Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

I don’t know what I did to get on the Federal Trade Commission’s radar, but I’ve gotten a bunch of email from them lately. So far, it’s all been good — the first email was for YouAreHere, a cool site that tells kids how to be savvy consumers. Now they’ve sent me Net Cetera, a handy guide for good online citizenship.

Net Cetera deals with the benefits and hazards of P2P file sharing, privacy issues, identity theft, phishing, spamming, cyberbullying, sexting, and other cleverly named vices unique to the internet. (more…)

BY THOMAS RHEINECKER

Searching the internet for information is a tricky business. There are countless resources out there but there is not a lot to govern the quality or accuracy of the information that you find. A web site may look genuine but may still contain inaccurate information.

This is even more important when you are using the web to conduct scientific research or to look up information to support any stage of a research project. Inaccurate information could invalidate your research and leave you with useless results. You will have wasted time, energy, and not have furthered the quest for knowledge as you had originally anticipated. So how do you find authoritative web resources for scientific research?

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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

Related stuff:

Enter a new world with lesson plans for Google Earth

Google Earth 5 adds more educational features

Instructifeature: It’s getting hot in here! Teaching about climate change

Welcome to the first Random Roundup, in which we spotlight otherwise-unrelated articles that all happen to share some arbitrary criterion — in this case, Jurassic Park, which we apparently reference pretty often. In addition to realizing that my pop culture knowledge apparently stopped in 2001, I felt these articles deserve a second look from readers. If you enjoy these, try poking around the archives and see what other ancient articles you might unearth. -BILL FERRIS

Teen Tech Week begins March 8
“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” This warning by Jeff Goldblum in the cinematic classic Jurassic Park is as true for discussing the hazards of reckless information consumption as it is for warning of the dangers cloning giant prehistoric monsters. Kinda.

Dragon DNA and other genetics fun: Genetics Web Lab Directory
However, you will certainly find something you can use in your classroom to help your students understand the difference between factual genetics exploration and wishful thinking.

Be part of a Tyrannosaurus dig at Unearthing T.rex
While we can’t see these elite predators in action now that Jurassic Park 4 has been canceled, we can take a look at the excavation of a dead one.

Watch Genetics in Action: DNA from the Beginning
Being an English major, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around some of the sciences. Most of my knowledge of genetics and DNA comes from Jurassic Park. Lucky for me I found a slick site called DNA from the Beginning, which uses flash animation to spell out DNA basics.

Extract DNA from Bananas
Thanks to this experiment, genetic research has never seemed so simple. Remember the lessons of Jurassic Park, though, and be careful while messing around with the building blocks of life. You don’t want to have a bananasaurus on your hands. On second thought, yes you do.

Awesomeosaurus: New Carnivorous Dinosaur Discovered
That’s right, paleontologists have found a new dinosaur. This new species is one of the largest carnivorous dinos ever, which is way cooler than if it they’d found an herbivore. These critters apparently roamed Africa 95 million years ago, along with Jurassic Park III star, Spinosaurus, which surely led to some thrilling territorial struggles.

Photo credit: niznoz on Flickr.

“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” This warning by Jeff Goldblum in the cinematic classic Jurassic Park is as true for discussing the hazards of reckless information consumption as it is for warning of the dangers cloning giant prehistoric monsters. Kinda.

When using technology to find information, the consequences aren’t as high as, say, the possibility of getting torn to shreds by a velociraptor, but that doesn’t mean your students shouldn’t learn how to be competent, ethical technology users. That’s why the Young Adult Library Services Association launched Teen Tech Week, happening this year March 8-14.

The theme of this year’s Teen Tech Week is “Press Play.” Not to be confused with a so-so Aerosmith album, YALSA describes the “Push Play” theme like this:

“One way to interpret the theme is to emphasize the word ‘play.’ Play can be about teens creating and sharing their own content for the fun of it, like videos, music, and digital artwork. Play through games can be encouraged with tournaments, tech trivia contests, and video games. The theme can also take a more educational direction. Teens can ‘press play’ on various digital devices to learn more about the world around them. They can press play to watch film documentaries, listen to an audiobook, get online homework help, learn a new language and more.”

The Teen Tech week website has lots of ideas for activities and resources, so hop on over there for more information, and make sure your students know the best strategies for using technology for learning. -BILL FERRIS

Related stuff:

Get librarian-approved search results with Reference Extract — someday

Remember November for Information Literacy Resources

Instructifeature: Five Tips to Improve Students’ Information Evaluation

There’s a lively discussion in the comments over at the Reference Extract planning site: some visitors are skeptical (to say the least) about the need for a search engine that gives results “weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress.”

But both teachers and librarians know that students encounter a great deal of non-credible and un-credible as well as incredible content on the web, content that students are all too prone to take at face value. And there are similar projects out there: KidZui, which we covered last month, is not just a search engine but an entire browser built to lead kids toward websites approved by teachers. New search engines such as Cuil, which we covered back in August, do emerge. So a project like this — and Reference Extract is an ambitious project–isn’t out in left field, whether or not it’s a Google-killer.

If you read through the proposal, there’s lots of interesting data to support the project, and there’s some good geek food for those who’d like to know how the search engine will work (they’re going to pull out and index the URLs from QuestionPoint and use the Find retrieval engine from OCLC, or possibly Nutch . . . oh, never mind). The folks who are going to build this search engine prove with studies and pretty graphs that librarians are perceived as credible and that different librarians do tend to send researchers to the same websites.

So what do you think? Would you be likely to use and encourage your students to use a search engine “built for maximum credibility”? -AMANDA FRENCH

Reference Extract planning site

Related stuff:

Ensure kid-safe browsing with KidZui

Cuil adds power, pictures to web searches

Visit the Library of Congress online

Search the world’s libraries with WorldCat

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

Related links

Instructifeature: Five tips to improve students’ information evaluation

Search visually safely with Redzee

SearchMe visual search

Cuil adds power, pictures to web searches

Be a smooth Boolean operator with Boolify

120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power
Some of the best ways to boost your brainpower have nothing to do with studying. Brainteasers and puzzles, critical thinking, and the occasional nap all work as the equivalent of mental calisthenics to keep you thinking faster and more creatively. I’ve started doing #22, learning to juggle, and I feel it’s made me think better on my feet. Plus I can impress friends and loved ones. I’m also intrigued by the title of #14, SCAMPER!

10 Tips for Immediate Productivity Results
Ever feel like you’re working hard but not meeting your goals? This list will help you get organized and get things done. Tips like not confusing “urgent” with “important,” and batching small jobs together and doing them at once are great ways to boost your productivity.

10 Most Common Passwords
It’s a fine line between creating a memorable password and making things too easy for hackers and identity thieves. PC Magazine lists the 10 most common passwords on the Internet. Suffice it to say, if the password to your bank account is on this list, you’d best change it ASAP. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk on flickr

The nice thing about the Internet is that even the Midwest can be at the cutting edge. Dr. Michael Wesch is an anthropology professor studying online communities. I know, I know, you’re asking, “that’s a college program?”

You may even have seen A Vision of Students Today, which garnered lots of attention (not all positive) about how technology infuses most students lives. I’m going to point you to another video that shows more about technology can be used to make project based learning work. It’s from his World Simulation Project where students play out 650 years of culture. It came out of Dr. Wesch’s frustration with teaching in a large (200-400 student) lecture format, and wanting students to have a more meaningful experience than bubbling in a test sheet.

The extended play version of the video documentary has recently been put up (for a limited time) so check it out! -ALICE MERCER

World Simulation Project

Related Stuff:

See who’s hating who at World Conflicts Today

Condense Centuries of Hostility into Ninety Seconds with Maps of War

Uncover Thousands of Years of History at Kidipede

When I was a kid, search engines like we know them today were nonexistent, and I would sift through Yahoo!’s web directory just like the rest of the mid-90’s nerds out there. These days, kids have vast quantities of information on every topic you can think of right at their fingertips — well, as long as they know how to effectively search for it.

The Boolify Project is a piece of software that takes the concept of Boolean Operators — add “and” to narrow, “or” to broaden, etc. — and boils it down into a visual search engine that’s easy for kids (elementary to middle school level) to understand. By illustrating the logic of their search through puzzle pieces, your students can piece together their searches and see how each change to their search terms changes their results.

And the best part? The search results are presented through Google’s “Safe Search Strict” technology, so your students will get great search results and you don’t have to worry about them stumbling upon something that’s not so safe for the classroom.

Boolify also offers some basic lesson plans to help you understand Boolean Operators and effectively teach them to your students, as well as how to evaluate the credibility of a website. With these tools, you can not only help your students find information on the web, but also determine if it is actually valuable — a skill that proves more and more useful as the web expands.

Check out their instructional video on YouTube. Right now, it’s in beta and only offered in English, but their website indicates that they’re working to make it a multilingual tool.

Come to think of it, I think I know some grown-ups that could really benefit from Boolify… — LAUREN FROHNE

Boolify

Related Stuff:
Add Muscle to Your Searches with SortFix

Counting your Blessings: 5 Ways to Increase Happiness - I know that this probably doesn’t apply to you, but if you are the least bit unhappy, there might be some info here that will turn your frown upside down. Via Goodlife Zen (I know, what a wretch-worthy great title for a blog), this list will help you realize how important gratitude is in both giving and receiving.

The Top 10 Qualities Of A Good Teacher - Here’s something wonderfully relevant and perfect for you. Sure, there are probably hundreds off qualities that make a good teacher, but the blog Ripples of Improvement has boiled it down to the top 10. How many do you exhibit? (Also, surprisingly not on the list: a sense of humor. Hmm.)

100 Best First Lines from Novels - Not that I’ve read 100 novels, but someone surely has. Check out American Book Review’s list of the best of the initiations in fiction. If nothing else, these might inspire you to think of some of your own, and they might prove to be great prompts for students. Anything’s better than “It was a dark and stormy night…” (My personal fav: “All this happened, more or less.” -KV)

Top 100 Tools for Learning Spring 2008 - Again, a very topical and appropriate list for you teachers and learners. There might not be much new on here that you aren’t already using or have at least heard of, but maybe now is the time you start to use them to your advantage. Courtesy of Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.

Alas, this might be my last MBTN for a little while, but I’m confident in my co-authors to bring you the best of the web in numbered list form at the beginning of each week. If they don’t you let me know, friends. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo via: solar ikon on flickr.)

Are your students aware of the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide? Every year it’s directly responsible for hundreds of deaths, yet it’s perfectly legal. It’s colorless. It’s odorless. It’s tasteless.

It’s water.

As a teacher, it’s up to you to teach students how to discern joke sites like DHMO.org from real online resources. Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone. Renowned educational guru Alan November has a series of Information Literacy Resources that will help your students evaluate the information they consume.

November introduces strategies like using www.easywhois.com to find out the publisher of a website, and to remember that any nutcase with WiFi can register a site with a .com, .net or .org in its URL. You’ll also find quizzes, and suggestions of practice sites for your students to evaluate.

Teaching information literacy is every teacher’s job. Hopefully these resources will make that job easier. Because you never know when a kid will start circulating a petition to ban water. -BILL FERRIS

Information Literacy Resources via November Learning

Related Stuff:
Instructifeature: Five Tips to Improve Students’ Information Evaluation

Photo credit: courtneyp on flickr

If you’re a history teacher, you probably already know you can’t beat primary sources. This is especially true given the fact that many textbooks are a load of hooey. But like any piece of evidence, students must learn how to evaluate and apply primary sources. And since you’re just one person and can’t screen all the evidence ahead of time, it’s up to you to teach students to assess materials for themselves.

Making Sense of Evidence, a resource from George Mason University’s “History Matters” course, gives students the tools they need to make sense of primary sources in history. Historians will help students examine everything from the meanings of words to historical context. They list questions to ask, and discuss the unique aspects of all manner of sources such as oral histories, letters and diaries, photos and newspapers.

This site is a great way to look at history without leaning on textbooks. If we empower students to learn about history straight from the source, they just might think it’s more interesting than they thought. -BILL FERRIS

Making Sense of Evidence

Related Stuff:

Instructifeature: Five Tips to Improve Students’ Information Evaluation

Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs on flickr.com.

Too many schools fear the Internet like your four-year-old nephew fears his bedroom closet. Forget resources like OpenCongress.org or FreeRice - these Luddites think every online kilobyte is infested with scammers, predators, and pornography that magically appears on screen the minute the teacher turns her back. So, after spending thousands of dollars equipping classrooms with computers, some schools try to wall up the Internet where kids won’t find it, like in a story by Edgar Allen Poe.

You and I, of course, know this is useless - kids can access whatever they want at home, and students have been figuring out how to break firewalls since they were invented. But how do you convince your school administrators that removing the barriers will open students to a veritable gold mine of educational tools?

It’s up to good Web citizens like you to be an advocate for educational technology. Don’t worry, you don’t have to fight this battle unarmed. Instructify presents these three rules to help you.

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So your students need to do research for your latest assignment. You’ve probably shown them a few Web-based tools to make their lives easier, too, like Footnote or SlideShare.

Nowadays kids can find out almost everything they want to know online. But as the Luddites love to point out, the Web’s full of half-truths and stuff that’s just plain incorrect. Anybody with an ISP can communicate anything they want to the entire world. So how do you separate the PhD who wants to share his knowledge about Physics from the guy who thinks he’s a scientist because he watched a few episodes of Nova?

If you want your students to grow into intelligent, productive members of society (hint: you do), the best lesson you can teach kids is how to separate the nuts from the nougat for themselves.

With that in mind, here are 5 strategies students (and you) can use to figure out what information is worth citing, and what is worthless.

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