Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

I’ve been a dedicated Firefox user for years because of its wondrous catalog of extensions. I like Google Chrome, too — from its load time to how it accesses pages, everything about it is fast, fast, fast. But I never made the full-time switch because it didn’t have all my geeky extensions.

In their ongoing bid for world domination Google has rectified this deficiency, opening up its sprawling new extensions gallery. To use them you’ll have to install the new beta version of the browser (don’t be afraid of using a beta version in this case, however — “beta” is Googlespeak for “software”).

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Wallwisher gives your students a set of interactive sticky notes they can use to post questions or ideas. Once you set up your Wallwisher account, you’ll get a shareable URL. Students can post their comments and questions simply by double-clicking the wall and typing their notes. They can also add pictures, links and images.

If you have a digital projector, you could display Wallwisher at the beginning of class so students can post questions about their homework. It’s also a handy tool for brainstorming or sharing notes, especially if kids are working on a group project from two different locations.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

This week’s by the numbers segment shows you easy ways to be more productive, as well as the tools to help you do it. Read all about it after the jump.

Stripped GTD: 3 Habits That Make You More Productive
If you’ve heard of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system but are a bit intimidated by the implementation process (he recommends setting aside two full days to reorganize your personal organization system), Stepcase Lifehack has a streamlined version, boiling GTD down to its barest essentials. Check out these habits and dial up your productivity.

(more…)

BY NICK YINGLING

Today’s MBTN is a little short because I don’t subscribe to the same newsfeeds as Bill, so I apologize and beg for your mercy. These two are about going back to school, which, for a good number of you, is very soon. I’m also going to cheat a little bit by calling them “Back-2-School”. See what I did there? By the numbers!

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

mySchoollog is an organization and productivity tool created specifically for students. Kids can keep track of their assignments, quizzes, grades, course schedule, and even upload their notes and files. Students can enter tasks into their to-do list, sorted according to subject (labeled as “lesson” in this app). Students can also download their to-do list and notes in Word or PDF formats. It also has a handy extras section, which features the periodic table, converters for length, temperature, and energy units, and tables of trigonometric ratios.

(more…)

Venerable note-taking app Evernote has rolled out a few new features that ought to help you and your students. You can now send Twitter messages directly into your Evernote account, use Evernote on your iPhone, or find tips on how you can use Evernote on their tips blog. You can also read the general Evernote blog for updates as they happen. All that is in addition to existing features like saving snippets websites you visit and recognizing text in pictures. -BILL FERRIS

Ron’s Evernote Tips Blog

Evernote Blog

Related stuff:

Evernote: never forget anything ever again. Ever.

Post-its for the Web: MyStickies

Kwiry – Remember to Remember Not to Forget This

Five Best Note-Taking Tools
Back when I was a student, we had to take notes with a pen and paper. Today’s learners have a lot more options that take advantage of online technology. Lifehacker presents this list of the top five ways to take notes (don’t worry, my trust old pen and paper made the cut).

25 Tools every Learning Professional should have in their Toolbox
Another list of free tools teachers should use. Firefox, Skype, WordPress, all that stuff. You’re probably using a lot of these already. If not…well, this may not be the blog for you.

7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling
Anybody with a video camera and a computer can broadcast a movie to anyone thanks to YouTube. Not surprisingly, smart teachers want to harness this technology for educational purposes. This article from Educause Learning Initiative will give you a good introduction to various forms of digital storytelling and how to use them for teaching and learning.

5 Things We Learned About Teens at TOC
The Publishing Trends Blog presents a fascinating glimpse at how teens use technology, gleaned during the Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Among them, kids don’t care about mastering a piece of software — they won’t sign up for a training seminar on Excel or Photoshop, they just want to know how to use it for the project they’re working on. To quote the article, “they’re concentrated on the outcome, not the tool.” These five discoveries may help you better understand your students’ learning process. -BILL FERRIS

I have a love-hate relationship with Wal-Mart. Shopping there can be unpleasant, as I always seem to get stuck in an aisle behind a family of six who can’t find what they’re looking for; however, I still shop there because I know I can find anything I want. Well, 4teachers.org is like the Wal-Mart of classroom technology resources, but better. You can find it all under one roof, AND you won’t spend hours stuck behind a slow-poke.

4teachers.org has a plethora of tools that teachers can use to make their lives easier. Some tools such as RubiStar and Assign-A-Day have already been discussed in this blog. Some other tools that are useful include CasaNotes, Project Based Learning (PBL) Checklists, and The Teacher Tacklebox. CasaNotes generates simple form letters that you can edit and print in English and Spanish. It offers some of the basics you might not want to recreate like progress reports, field trip permission slips, and parent-conference notices. The PBL Checklist section not only gives you information on the basics of PBL, but also provides customizable checklists for typical projects at various grade levels. Finally, the Teacher Tacklebox will allow you to search the best of the resources found on 4teachers.org. You can input a subject (such as Math), a theme (such as Basic Math), and a topic (such as Place Value), and it will come up with lesson ideas, TrackStar tracks (another 4teachers resource), and links to help you differentiate your instruction and integrate technology.

There are many more useful tools on 4teachers.org, so, please browse the “aisles” on your own. You’re guaranteed to find something you can use right away in your classroom, and you won’t have to dodge wayward carts. -REBECCAH HAINES

4teachers.org

Related stuff:

Setting the Standard

Mark your calendar and share it

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

Related Stuff:

Zotero: The web wrangler

Teach your students how to take notes that work

Build study skills at “How-to-study.com”

Organize your notes and projects with Springnote

I’m taking a professional development class at UNC this semester. On campus, I’m amazed at the beauty of the campus, how young the students look, and how I’ve completely forgotten how to take notes in class. I didn’t really notice this until I reviewed for our midterm exam and saw that I’d confused “taking notes” with “writing down the stuff on the teacher’s PowerPoint slides.” Half my notes made no sense out of the context of class — just as well, though, as I can’t read my own handwriting most of the time anyway.

As a teacher, don’t take for granted that your students know how to take notes properly.  They may want to read Advice for Students: Taking Notes that Work, a post from Dustin Wax at Stepcase Lifehack. This post offers students tips like not cluttering up their notes with stuff they already know, such as that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, or that ninjas are awesomer than pirates. Wax also talks about several note-taking techniques like mind-mapping, or the Cornell Notes system, which we’ve addressed before.

Even your good note-takers could benefit from seeing alternative ways of capturing information. Though I ended up with a “B” on my midterm, your faithful author could  stand to brush up on his note-taking as well. -BILL FERRIS

Related Stuff:

End the Cornfusion with Cornell Notes

Build Study Skills at How-to-study.com

I often find my desk completely wallpapered with reminders, phone numbers, messages, and all kinds of forget-me-nots in the form of sticky notes. This outdated, analog system does little to contribute to my overall productivity, to say the least. If you also find yourself frequently drowning in yellow sticky paper, you may want to give Stikkit a try.

Stikkit‘s so-called “little yellow notes that think” provide a platform for all of your daily tasks, notes, phone numbers, calendar, bookmarks, and everything you need to stay productive, and organizes it for you. That’s right, you write your note with whatever random details are necessary, and Stikkit organizes it based on date, person, or any other crucial piece of information.

The interface is as easy-to-use as scribbling a note, and you can share it with friends, family and coworkers, even if they don’t have a Stikkit account. When you share a stikkit with someone, they can make edits or add comments, and Stikkit keeps track of who added what. You can also forward or BCC notes from your e-mail to Stikkit and your message will be posted and organized as a stikkit note.

Now you can stop littering your workspace and wallpapering your desk with those pesky sticky notes by digitalizing them! How 21st century! — LAUREN FROHNE

Stikkit

UPDATE: As of December 19, 2008, Stikkit was no more.

Related Stuff:

Evernote: never forget anything ever again. Ever.

Post-its for the Web: MyStickies

Organize Your Notes and Projects with Springnote

Now they’ve done it. They’ve ruined my ability to forget stuff. That trusty companion—from so many Friday and Saturday nights (and Saturday and Sunday mornings, too), from so many ex-girlfriends’ birthdays/anniversaries/other clichéd relationship obligations, from so many work/school obligations—is gone for good. Now, thanks to Evernote, I have to say goodbye to my ability to forget stuff.

Its going to be a tough loss for me to handle, but I’ll just have to cope by filling the void with my new FRIGGIN’ AWESOME ABILITY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING! Evernote lets you grab whatever you want on a website for easy reference later. While Evernote still lets you grab whole pages, why bookmark the entire page when you just want that one chunk of info? See an image, video, link, snippet of text, or whatever that you like? Highlight it and with the click of a button you’ve sent it to your Evernote.

I think it was LifeHacker where I picked up the tip to use my camera phone to take quick snapshots of business hours, ads, etc. so that I had them for easy reference, plus I’d save valuable seconds by not actually having to write things down. And I saved paper, so there’s a green spin for my personal PR, too. It’s a nice tip, but it gets annoying when I start to max out the memory on my phone. So eventually I have to waste time deciding which pics get zapped, so then I might just have to actually jot down the info somewhere after all. Someone on the Internet must have been paying attention to my plight because now I can use Evernote mobile.

With a mobile version of Evernote, I can send in those all the snapshots on my phone to have them sync up with the rest of my notes. They’ll even be searchable, as Evernote’s recognition technology can recognize the words in images. That’s some pretty next level Internetwebs technology right there.

The mobile version of Evernote is only available for your iPhone and other phones with internet capabilities, but don’t worry—in a few short years all phones will be internet ready…and shortly thereafter the machines will probably rise up against humanity. But everything will be alright. You’ll be able to easily look back and remember the full life you’ve led, all thanks to this new tool! -NICK YINGLING

Evernote

Related Stuff:

Post-its for the Web: MyStickies

Kwiry – Remember to Remember Not to Forget This

Organize your to-do list online with Remember the Milk

Mind Mapping Made Simple with Mindomo

Filesharing via the Internet can provide huge benefits in an academic environment. While the idea of “mass collaboration” might sound scary to administrators — like it could possibly violate every kind of honor code rule in the book — the ability to share class notes, study guides and other class materials can prove beneficial to students and teachers alike.

Since many schools do not already use an Internet-based classroom environment (such as Blackboard ), GradeGenie provides a free and easy way to share useful class materials with students and classmates, by letting both faculty members and students upload non-copyrighted class handouts as well as their own notes and make them available for other students to download. Users can search for information by selecting the school and the course, but can also search by instructor or topic.

With the site, GradeGenie seeks to help students obtain materials that will help them succeed in the course. And while it may not provide your students with the magic they may need to pass your class (as the name might suggest), it will help them wield the power of “mass collaboration.” — LAUREN FROHNE

GradeGenie

Related Stuff:

Keep Students in the Loop on their Grades with GradeMate

Organize Your Notes and Projects with Springnote

Send Files and Keep Your Dignity at drop.io

Image from GradeGenie.com

Remember that scene in The Shining when the elevator doors open up and all that blood comes flooding out? In your case, imagine the sliding doors of a Staples or OfficeMax and instead of blood imagine paper and post-it notes pouring out. And your desk was sitting directly in the path of the avalanche.

I shouldn’t have laughed when you called your desk “organized chaos.” I was just trying to be polite. It wasn’t that funny and I’ve heard people say it before, but it’s pretty uncomfortable for both parties when jokes sink like lead balloons. But the worst part about my laughing at your description is that I fear I may have enabled you to continue spending so much of your workday in such a cluttered mess. Let’s face it: your work area is a mess and all of your colleagues are starting to talk.

For your sake, for everyone’s sake, pay a visit to MyStickies.com. You can finally get rid of some of those post-its you have all over your monitor. MyStickies lets you post a sticky note directly on the web page you visit, which really helps you pinpoint what’s important to you on the page. Do you have a million pages bookmarked in your browser? And, like me, sometimes you can’t remember why you bookmarked it to begin with? This will help remedy that mess too.

So, please, clean up your workspace. You don’t want to look like some caricature from a Dilbert comic. And maybe you’ll be free to personalize your space once everything is Clean and Relaxed. –NICK YINGLING

MyStickies

Sure, your phone plays music, surfs the Web, sends email, and has GPS capability (and you can, you know, talk to people with it, too). That stuff is cool, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what these handheld powerhouses can do. Now, with one simple download, you can give your phone some extra power you can use in the classroom thanks to gWhiz.

gWhiz is a suite of mobile learning tools that includes a powerful graphing calculator, a personalized reference library, and a flash card application. If Little Johnny wants to email his friends the graph of a tricky equation, he can do it straight from his phone. Create custom reference guides for an upcoming test on state capitals. Students will be able to get a lot of mileage from these apps, and they’ll always be within easy reach.

Now, the bad news. Right now, gWhiz is only available for BlackBerry phones. They’re working on adding more phone compatibility, though, including Google’s upcoming Android mobile phone platform. Maybe by the time summer vacation is over I can add gWhiz to my Motorola Razr (or maybe not). If you don’t have a BlackBerry, you may want to check back in a few months to see when gWhiz will be compatible with your phone.

Schools can really benefit from enhanced phone technology, since these devices are small, increasingly powerful, and within the price range of many students’ families. Applications like gWhiz can leverage this technology to create a powerful learning tool within the palm of every student’s hand. -BILL FERRIS

gWhiz