Instructify

BY AARON FOWLES

It’s no secret that kids in America aren’t eating well; any trip to the snack aisle in the supermarket is sufficient evidence of that. We also know that kids aren’t exercising. What we don’t know, clearly, is how to fix it. The negative trend in childhood and adolescent health has continued, and is exaggerated in low-income areas.

The United States Department of Agriculture has given us MyPyramid.gov as a resource to address personal health, as well as tools to reach students. The site has tools that are useful for kids ages 6 and up.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Let’s get straight to the point — I don’t like eggs. They’re practically the only food I flat out refused to eat in any form. But my disdain for them can’t cloud a potential educational resource like The Good Egg Project and what it brings to the table. The Good Egg Project takes the everyday breakfast item and wraps it in an informative website that lauds the many virtues of eggs. From explaining how they get from a farm to your plate to videos showing egg farms across the country, the site pretty much covers all aspects of everything you could want to know about eggs.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Let’s face it, unhealthy food options and a general lack of nutritional awareness have made childhood obesity a big issue in this country. In an effort to tackle the problem head-on, First Lady Michelle Obama has launched the aptly named Let’s Move. Part informational and part networking building, the site offers a wealth of nutrition and health information while trying to lay the foundation for a network of health-conscious citizens to work together to fight childhood obesity.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Need some global statistics to emphasize a point you’re trying to make in an ecology or civics lesson plan? Trying to drive home the point in a health-related lesson about the spread of disease or the scope of our ever-growing obesity epidemic? Then check out Worldometers, a real-time online ticker that tracks statistics ranging from food consumption, to energy use, to how much people spend on video games.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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BY NICK YINGLING

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.

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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.

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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

Related stuff:

Food for thought about food

Coca-Cola: At Least it’s Not Crack

That’s a Lot of Pennies: The MegaPenny Project

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