In light of the recent earthquake in Haiti, it seems appropriate to offer up tools for teaching about the possibilities of natural disasters and preparations that can be done locally in our schools which may better prepare students for coping with the situation should it occur. To that end, the Red Cross has assembled their Masters of Disaster curriculum focused for students K-8.
BY BILL FERRIS
America runs on electricity. And coal, and wind power, and hydroelectric, and Dunkin Donuts. Powering a Nation, a multimedia project from the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication, looks at the cost of our current energy situation, the possible alternatives, as well as the consequences of making the sorts of wholesale changes that green energy would bring.
BY BILL FERRIS
During a recent flu outbreak, I only let 1400 people die. Go me!
I’ve just played The Great Flu, an online game designed to teach people about flu pandemics and how to control them. Your task: try to control a flu pandemic somewhere in the world. At your disposal: an array of tools and tactics such as distributing facemasks, stockpiling “wild guess” vaccines that may or may not help, informing the populace, and extremes such as shutting down airports and isolating victims. Every measure you take costs money, and if you pony up funds for improved health care in China, you’ll have to spend it again if the flu migrates across the border to India.
BY MELISSA THIBAULT
Picture this. You just finished teaching your third lesson on prime factors, photosynthesis or fractions, and there are some students who need more visuals and more practice. Wouldn’t it be great if you had free, quality-assured courseware in math, science, health, reading and keyboarding you could use to reinforce hard-to-grasp topics?
e-Learning for Kids, a global, nonprofit foundation, provides free courses for children ages 5 – 12, and is working to build a community for parents and educators to volunteer their expertise and share innovations and insights in childhood education. (more…)
BY BILL FERRIS
When I grew up, playing video games was the opposite of a healthy lifestyle — hours of sitting on my butt, staring at the TV, and not socializing (I did, however, rescue various princesses and punch out Mike Tyson).
Humana Games for Health wants to erase the stereotype of the chubby weakling shoving Cheetos in his mouth while mashing buttons in a dark basement. They’re looking reward you handsomely for your ideas for a healthy video game in their InsertCoin competition.
When I was in school, time management was an issue. Video games robbed me of my attention span and desensitized me. Then the internet came along, chaining me to a computer for hours. To top it all off, I was incredibly popular and all the coolest people wanted me to hang out and share an Orange Julius with them at the mall. Things are much better now: the video game playing is under control; the 28k modem is gone so I don’t have to spend as much time at the computer; and most of my high school acquaintances are now in jail.
What’s the latest technology threat to the health and well-being of the American teenager? Text messaging, according to this article from The New York Times. Citing the Nielsen Company, it reports that “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008.” That number, they say, is double the average from the previous year.
BY BILL FERRIS
This week’s MBTN features foods that will keep you healthy, a new job-search site for teachers, and tips for stopping conflicts. Read more after the jump.
In their book Made to Stick, Dan and Chip Heath write about a stunning demonstration that showed the number of nukes in existence during the cold war. During this demonstrations, Geoff Ainscow of the group Beyond War asked audience members to close their eyes. He then dropped a BB into a metal bucket, representing the Hiroshima bomb. The BB made a loud clang as it hit. Following that, he dropped in 10 BBs — the nuclear firepower of a single Russian or American nuclear submarine. Then, to illustrate the arsenal of the entire world, he dropped in 5,000 (!) BBs, creating a cacophony of the little spheres smashing into the metal bucket (click here to read the excerpt, with an audio clip).
As this anecdote shows, sometimes a sensory demonstration works best to illustrate scale. The website Sugar Stacks has applied this tactic to eating habits. The front page shows various-sized servings of Coca-Cola. Next to each stands a pyramid made out of sugar cubes equal to the amount of sugar in each serving. Looking at the piles of sugar may make your students rethink that trip to the vending machine between classes. Sugar Stacks asks, “A label can tell you there are 39 grams of sugar in your soda, but what does that much sugar look like?” Frankly, it looks like a case of type 2 diabetes waiting to happen. Sugar Stacks doesn’t only pick on sodas. You can find out the horrifying amounts of sugar in snacks, cereals, and even fruit (the amount of sugar in fruit is really depressing — what are we supposed to eat? Drywall?).
While not as high-stakes as nuclear war, making informed eating decisions is important for your students to learn. Visualizing how much sugar is in their diet may mean fewer trips to the dentist and the doctor in the long run. -BILL FERRIS
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.
25 Item To-Do List Everyone Should be Doing - If you’re not already making to-do lists in order to be the most productive you can be, maybe now is the time to start. This list from BANDBMAMA’s Blog is a great place to start. Such helpful items as taking a walk to smiling at others can really make your day feel great and productive.
9 Things Every New Blogger Should Know -Blogging doesn’t have to be difficult. If you and your class aren’t blogging already, don’t get overwhelmed before you even start. There are a few things you should know before you get started, however. This list is a good place to start, as it illustrates a few of the crucial things to producing a blog that’s approachable and engaging. Check out these tips and more from Blogging Agenda.
10 Ways to Eat Natural - I’ve been doing my best to start eating more healthily lately. I’ve stopped eating fried foods and cut down on other processed items, and I’m honestly feeling a lot better already. Eating healthy and natural doesn’t mean you have to completely restructure your diet, however. If you abide by a few of these tips from Health.com, you’ll find that eating natural foods might be easier than you think.
10 Most Popular DIY Sites - Do you like to get your hands dirty and create from scratch? Does the look and feel of something that you’ve made all by yourself give you a thrill? Do you simply just like to make things with your own hands? Well, there are plenty of resources on the web for you to find ways of doing-it-yourself when it comes to making projects with things at your disposal. This list of the 10 best resources might even lend you a great opportunity to do some fun projects with your students. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: Arbron on Flickr.
Top 100 Twitter Tools - I’ll be honest. There is a lot of Twitter abuse going on out there. One of the amazing things about Twitter is its ability to customize your experience. There are new tools being built all the time, but few of them are useful for anything other than gaining more followers. Fortunately, The Web Pitch has created a comprehensive list of the Top 100 Twitter Tools, with categories including Information Gathering, Organization & Productivity, and Business & Finance.
10 Job Listing Sites With Unique Opportunities - Times are uncertain. Therefore, it’s always good to be aware of ways you can access social resources and know how to use them if the economy continues down this slippery slope. Lifehack has a list of 10 job sites that will help you score a job if the need arises. Luckily, Craigslist isn’t on the list.
15 Simple Changes That Will Quickly Improve Your Health - It’s time to start seriously thinking about your health. You might already have it on your list, but it should really be at the top. There are simple ways you can start thinking more healthily right away. Dumb Little Man presents this list of changes to your eating and drinking regimens, as well as easy ways to exercise in a pinch.
Teach Creative Writing With These 5 Steps - Creativity is a difficult thing to teach. It is really more about nurturing creativity than instructing it, IMHO. Bloggeron brings us these five steps to help you teach things such as how to generate characters and share ideas. Creative writing can be a lot of fun for students who might be bored by the same old worksheets. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: Wetsun on Flickr
7 Steps to Emotional Maturity - It’s easy to get wrapped up in your emotions sometimes, and that can lead to ineffective teaching. For students, getting wrapped up in their emotions can be a hindrance to progress. This list shows steps toward gaining emotional maturity, which doesn’t necessarily mean giving up your emotions. It just means taking the time to understand your feelings.
Top 10 Language Learning Blogs - Learning a new language doesn’t have to be difficult. Especially when you have the entire Internet at your fingertips. You might not even have to do too much research to find the right language to learn with these 10 language learning blogs from The Linguist. For all you foreign language teachers out there, this could be a great list for resources, too.
101 Interesting Human Body and Health Facts - Normally, I am wary of the word “interesting,” mainly because it is rather subjective, and also because it is one of those adjectives that doesn’t do much for its subject. However, this list from List Lovers encompasses a long list of uncommon medical facts, many of which are quite useful. For instance, did you know that one uses 200 muscles to take a single step?
Top 100 Novels of All Time - This list, compiled from other top 100 novels lists, including those on The Radcliffe List and Time, is a serious list for a serious reader. I don’t know how many of them I’ve actually read cover to cover, but many of them I read while I was in school. Hopefully, your students can do the same. I can’t say I totally agree with this list, as there’s no Fahrenheit 451 to be found. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: solar ikon on Flickr.
Some people discourage you, telling you not to “reinvent the wheel.” Other people will give you too much encouragement, saying “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Do not listen to either of these people. Both are trying to distract you with nonsensical feedback while they secretly steal your inventions and race to the patent office. While its clear that I have an obvious mistrust for others concerning my inventions (potato chip clip AND TV remote combined), don’t let my negativity infect your science classroom.
Originally published few years back, this article by the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) takes a rigorous look at one invention that is assumed to work just fine the way it exists: the parachute. Apparently, we’ve assumed parachutes to be a successful way of preventing death by “gravitational challenge” based purely on anecdotal evidence — there hasn’t been a single study that included controlled, randomized, double-blind parachute placebo groups. Without such a study, can we really know for sure that skydivers wouldn’t fare as well with a placebo instead of a parachute?
Their intent was to satirize criticisms about health interventions based off observational data by advocates who prefer evidence based findings. You, however, can use it with your students to spark an interest in challenging assumptions and looking at things from a different angle. While the article is tongue-in-cheek, it works on a fundamental level in that it is still an interesting, solid example for students trying to write a scientific research paper to see just how a scientific research paper gets written. Abstract, objective, data sources, citations—they are all in there. -NICK YINGLING
Instructifeature: Five Tips to Improve Students’ Information Evaluation
Photo credit: Library of Congress
I just ate the sticker off my granny smith apple. Well, to be more precise, I just ate about 3/4 of the sticker, and when I was taking the next bite, I saw the remaining bit. So I didn’t eat the whole sticker. But now I am left wondering which is more toxic — the pesticides no doubt used to make sure this delicious apple grew to be ginormous, or the sticker and its adhesive? I mean, they have to consider that one in 10 dummies will end up eating the sticker, right?
Michael Pollan wrote a tremendous pieces for the NYT Magazine this weekend: An Open Letter to Our Next Farmer-in-Chief. In it, he argues that the American food system is deeply broken, and with the price of oil rising, in need of reform. Soon.
It must be recognized that the current food system — characterized by monocultures of corn and soy in the field and cheap calories of fat, sugar and feedlot meat on the table — is not simply the product of the free market. Rather, it is the product of a specific set of government policies that sponsored a shift from solar (and human) energy on the farm to fossil-fuel energy.
The piece lays out an agenda that includes not just reform of the government’s approach to agriculture (which should delight free-marketeers), but a prescription for better health (cutting back on plentiful corn and soy could mean limitations on cheap non-food derivatives like high fructose corn syrup) and some re-tooling of the educational system as well (taking a long hard look at agricultural/industrial education and how we promote certain careers). This is the kind of thoughtful editorial that could spark some real discussion in a classroom — you could use it as-is for high-schoolers or adapt it for middle-schoolers. -ROSS WHITE
An Open Letter to Our Next Farmer-in-Chief
Relive the Carnage of American Conflict…With Food
Force Feed Food Force to Your Students
Test Your Vocabulary and Feed the Hungry with FreeRice
Save Money and Your Taste Buds - Bring Your Own Lunch
Photo credit: Stevie Rocco on flickr
If you were jonesing for a list of lists to better your edification skills yesterday, I apologize. Nonetheless, Instructify is happy to present Tuesday by the Numbers, the day-late version of its sister column, Monday by the Numbers.
100 Free Online Ivy League Courses You Should Take Just for Fun - I know it says “for fun,” but come on, the real reason to take any class is to get some sort of betterment or education, right? Whatever your motive, Eduk8 delivers this great list of online course offerings from places like Johns Hopkins and MIT. The courses themselves range in subject from Child Development and Psychology to Foreign Culture, and the list is chock full of such unique offerings as The Anthropology of Computing and Hip Hop.
100 Awesome, Free Web Tools for Elementary Teachers - It can be tough sometimes to filter out the things on the web that are truly valuable, especially when it comes to things that are useful in teaching children. Here’s a list from SmartTeaching.org that will help you be a better researcher and educator to the youngins. With 100 here, you’ll find something you didn’t know for sure.
101 Ideas for a Great Start - Though the school year has technically already begun, it isn’t too late to start things out right by setting yourself and your students up for success. Iowa State offers these tips in establishing some great methods for students and teachers to start things off on the right foot. The list is set up in categories such as ‘creating a welcoming atmosphere’ and ‘encourage active learning.’
7 tips to top sleep, 3 tips for staying awake - Though it should just be as easy as ‘get to bed earlier, wake up later,’ sleeping is not always as easy a task as it seems to accomplish. The University Blog gives us these tips to help you zonk out at night, and pep up during the day. Stop yawning and read these now. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
Photo credit: zen on flickr
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