December 4, 2009
Find kid-friendly videos at ZuiTube
ZuiTube bills itself as “the largest collection of online videos for kids.” Just like on YouTube, you can search specific topics, or browse categories. Unlike YouTube, when you search for Uranus, you only come up with legitimate, kid-appropriate videos.
Try yWriter for long writing projects
What differentiates yWriter from other word processors is that it makes it easy to divide your writing into individual scenes and chapters, making them accessible without having to open multiple files. You can reorder scenes and chapters just by dragging and dropping. When you’ve got your narrative the way you want it, you can export the whole thing to RTF or TXT format, readable in any word processor.
See the history of aviation at NASA’s Lessons of a Widowmaker (and Other Aircraft)
NASA has tested some cool aircraft in its day, including the U2 spyplane, the Black Widow, and the Northrup HL-10, a wingless (!) aircraft that was an early ancestor of the modern space shuttle and weighed about as much as a Cadillac Escalade.
Build an online portfolio with Carbonmade
Back in my day, building a portfolio meant shelling out a few bucks for a three-ring binder and those plastic pageholders. Carbonmade takes the hassle out of the portfolio process by letting you or your students set up free, simple portfolios online.
December 4, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
You can use portfolios for everything from exhibiting student projects to creating a teaching portfolio. Back in my day, though, building a portfolio meant shelling out a few bucks for a three-ring binder and those plastic pageholders — and then I had to spend way more time than I budgeted for stuffing and organizing my work in the binder. Carbonmade takes the hassle out of the portfolio process by letting you or your students set up free, simple portfolios online.
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December 2, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Here in North Carolina, we pride ourselves on being the home of the Wright Brothers’ first flight (you hear that, Ohio?) So naturally, we at Instructify were interested in the experimental aircraft showcased on Lessons of a Widowmaker (and Other Aircraft), a terrific multimedia site from NASA.
NASA has tested some cool aircraft in its day, including the U2 spyplane, the Black Widow, and the Northrup HL-10, a wingless (!) aircraft that was an early ancestor of the modern space shuttle and weighed about as much as a Cadillac Escalade. Read the rest of this entry »
December 1, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
As you know, November was National Novel Writing Month. I decided to participate this year, and while I didn’t reach 50,000 words in 30 days (I made it to 35,000), I still plan on finishing the book in the next week or two.
To write this 1.5-month masterpiece, I used yWriter, a free piece of software developed by author and programmer Simon Haynes, who wanted a program that facilitated writing long pieces of fiction. While yWriter is geared toward novelists, it’s applicable to any long-form writing project.
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November 30, 2009
BY REBECCAH HAINES
Let’s say you’ve just begun a multimedia project in your techno-savvy classroom. You want your kids to use the latest tech tools to create a wonderfully creative product. Inevitably, this involves adding video clips to whatever they’re creating – blogs, wikis, what-have-you. As great as YouTube is, it really isn’t something you can just let kids go and run searches on at school (that is, of course, if you can get it at your school). So what’s an awesome, “technorate” teacher like yourself to do? Well, next time, try ZuiTube.
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November 25, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
It’s time for the 2009 Edublog Awards. Below are Instructify’s nominations. I’ve undoubtedly forgotten some of your favorites. If you’d like to nominate some deserving educators yourself, head to the Edublog Awards homepage to learn how.
Best individual blog: dy/dan
Dan Meyer makes math sound fun. That’s coming from an English major.
Best individual tweeter: @web20classroom
Steven W. Anderson always has lots of great tools to share, and we’ve gotten a few article ideas from him.
Best student blog: studenthacks.org
Productivity tips geared toward students. It’s geared toward a college audience, and may or may not still be active, but it has lots of useful resources to help kids get through the rigors of homework and student life.
Best resource sharing blog: Free Technology for Teachers
Lots of handy tools to make teaching more fun.
Most influential blog post: dy/dan — What I Would Do With This: Groceries
Because of this post, I’ve reclaimed an hour from my life from standing in grocery lines. Oh yeah, you can use it in your math course, too.
November 24, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Just because you don’t know web design doesn’t mean you can’t have a nice-looking website. Wix lets you create a Flash-based website from one of their many templates, or build a site from scratch. Here’s a sample site I made in about five minutes. Wix templates allow you to create sub-pages, upload photos, and incorporate animations into your design.
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November 24, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
iRubric is a slick way to create and share rubrics for assignments. Like Rubric Machine, you can create a rubric for an assignment in minutes. The interface is fairly intuitive, and made more so by a helpful series of how-to videos posted on the site.
Of course, one of the primary advantages to an online rubric application is the ability to share and adapt existing rubrics. At iRubric, you can find hundreds of rubrics developed by fellow teachers, all organized according to subject and grade level.
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November 20, 2009
Learn to type at TypingWeb
If there’s one foundation skill kids need for the 21st century, it’s typing. It only makes sense that kids develop a good working knowledge of the keyboard beyond the hunt-and-peck method. They can do that without signing up for a typing class at TypingWeb.
apostrophe.me takes the confusion out of using apostrophes
Do your students struggle with apostrophes? Or is that apostrophe’s? Aaugh! Lucky for them, there’s a handy chart available on the web that shows how those flying commas work. Go to apostrophe.me and check out “How To Use An Apostrophe,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
Google offers scholarships for minority and special-needs students
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.
Map out your classroom with Classroom Architect
You could use mind-mapping resources such as Gliffy to create your new floor plan digitally, but why not use a purpose-built application to do the work for you? Classroom Architect from 4teachers.org lets you drag and drop your desks, tables, chairs, TVs, and whatever else you have in your classroom without breaking a sweat.
Write, edit, collaborate online for free: Zoho Writer
Longtime Instructify readers know there are a bevy of free and web-based word processors out there. Only a few of them, however, are powerful enough that I wouldn’t miss Word. I dare say that Zoho Writer is one of those few.
November 20, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
A lot of schools and families shell out big money to Microsoft every year for MS Word. It’s my word processor of choice, but I’ve been lucky in that it came pre-installed on my computer. If I had to actually find a word processor on my own, I’d face a real dilemma: on one hand, I’ve gotten really used to Word’s format, as well as the level of formatting I can do on documents. On the other hand, I’m a cheapskate.
Longtime Instructify readers know there are a bevy of free and web-based word processors out there. Only a few of them, however, are powerful enough that I wouldn’t miss Word. I dare say that Zoho Writer is one of those few.
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November 19, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Who doesn’t love moving furniture? The answer, of course, is pretty much everybody. Changing up the floor plan for your classroom involves moving desks, rugs and shelves around until you achieve feng shui (or you just say “good enough” and give up), or killing a few trees as you sketch up then toss out flawed, not-to-scale maps of possible layouts.
You could use mind-mapping resources such as Gliffy to create your new floor plan digitally, but why not use a purpose-built application to do the work for you? Classroom Architect from 4teachers.org lets you drag and drop your desks, tables, chairs, TVs, and whatever else you have in your classroom without breaking a sweat.
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November 18, 2009
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
November 17, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Do your students struggle with apostrophes? Or is that apostrophe’s? Aaugh! Lucky for them, there’s a handy chart available on the web that shows how those flying commas work. Go to apostrophe.me and check out “How To Use An Apostrophe,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
Read the rest of this entry »
November 16, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
If there’s one foundation skill kids need for the 21st century, it’s typing. Yeah, it seems basic, but in a computerized society, pretty much everything is done on computer. The keyboard is how we interact with computers and the internet, and therefore, much of the world. It only makes sense that kids develop a good working knowledge of the keyboard beyond the hunt-and-peck method. They can do that without signing up for a typing class at TypingWeb.
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