICK YINGLING

Adventure Rock

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and I dreamed about being on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sadly, I’m not currently exploring foreign lands for ancient artifacts and getting chased by Nazis, nor did I ever get the chance to be a Blue Barracuda. But with National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid, your students can have the opportunities that I never did, and learn while doing it!

With this fun and educational game, your students can coast through an ancient pyramid using a robot to search for hieroglyphic clues. Once they find the hieroglyphic in each room, they can access the secret room to see mummies and other neat stuff. It’s a great way to start a lesson on Egyptian history and to discuss the significance of pyramids and hieroglyphics.

And after your students get to scope out some mummies, they can move on to find shrunken treasure, explore Mars, or even learn about helping animals with other map games on the National Geographic’s My Wonderful World Web site.

These games are fun, engaging and most of all, educational. And if your aspirations were the same as mine growing up, you can live vicariously through your students! Everyone wins! -LAUREN FROHNE

Explore a Pyramid
My Wonderful World

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You may have heard your students talking about questing or getting their epic mounts or selling bars of gold on the auction house. If you have, you’re probably dealing with a World of Warcraft player.

As a long-standing gamer and a doctoral student interested in virtual worlds and games and their potential use for teaching, I was thrilled to learn that a recent issue of Science magazine called for participation in a unique conference – one that would take place within the massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft (WoW). For three days in May, participants in the Convergence of the Real and the Virtual conference created characters and joined players from around the world to participate in scholarly discussions about the game while hanging out in a virtual world.

The conference was comprised of three sessions: one about the possibilities for research within the game, one about the relationship between the game and the “real world,” and one about the future of such virtual worlds.

I was particularly drawn to the second session because it featured both Constance Steinkuehler who researches the potential for learning and literacy in games, and Julian Dibbell, who researches cultural and sociological aspects of games. These scholars are two of my most favorite within this community. This particular session shed some light on the learning potential in games.

Steinkuehler believes there’s serious learning and knowledge creation that occurs as a result of playing WoW. For instance one conference participant related a story about how his son wanted to find a specific pet within the game (yes, players can have virtual pets in the game) and spent several hours researching how to find and obtain such a pet. This example uniquely illustrates the development of critical thinking, research skills, and strategic planning - indispensable skills in high school, college and beyond. Other threads of discussion in this session included the notions of:

1. How real is a friend in WoW?
2. Are the relationships that are formed in-game meaningful?
3. Is the social space of the game completely different from real life, or does it simply mimic real life?
4. Can leadership be learned in WoW?
5. Can skills developed within the game world transfer to the real world?

If you are interested in learning more about the potential for learning in games, I recommend you start with Steinkuehler’s work. After all, 10 million people play WoW; and some of them might be your students! -LAURA CHRISTOPHERSON

Back in February, Jeremy blogged about Doodle 4 Google, a contest where students redesigned the Google logo based around the question, “What if…?”. The entries are in, and you can now vote for your favorites. The winning drawing will replace the usual Google logo on May 22.

If you missed the contest deadline, you can still take advantage of the lesson plans Google has made available for the project. The contest’s central question, “What if…?” can be a springboard for lots of creative ideas beyond just the Google logo. For example, I think the Instructify banner at the top of this page would be a great choice. -BILL FERRIS

Doodle 4 Google - Vote

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