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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Looking to harness your student’s creative energy and possible have them win a college scholarship at the same time? Google is once again staging their Doodle 4 Google competition, letting K-12 students across the country take a crack at redesigning the iconic Google logo. We’ve plugged this competition in the past, but it’s worthy of a re-mention. The theme for this year’s competition is “If I Could Do Anything, I Would …” All of the details about how to register your school and submit entries can be found here.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Your elementary students can follow Santa Claus’ flight path on Christmas Eve through the magic of Google Earth.

The jolly elves at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (that’s NORAD to you and me) have been tracking Santa using a combination of satellites, radar, Santa Cams, and fighter jets (!) for years. Now they’ve joined forces with Google to better update kids on Santa’s whereabouts as he flies around the world.

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BY BILL FERRIS

I’ve been a dedicated Firefox user for years because of its wondrous catalog of extensions. I like Google Chrome, too — from its load time to how it accesses pages, everything about it is fast, fast, fast. But I never made the full-time switch because it didn’t have all my geeky extensions.

In their ongoing bid for world domination Google has rectified this deficiency, opening up its sprawling new extensions gallery. To use them you’ll have to install the new beta version of the browser (don’t be afraid of using a beta version in this case, however — “beta” is Googlespeak for “software”).

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BY BILL FERRIS

Google, apparently fed-up with the stereotype of programmers being a bunch of pasty white dudes, is trying to open up the computer science field to women, minorities, and special-needs students with a series of scholarships. These $10,000 scholarships will go to qualifying students who intend to pursue computer science in college.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Just because Google and Microsoft hate each other doesn’t mean their software can’t work together in harmony. OffiSync lets you create, access, edit and save Google Docs from Microsoft Office.

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BY NICK YINGLING

One of my fondest memories growing up was this time when my friends and I found an old treasure map. We eventually ran afoul of a family of gangsters, but my one heavyset buddy was able to befriend the deformed son of the head gangster, Mama Fratelli. Just as the gangsters caught up with us, Chunk and his new friend, Sloth, were able to swoop in and save the day. We were, truly, a bunch of Goonies. No, wait—there I go again, confusing myself with Corey Feldman.

That image you get in your mind when you imagine treasure maps isn’t just fascinating because of the promise of riches. That classic example of some old, yellow, frayed-at-the-edges map also maybe has some crazy artwork of an agitated seabeast where there be dragons or something. You can just feel the wonder of exploration resonating from old-world cartography.

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has been busy scanning these old maps and making them available free-of-charge in digital high-resolution images. (more…)

BY NICK YINGLING

According to the plot summary for Teen Wolf on Wikipedia, “High school student Scott Howard is seventeen years old, sick of being average and wishing he were special… Scott keeps undergoing changes and eventually undergoes a complete change and becomes a wolf… During the final basketball game, Scott refuses to “wolf out” and insists on winning the game on his own.”

Isn’t that heart-warming? The message is just be yourself!

So, what does Teen Wolf have to do with anything here? (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Google announced yesterday their plans to roll out a new operating system, Chrome OS. They’re designing it to run on netbooks initially, desktops eventually, beginning in the latter half of 2010.

According to the Official Google Blog, “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.” The code will be open-source, to boot.

The question: what possibilities does this operating system hold for educators? As more and more computing happens online, does this development set the stage for schools to shrink their technology budgets by buying Chrome-packed netbooks instead of laptops or desktops? And if so, how will this run up against filters, firewalls and internet censorship that’s so common in many schools. It’s all fair game here. Let’s hear your opinion in the comments!

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

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BY NICK YINGLING

Computer science and programming language can both be pretty intimidating. In fact, they can be a little forbidding if you try to jump in feet first. The thing about computers, though, is that they aren’t going anywhere, and they’re just going to keep talking their crazy language. That’s why it’s great to have a little help to chip away at that mystique.

Google Code University is a great resource that computer science students and educators can use to stay current with tools and computing technology. Everything is Creative Commons, too, so it should be easy to work it into your classroom.

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BY BILL FERRIS

It’s hard to believe that Google figured out how to search for my house from space before getting around to searching for photos licensed under Creative Commons¹. According to the Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google), Google Image Search now lets you narrow your results to pics that carry the Creative Commons license. Hey, better late than never.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Google is renowned as one of the most remarkable companies in the world. Their search engine, maps, docs, the Android phone platform, are revolutionizing the way information is found, communicated and used. As such, when Google wants to bring in a speaker to rally the troops, they can get top-notch presenters like Steve Wozniak, Tom Brokaw, Neil Gaiman, David Allen, John Battelle, Merlin Mann, and Ken Jennings. Seeing as how they’ve bought up the whole internet including YouTube, they’ve archived videos of these presentations and made them available to the public at Videos from the Googleplex.

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U-2 Spy Plane in Google Earth
Nothing says Cold War quite like the U-2 spy plane incident. Free Technology for Teachers provides a link to a Google Earth file in which your students can find out fascinating facts about this seminal event in American history.

How To Learn Photoshop In 24 Hrs
As long as you’ve ponied up a few hundred bucks for Photoshop, you may as well learn how to use it. DesignReviver has a series of tutorials on how to use this venerable graphics program.

18 Most Scenic Places For Teaching English Overseas
Who among us hasn’t pondered teaching English abroad? See exotic places, learn a new language, and see how people live in another part of the world. MatadorAbroad sweetens the deal by listing 18 of the most beautiful places you could go for your overseas teaching experience. Locales like Rio, Prague and Zanzibar look awfully tempting, especially when winter rolls around again.

Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools
Get the most out of 140 characters. Tech & Learning has 9 reasons Twitter is a powerful educational tool. FYI, this entry: 138 characters. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: (nz)dave on Flickr.

Google does it again.  This time it’s a new layer for Google Earth that uses NASA-funded maps to show carbon dioxide emissions from various sources.  Of course, you can download Google Earth 5 and get the information so you can make your own maps, but you can view an example here.

In a classroom, maps like this can have many applications. The most obvious would be in a science class if you were studying climate change. You could compare and contrast the emissions from electricity production and the industrial sector.  Additionally, you could use the map to study your own area’s carbon footprint and compare it with other areas. Students could use the data within Google Earth to create a “tour” showing how various sectors and/or geographical areas contribute to carbon dioxide emissions.

I’m sure that once you play around with the maps and look at the data on your own, you’ll find many ways to integrate it into your own classroom. -REBECCAH HAINES

USA CO2 Emissions from fossil fuels 2002

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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.

We here at Instructify love to hear from you. Would you like to leave some feedback on this posting or just send me a message? Simple: just go up on your roof and paint your remarks in big, block letters. If you’re in a rural area, you might arrange some rocks in a field. Then in the comments section under each posting simply send us the coordinates.

Yeah, I suppose maybe you could leave the actual comments in the comments section, Captain Buzzkill. I’m just trying to get you motivated about different ways that you might possibly use Google Earth.

Maybe you might be interested in using Google Earth to explore the Civil War, look at the global diamond trade, or engage students in math and geometry by looking at different mountains’ ski slopes. Take a look at these lesson plans for Google Earth, for example. You’ll find lessons spread out across five content areas: social studies, math, science, language arts, and cross curricular. The lessons start at basic how-tos for users (which aren’t just for stinking newbies — experienced users might even find new features to investigate), then branch out into both student-controlled and teacher-controlled lessons.

The best part is that these lesson plans are already prepared for you. The file formats will vary, but now you don’t have to stay up until 1 a.m. doing prep work and planning. Who knows? This new abundance of time might afford you the chance to start a new hobby…like arranging cryptic messages for satellites to read. I’m just saying. -NICK YINGLING

Lesson Plans for Google Earth

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