Google now lets you create online annotated maps with amazingly simple tools. You can add info windows (with html), plot lines and add polygons. It really is the easiest thing imagineable. Go there and try it. This example map has absolutely no point. I just made it on the fly to prove to myself how […]
Want a way to explain density to your students? This Google video is worth a thousand words and about four thousand powerpoints. Really wild plus you get to say sulphur hexafluoride which is kind of fun. http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5924038987398556208&hl=en link via Digg […]
U.S. Housing Prices The first example is an animated roller coaster ride of US home costs adjusted for inflation. It’s a pretty dramatic and entertaining way to look at the data (link from Digg). It makes a graph “real” in a way that I’ve never really seen before. Personal Pies Personal Pies (great title) is […]
Future Me allows you to write yourself and email and have it sent at a time of your choosing (dramatic music) in the future. While you may not have a flux capacitor you can get your students emailing themselves up to 30 years into the future (you can do much less). Whether the site, the […]
Buzzdash.com It’s just odd questions people have asked that you can vote on. Everything from your weapon choice in a duel to choosing your favorite time period. The nice thing about this site is it taps into student interest in couple of ways. They can participate by voting. The questions are odd enough to be […]
Ficlets A fun writing site (although I can’t promise content appropriateness). Basic premise, you publish a short story (minimum character count 64, max 1,024). Then people add on prequels or sequels. Once you’ve written and shared your ficlet, any other user can pick up the narrative thread by adding a prequel or sequel. In this […]
The first rule of blog club is don’t talk about blogs. The second rule… I know it’s a stretch but this is a fight and you will have to employ subterfuge, guerrilla tactics, mind games and stealth to pull this off. Ignorance and fear are your opponents. Defeating them will enable you to put a […]
Read More… from 7 Tips to Get Blogs into Reluctant Schools (prt 1)
Wikipedia’s “speedy deleted” article titles might make a fun, no hassle writing prompt reservoir. I’m not exactly sure how Defective Yeti got these but I’m sure some of you wikipedia experts could tell me (and then I’ll update the post and feel less inadequate). Some are, of course, not school safe but you could just […]
I’m trying to go to sleep but I keep finding cool stuff- oh well- I’ll take interesting information over sleep any day. There are secret super zoom areas in Google Earth- good enough to make out faces. Check out this article for the details on how to do it and make sure you wear a […]
Google Earth Lit Trips Novels plotted out in Google Earth with supplementary information and photos. Unbelievably cool. They’ve got a few to choose from with preview screenshots of what you’ll be getting. They have Grapes of Wrath, Candide and Night as well as a number of others. It looks like it’ll be growing too as […]