Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

One of the oldest classroom management tricks in the book is to use a timer to keep your students on schedule. Just finished a math lesson? Let them know they have two minutes to get ready for science. Big test today? They have 45 minutes to finish it. A timer sets clear expectations while keeping class running on time.

Online Stopwatch is the latest free online timer application I’ve found. Obviously it lets you set the timer, which then counts down to zero. However, it has several more features as well. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As school budgets dwindle and schools focus on high-stakes testing in core subjects, some schools see art programs as the go-to budgets to slash. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools and projects out there for art teachers that don’t cost a dime. The following are five of Instructify’s favorite free tools for art teachers.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Picking a good color scheme is, for me, like calculus — an ordered, complex set of laws that I’ll never, ever understand. Thankfully I can use cheats like referring to the color wheel, or this slick online Color Scheme Designer. Just move your cursor around the color wheel to find your central hue, choose between mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic or accented analogic, whatever those mean, and CSD will present you a selection of colors that will look great on our class blog, bulletin boards, art projects, school newspapers, activity T-shirts, or even your daily wardrobe (if you’re like me, you’ll need a lot of schemes based on khaki).

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BY BILL FERRIS

I must have wasted at least an hour of my life typing email signatures and other oft-repeated text (an hour seems like a lot of time when you know it was spent typing, “Sincerely, Bill Ferris” over and over). Signatures, addresses, and standard responses to frequently asked questions eat up a lot of time over the long haul. Take those precious minutes back with Texter.

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BY BILL FERRIS

“Back in my day we didn’t have those fancy calculators,” my dad used to say. “We had to use slide rules.” Which was his way of telling me he wouldn’t be much help with my math homework.

Sure, your math students are probably addicted to their TI-85s, smart phone apps, or online tools like Calc5, but sometimes it’s good to experiment with the tools of days gone by. Now you can make your own circular slide rule by following these directions from the physics department at the University of Montana.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Students have gotten used to doing things electronically. Your classroom doesn’t have to be an exception thanks to LectureTools, a learning management thingy from the University of Michigan.

Developers designed LectureTools with huge, impersonal college lecture courses in mind. However, there’s a lot here that K-12 teachers can use, too (though some of them would probably be best suited for 1:1 laptop environments). (more…)

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Have you ever wanted to make your own animated movie? The script, the soundtrack, the camera angles – if it were all up to you, you’d do an awesome job — probably better than Steven Spielberg, right? Well, move over Steve-o because with Xtranormal’s Text-to-movie website, you can create your own animated flick. Okay, so with the free version of Text-to-movie, your animated features probably won’t win an Oscar, but that doesn’t mean this product isn’t useful in the classroom. With a few simple steps, you or your students can create a movie. (more…)

Venerable note-taking app Evernote has rolled out a few new features that ought to help you and your students. You can now send Twitter messages directly into your Evernote account, use Evernote on your iPhone, or find tips on how you can use Evernote on their tips blog. You can also read the general Evernote blog for updates as they happen. All that is in addition to existing features like saving snippets websites you visit and recognizing text in pictures. -BILL FERRIS

Ron’s Evernote Tips Blog

Evernote Blog

Related stuff:

Evernote: never forget anything ever again. Ever.

Post-its for the Web: MyStickies

Kwiry - Remember to Remember Not to Forget This

Welcome to May’s random roundup. This month’s theme: Little Johnny, one-man stand-in for school-aged children the world over. After a year-and-a-half of hard work, we figured this overused cliche deserved a post of his own before he gets back to studying.

Time-savers for teachers
For other notes and resources the students need, consider giving this stuff to them as a whole, at the beginning of a session or semester. That way you only have to keep a master copy for Little Johnny who struggles to keep himself organized.

Learning exercise: Promote healthy living this school year
If you’re concerned about your students’ health, you can do something about it by extolling the virtues of healthy exercise. Ask Little Johnny how his little league team did over the summer. Do you have any joggers or climbers in your midst? Take an interest, and maybe they’ll get more active.

Search Visually, Safely with RedZee
RedZee filters out porn and other inappropriate content, so you don’t need to worry that Little Johnny will “accidentally” stumble across something he shouldn’t be looking at on a school computer.

Swap your Stuff at Zwaggle
But Zwaggle might be a good resource to pass along to parents. If you can make their lives easier by showing them where to find Christmas presents on the cheap, they might make your lives easier by encouraging Little Johnny to buckle down and try a little harder for his nice teacher.

Keep Your Grade Book Online with Engrade
If students (and their parents) can track their grades at any time, it may motivate them to stay on task throughout the class. Come parent-teacher conference time, you won’t have to deal with parents who are angry about Little Johnny’s surprise “D.”

Instructifeature: How to Stimulate Class Discussion Using Discussion Forums
In the classroom, you’re limited by clock. There’s only so much time you can devote to class discussion. Students feel the time crunch even more keenly—they’ve got to compose a thoughtful response in mere seconds. And while thinking on one’s feet is a valuable skill, how much better would Little Johnny’s answer be if he had more time to compose his ideas? Using discussion boards, students have the time they need to think of the best answer they can.

Photo credit: khalid almasoud 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

The Manuals

Related stuff:

Discover how to open mystery file extensions at OpenWith.org

Learn How at VideoJug

Photo credit: Telstar Logistics on Flickr.

Keep your students on task with E.gg Timer, a simple and stylish timer application. E.gg Timer works much like Class Timer in that you can easily set a countdown timer that plays an obnoxious noise when it hits zero. However, E.gg Timer’s interface is much more slick. For starters, you can program the time right into the URL — http://e.ggtimer.com/2minutes will give you a countdown of two minutes. If you just put a number in the URL (http://e.ggtimer.com/10, for example), it will assume you want that number of seconds. Once the timer starts, you get a clean black-and-white numeral display, as well as a status bar for a graphical representation of how much time is left.

You can use E.gg Timer to let students know how much time they have left to finish a test, or you can give them a set amount of time to get organized for the next activity. Or, I suppose, to boil an egg. -BILL FERRIS

E.gg Timer

Related stuff:

Manage Your Time Wisely with Class Timer

Instructify recently backed out of talks with a certain upcoming summer blockbuster. I can’t name the movie in question, nor can I reveal why negotiations ran aground, nor can I confirm or deny that my own personal “unreasonably greedy disposition” made things go sour. Let’s just leave it at this: their movie about mechanical things that trans — er, change — into other mechanical things would have had some terrific synergy with this posting about Constructor.

The description on the Sodaplay website sums up Constructor so well that I won’t even try rephrasing it with my own words: “Sodaconstructor is a construction kit for interactive creations using masses and springs. By altering physical properties like gravity, friction, and speed, curiously anthropomorphic models can be made to walk, climb, wriggle, jiggle, or collapse into a writhing heap.”

Constructor runs in a separate Java app, so you’ll need to make sure you’re updated. You might do best using it to lead a lesson first and then turn it loose on your students. I searched around in both the application and the homepage, but I couldn’t find any instructions. That means you’re going to have to do some goofing around and exploring on your own, but that’s the fun part anyhow. -NICK YINGLING

Constructor

Related stuff:

Let’s Have Some Phun: Physics Gets Creative for Young Learners

I was once told by a band director friend of mine that 108 is the magical musical tempo at which all middle school band music is played. But how do you know how fast 108 is if you’re not a band director? Luckily for you, the internet does it again with Best Metronome.

This site offers, well, an online metronome, in three different versions. The highly accessible metronome is quite simple, allowing you to type in a tempo (such as the magical tempo of 108), and hear the beat. Additionally, it lets you know what tempos go with musical tempo markings – for instance, 108 would be andante. Slightly more advanced is the simple best metronome. On screen, this one looks like an old-timey metronome with the stick that moves back and forth (you even have to wind it!). Finally, you have the advanced metronome. Some of the settings on this one were too complicated even for me, an old band nerd. However, you can set the speed of this one all the way up to 900 beats per minute! Why you would want to do this, I’m not sure, but you can. Additionally, you can have it play you standard preset rhythm, such as the waltz or tango.

If you are a band director, have musical students, or are musical yourself, you will find this website useful. Even if you’re not musical, you can find out what the standard beat for the polonaise is, and who doesn’t want to know that? -REBECCAH HAINES

Best Metronome

Related stuff:

We Got the Beat: Metronome Online

Learn Music Theory Solo or in an Ensemble at MusicTheory.net

Play it by ear: Trainear.com

I’m at the NCTIES conference in Raleigh. The intro session featured Vicki Davis of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. Renowned for using nifty tools in her teaching, she shared a great philosophy for integrating technology into your classroom: focus on what you want to DO, and THEN pick your tools. Deciding you want a blog because that’s what everybody else is doing isn’t going to lead to a good learning experience for students.

In my first morning session, Wilson Diaz from Chapel Hill High School talked about how using the Google suite of apps (Docs, Groups, Calendar, etc.) helped him with both parents and students. He hit all the high points, such as using Google Docs for collaboration and such. However, he also noted that by using Google as a class information tool, it stopped parents from calling him with the same old questions. You know the ones — “If I only knew Little Johnny was having problems, I  could have done something sooner!” or “Little Suzy told me she didn’t have any homework.” And so on.

In addition, Diaz said he uses Google to post assignments and due dates. That means, for example, if a kid loses a worksheet, he or she can download it immediately, rather than wait until after school to stop by the teacher’s room. It was a nice presentation on how to use a series of tools to eliminate headaches from the teaching process.

Overall, I enjoy NCTIES because it’s more hopeful than other conferences. It focuses on possibilities rather than problems. Don’t get me wrong, people discuss problems here all the time, but the solutions — usually creative and incorporating technology in ways that will engage students — sound like opportunities rather than obstacles. -BILL FERRIS