Instructify

Sometimes it seems as though the main thing kids (and adults) need to learn about history is that it really happened, to real people, people not so different from us. Never in all of history has it been easier to make this point with primary sources, more of which go online every day. One recent historic addition to this global archive at our fingertips is the LIFE magazine photo collection, now on the web courtesy of Google.The front page of the LIFE photo archive gives some terrific introductory browses, by decade or by a few chosen topics. To search only the LIFE photos, you can visit this page or else enter “source:life” in a regular Google Images search. Perhaps best of all, all the pictures seem to be available in large, high-resolution versions, and all of them seem have useful information prominently displayed, such as the date the photograph was taken and the name of the photographer. It would have been nice if copyright information about the photos were as easy to find; under the current copyright laws, it is a fair use for educators to put any of these photos in classroom-only materials, but it’s not clear whether they can be reproduced on an open website or in a book, for instance.

One wonderful thing about the LIFE photos is that they’re works of art as well as of American history; the magazine’s photographers routinely collected entirely justified awards. Some of the gorgeous photos I found by browsing include a picture of a bare-chested Picasso with a flower behind his ear, a picture of children of Japanese ancestry on their way to a WWII internship camp, and a picture of famed socialite and photographer Lee Miller in full soldier kit sitting on a piece of rubble. But why not look around for yourself? A search is worth a thousand words. — AMANDA FRENCH

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

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Google plans to digitize newspapers

When will Google quit? They seem to want to invent everything that hasn’t been invented yet and reinvent everything that’s already been invented. One recent contribution is Google Notebook, which, as you might guess, is an online note-taking site.

The main advantage to using Google Notebook might not even be considered an advantage by some teachers: it gives the students the ability to share and comment on each others’ notes. Maybe Google Notebook could integrate with PayPal so that bright, unscrupulous students can more easily sell their notes? Horrors. But personally, I’d bet that a bright, scrupulous teacher could get great results by using this tool with an entire class or with more than one class studying the same subject. (Overseas collaborations, anyone?) Even if students don’t share them, however, web-based notes will still be conveniently accessible from any computer or smart phone, as well as searchable.

Google Notebook will work best for Firefox users who are willing to install and use add-ons (also called “extensions”), because the Google Notebook Firefox add-on makes it very easy to “clip” pieces of text from websites: all you have to do is highlight the text and right-click to save it. This functionality is duplicated by the Zotero Firefox add-on, however, which unlike Google Notebook can also handle images and generate a properly formatted bibliography.

Google isn’t the only one to have invented an online note-taking site: plenty of other non-behemoths have had the same idea. If you’ve used one or more of the note-taking services below, why not throw us a comment? We’d love to hear what you think.

• Fruitnotes
• Luminotes
• Notefish
• UberNote
• WebAsyst Notes
• Zoho Notebook

-AMANDA FRENCH

Google Notebook

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By now you’re surely familiar with Google Book Search, the project to digitize and display millions of books, which began in 2004. You’ve doubtless noticed that ordinary Google searches now turn up results from books, so that a student’s search for “Silas Marner” will point her not just to Wikipedia, but to the text and page images of the book itself on http://books.google.com. You may even have heard that Google recently settled a lawsuit brought by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild over whether the search company had the right to scan in-copyright material and display parts of such material in search results.

It is our delightful task, however, to tell you about something we’re guessing you haven’t heard of: Google Book Search previews. You can now use Google Book Search’s “Preview Wizard” to generate a little virtual book that will fit in a small square of your web page or blog. All you need is the book’s ISBN number, access to your web site’s underlying code, and the courage to copy and paste snippets of JavaScript. (If you have a WordPress blog, use Design and Widgets to insert the code; if you have a Blogger.com blog, use Layout and Edit HTML.) By default, what appears is a picture of the book’s cover with clickable arrows that let you page back and forth in the book, though you might want to choose other display options. Some books will grant you access to the full text, while others will give you only a few pages or chapters, but in both cases this widget is a great way to encourage your screen-dazed students toward books.

It’s also worth noting that libraries, bookstores, and book-oriented sites are taking advantage of the same technology on a larger scale; Google Book Search previews are available from the websites of WorldCat, LibraryThing, GoodReads, Books-a-Million, and many more. Happy reading (online)! — AMANDA FRENCH

Google Book Search Preview Wizard

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Google plans to digitize newspapers

Many teachers worry about their students’ reliance on Google as a way of finding information. If you can’t get them to become library junkies, you can at least prove to them that how they do research affects what information they find. A neat little visualization tool called Thumbshots.com Ranking can help.The Ranking tool allows you to compare searches on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines by displaying a row of dots representing web pages, arranged in the same order that they appear in a particular set of search results. Hovering over a dot will show you a small preview, or “thumbshot,” of the page. One thing you’ll quickly see is that there’s not much overlap: pages that show up in Google results often don’t show up in Yahoo! results and vice versa.

Pages that do show up in both sets of results are highlighted in blue, and blue lines allow you to compare where the pages rank in each set of results. In the Yahoo! results for “water on Mars,” for instance, a 2001 article published on NASA’s website ranks 3rd; the same page ranks only 35th in Google’s results. The Ranking tool also allows you to highlight a particular site so that you can see, for instance, where Wikipedia is in each set of results. Moreover, you can teach your students about the importance of search words by showing them that searching Google for “water on Mars” returns significantly different results than searching Google for “Mars water.”

Once you’ve constructed and conducted a lesson whose moral is “Different searches produce different results,” you might want to explore any number of different search engines. Metasearch engines such as Dogpile and Clusty are search engines of search engines that compile results from several different sources. Search engines such as Grokker, Cuil, and Mahalo display information in dramatically different ways from the big three (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Live Search). There’s a whole world to search out there, and a whole bunch of ways to search it. –AMANDA FRENCH

Thumbshots.com Ranking

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We’re all prone to a little questionable judgment every now and again, whether it’s caused by a crazy birthday party, a lack of sleep, or just some strange interaction with allergy medicine. But that doesn’t mean you should send that email to your ex at 3am or give your principal a piece of your mind after a night of venting with your colleagues. You’re only going to regret that rambling mess of incoherence and misspelled choice words.

Luckily for Gmail users, Mail Goggles has you covered. Mail Goggles prompts you to solve a couple simple math problems before you send your email. You know, just to make sure your head is on straight. The default setting makes Mail Goggles active only late at night on weekends, but you can change the settings to whenever you want.

Now, if only my cell phone had my back like this. -NICK YINGLING

Mail Goggles

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With so much information available online, the printed newspaper might not have much time left. In the information age, opening the paper today to read about what happened yesterday seems incredibly slow. They’re not searchable, and their size is unwieldy for folks used to reading news on a laptop or iPhone. Plus they generate waste, and your fingers get all inky. That said, I’ve fond memories of reading through the funnies and the sports section on Sunday mornings as a kid. My wife wrote for a daily paper, too. The newspaper was our culture’s medium of record for generations, and it deserves better than to merely vanish into obsolescence.

Leave it to Google to make newspapers searchable. Google will partner with newspaper publishers to digitize archived issues and make more papers available online. You can still read them as they were originally printed — that includes headlines, articles, photos, ads, letters to the editor, maybe even an ink smudge or two. “Over time,” the Google blog says, “as we scan more articles and our index grows, we’ll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you’ll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well.” Cool!

Google’s newspaper digitization project will allow your students to use primary source material to view history through the lens of people experiencing it. It also means they won’t have to head to the library to squint at microfiche editions of old newspapers for that research paper you assigned them.

Sure, the newspaper doesn’t have as many features as today’s online media, but it’s an important part of our heritage as an informed society. Now a lot of that heritage will be available digitally, and easier to access than ever before. I just hope they don’t forget to digitize the funny pages. -BILL FERRIS

Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time via the Official Google Blog

Google Launches Newspaper Digitization Project via Lifehacker

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Google Knol: a new Wikipedia?

I know I’m not the only person to have pulled this trick, which is to use a non-Gmail account for Google applications. I am still wedded to my Yahoo! Mail account for email, and I’ve used that email for some of of my accounts on Google, especially the ones that were acquired by Google after I started an account there (like YouTube).  On the other hand, I also have a GMail address (which generally collects dust, and spam from disuse) on my account as well. With so many online identities to keep track of, how do I get this all together so Google knows who I am in all Google applications?

It’s simple, really. Go to the My Account page, then click on “Edit” next to your name on the right. You can then specify Google to associate whatever email address you like with your account.

This tip comes by way of Mark Wagner at EdTechLife. -ALICE MERCER

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Download a shiny new web browser: Google Chrome

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I remember in 1996 when someone told me that I didn’t just have to use AOL’s web browser to surf “the ‘Net” (that’s what everyone called it back then). Apparently, you could also use Internet Explorer to check out web pages! Surely, such mind-exploding information probably gave me an instant nose bleed.

Jump to early 2004 when someone tells me that there exists a way to put an end to all the rampant pop-ups and regular browser crashes I was experiencing with Internet Explorer. The answer: Mozilla Firefox. A love affair with Firefox blossomed, IE was banished from my computer and I turned into a total snob towards IE users.

Now Google is getting poised to toss their hat into the web browser ring with Google Chrome. Right now its only being released as Google Chrome Beta so they can gather user feedback, but you can see what direction they’re heading in and some of it definitely looks good. You can find out more about Google Chrome by just, well, Googling it, I suppose. But how about I give you a quick rundown while I’ve got your attention?

Pros:

1. Google Chrome is very clean and sleek — that’s probably why they named it Chrome. If the T-1000 from Terminator 2 turned into a web browser, this is how it would look. One thing I initially resisted, but now enjoy is that the status bar at the bottom of the browser is no longer there all the time. Chrome looks a bit like other browsers would in good old Full Screen, F11 viewing mode. At first I felt a little un-anchored on the web page, as though I was about to fall into the screen. Eventually, I started liking it more and more. Even though it’s just a very small part of the window of other browsers, what’s the point in just taking up space at the bottom of the screen and declaring “Done” the whole time? Chrome’s subdued status bar appears in the bottom left only when needed. Seems like I wrote a lot about one small thing, but hey, it’s the little things, right?
2. Stand alone tabs – No longer will a crash on one tab bring down your entire browser.
3. Speed – Chrome definitely seems fast, but without a few weeks’ worth of browser history and add-on browser applications bogging it down, I can’t say I’ve really put it through the paces yet.

Rather than list the following as “cons,” I’ll give Google the benefit of the doubt since this is a beta version.

Wait and see:

1. Safe browsing – I didn’t really buy anything online because this is still a beta version, and payday is next weekend, anyways. Also, I avoided visiting dubious websites because I’m at work and I wouldn’t want to shatter your illusions about me.
2. Web apps aren’t ready – If you’d like to set up Twitbin in Google Chrome so you can follow LEARN NC on Twitter, you’re just going to have to wait until the browser is able to support web applications. -NICK YINGLING

Google Chrome

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Have you ever tried to have every computer in your class, or better yet, every computer in your lab go to Google Earth at the very same time? If you haven’t, don’t because those of us who have done this, have often earned the unending enmity of our school/district tech support. This is because there is no surer way to bring a network to its knees than running Google Earth, especially multiple copies from one site or node on a network. After many cookies, and cheerful smiles, you may repair that relationship with your network administrator. But how do you use Google Earth (a really wow tool) without causing a Google Earthquake on your network?

Your first option is to “cache” some of the big image files used in Google Earth. A less time and technically intensive solution is available though. Google Maps is starting to get a lot of the functionality of Google Earth, with less memory and bandwidth. Recent upgrades will let you add placemarks, and images to a map, and to save and share that information on maps. There are some “basic” overlays of photos and Wikipedia entries that can be added, and views include a satellite option. You can even export KML files to Google Earth. People are starting to do Google Lit Trips on Maps.

Don’t let “poor” memory keep you from using Google to teach geography in your class or lab, just use Google Maps instead. -ALICE MERCER

Google Maps

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In its never-ending attempt at taking over the Internet, and thus the world, Google recently launched its Knol project to the public. You might be asking yourself, what is a “knol” exactly? Google defines a knol as “a unit of knowledge” or “an authoritative article about a specific topic.” Okay, then what’s Knol?

Knol is an informational site, similar to Wikipedia and Britannica’s new platform, that hosts many knols written about various subjects. Anyone can write a knol (as long as they stick to the Content Policy), and other users can provide feedback, comments, related information, and — depending on the author’s settings — can even edit the knol. Even though Knol is a collaborative, user-driven information sharing platform, since it identifies its authors and allows them to document their credentials, its easy to evaluate the quality and veracity of the information.

Not only is Knol a great tool for top-level research, it also lets everyone (yes, even you!) share some knowledge on any topic imaginable. And, even if a knol on a topic already exists, you can still write your own article. Unlike Wikipedia, Knol is a forum that encourages individual perspectives, rather than enforcing a stringent neutral point-of-view. As they put it:

Google “[believes] that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content” and hopes “knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line.”

Google might be onto something by incorporating a sense of community into information sharing by putting a face with each article. It looks like they might also be another step closer to world domination. –LAUREN FROHNE

Knol

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Want to take your class on a trip to the Grand Canyon to see the Colorado River? How about a trip to New York City or Paris, France? Can’t afford the gas you say? Well not to worry. With Google Earth 4.3 you can take your students to any location on the globe without leaving the comfort of your classroom, or filling up your gas tank!

If you haven’t used it before, Google Earth is a Web-based program that uses satellite imagery to show places all over the world. All you need to do is download the free program and you are ready to get started. If you have used Google Earth before, version 4.3 has some great new features to take advantage of as you travel around the world. Some of these include photo-realistic buildings, swoop navigation from space to street-level, numerous layers that can be turned on to show anything from locations of volcanoes to the weather. With Google’s new street view, you can place your students virtually on almost any main street in the country. You can show your students how day and night work on our planet by using the dawn to dusk views with the sunlight feature. Take your students to any landform and not only see the 3-D image, but also view all the sight-seeing pictures and information provided by numerous professional organizations to help make this learning experience more memorable.

The new Google Earth 4.3 is out of this world - and if that is your next destination, just click on the outer-space feature and you can explore our solar system in the same way you explored our planet. -MONIQUE ST. LOUIS

Google Earth 4.3

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A picture is worth a thousand words, and several minutes, too. When it comes to Web searching, we’re stuck trying to figure out if a site is worthwhile by reading a few lines of text on Google’s results pages. Usually, you can tell at first glance whether the page you’ve landed on is what you’re looking for. So why do we waste our time reading text-based descriptions of a site and not just cut to a picture of the site itself?

That’s why RedZee designed its search engine to give you visual results instead of words, letting you find what you need in a hurry without having to read through what you don’t. Type in your search terms and RedZee gives you snapshots of the results. The pics are arranged on a “wheel” that you can quickly scroll through, letting you identify what you want by sight, rather than the traditional process of read, click, hope.

RedZee is also kid-friendly, and not just by virtue of its adorable red zebra mascot. 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.

I like Google just fine, especially their super-handy apps like Google Docs, Google Maps…I could go on all day. But it’s nice to see a new idea in the Web search game, and searching by sight is both fun and fast. You can cover a lot more ground in your searches, so to speak, with visual results. At RedZee, a picture is worth a thousand words you don’t have to scan to find what you’re searching for.-BILL FERRIS

RedZee

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Welcome to the Carnival of Education Career Fair! We’ve retracted the bleachers and set up the booths on the gymnasium floor so these brave teachers can see what they might be doing if they weren’t teaching (perish the thought).

Motivational Speaker
Mr. D at I Want to Teach Forever agreed to sport a freaking mohawk as long as his students worked hard, which was about three weeks. Sadly, his motivational experiment has concluded. Long live the mohawk.

Camp Counselor
As a kid, my wife got to go to Space Camp and Marine Science Camp. Had Tisha Kulak and American Consumer News been around back then to point out how to save money on tuition to summer research camps, I might’ve been able to go, too.

Productivity Consultant
Instructify-favorite studenthacks.org has some great tips for students who want to learn how to write a research paper.

Pro Athletes
The Jose Vilson uses Derek Jeter as an example of how nurturing students’ talent and leadership ability early on can reap great results.

And over at Jay P. Greene’s Blog, the author talks about the importance of identifying students’ talents, whether they’re a left tackle or potential honor student.

Economist
ESL teacher Larry Ferlazzo knows that money is the international language.

Translator
Melissa B. at The Scholastic Scribe provides a handy-dandy English-to-Eduspeak dictionary.

Director
Mathew Needleman at Creating Lifelong Learners takes a proactive approach to managing disruptive students during a class movie project.

Advice Columnist
Let’s Play Math! has some advice on teaching math to a struggling student.

Detective
OverwhelmedMom gets to the bottom of problems that gifted students face.

Investigative Reporters
The proprietor of a voice from the middle knows the means to discovery is asking the right questions.

In addition, eduwonkette responds to a Wall Street Journal article about the criteria used to evaluate teachers.

Game Developer
Alvaro at SharpBrains shares a few games to stimulate your temporal lobe.

Diplomat
Coach Brown tries to reach an understanding with hostile parents.

Nutritionists
At Homework. Dinner. Life. Angela points out that good nutrition habits ought to be maintained year-round, not just a few days before the test.

Meanwhile, Chanman at Buckhorn Road says all that caffeine students drink can’t be good for them.

Cartographer
Dan Callahan, a.k.a. geek.teacher, harnesses Google Maps for a lesson in community mapping.

Librarian
@EDU takes the work out of student research by pointing them toward Google Alerts.

Politician
Jane Artabasy at Golden Apple Teaching Excellence Network unloads the loaded word of the day, “elitism,” showing it’s nothing to be frightened of - especially in schools.

The folks at Golden Apple also mull over the differences in races and learning styles.

Astronaut
HowDoWhy asks, what is a solar system, anyway? Furthermore, just how big is ours?

Human Resources Specialist
Over at Right on the Left Coast, Darren discusses the sticky situation of a teacher dating an 18-year-old student at a different school.

Mentors
Allison Jones at Entry Level Living wants to revamp the way young people think about leadership.

The folks at the Efficient Leadership Files have some ideas on that as well.

Statistician
Lead from the Start crunches the numbers about the disconnect between teachers and EdSector.

Strategist
Seth Pearce at NYC Students Blog has an intriguing idea on how to overcome schools’ non-stop test preparation.

Lobbyist
PZ Meyers at Pharyngula has some news about a disturbing bill in the Oklahoma legislature regarding religion in schools.

Road Grader
As the great homework debate rages on, Shabam School makes a good case for grading homework.

Kindergarten Teacher (sorry, I couldn’t come up with anything else)
Kiri at Elbows, Knees, Dreams shares her thoughts (and asks for others’ opinions) about early entrance to Kindergarten.

Photo credit: ou_ags on flickr

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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Want to check out where, exactly, the eagle had landed? From the folks who brought you Google Earth (namely Google) comes Google Moon. Now your students can explore the Sea of Tranquility from their desks.

Google Moon works a lot like Google Maps and Google Earth except, you know, on the moon. In addition to satellite imagery, Google Moon has facts from all six manned missions to the moon, including samples of moon rocks, descriptions of gravity experiments, and a few words about moonquakes. Students can also get closeup views of the lunar surface, and a little background information on the brave astronauts who hurtled through the cosmos and landed on the famed green cheese orb.

Sadly, though, Google’s normally excellent driving directions don’t seem to work with Google Moon. -BILL FERRIS

Google Moon

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