FRIDAY FREEBEE: Lincoln’s Birthday

If you’re looking to bring Abraham Lincoln’s life into perspective on the 200-th anniversary of his birth, a series of videos, slide shows, essays and original documents at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is enough to build several class lesson plans around. On top of commentary by historians, like James McPherson and Sean Wilentz, there’s a series of podcasts on the 16-th president.

 

FRIDAY FREEBEE: Seek, and Ye Shall Find

What’s worse than sifting through the millions of Web sites with Google or other search engine in front of the class only to forget what you’re looking for or lose your way and have to start over. TigerLogic’s Yolink is a great way to stay on track with Web searches. The best part is that it divides the screen in two panes with the main site on the left and highlighted search hits on the right. Start by typing in your search term in the YoLink toolbar. At any time, you can save the results and share them with the class. It’s a free Internet Explorer add on that’s a 9MB download. The interface is thankfully free of ads at the moment, but the company plans to use them as a way to pay for the software and service in the future.

FRIDAY FREEBEE: Let There Be Light

Need some cash to upgrade your school’s lighting equipment because your electricity bills are out of control? The top prize of Lutron’s Greenovation Bright Green Dream contest can provide $15,000 for renovating your school. Just have your students imagine how to cut your school’s electricity use and carbon footprint while enhancing the learning environment. The submission can be on paper or digital, and the deadline is October 12, 2009. Any questions? Try the Q&A about the contest.
 
 

Robot Parade

Is it better to teach programming with a teacher showing how to write code or to have students create their own programs that control a bunch of robots? The latter is how Flowol 3 by Keep I.T. Easy works. The software shows students how to create useful and complicated applications by moving around flow chart items that connect to a variety of circuit boards and robots. The action is previewed on the interface’s main screen so the kids can see what will happen when they change a single item. The software works with PCs and Macs, costs $95 for a single use license and the hardware (which is sold by Kelvin) adds about $180.

Laptop Insurance

Regardless of whether they stay at school or go home with students every night, notebooks get stolen and it can cost a lot to replace them. Some schools add the equipment to their general insurance policies, but it can be expensive. Student Insurance Partners has another way, laptop insurance that can cost as little as $50 a school year for a $1,200 system and a $100 deductible policy; each policy requires a $5 processing fee. The insurance covers damage, destruction or theft, and is also available for other high cost items, like cameras and musical instruments.

Education Gets Personal

With many digital curriculum systems its one size fits all, regardless of individual students’ achievements and needs. it’s learning takes a different approach with a Web-based learning system that not only can be tailored to each student but saves their work in a digital portfolio. Chock full of multimedia options, it’s learning has several different interfaces that are tuned to a variety of age groups. A demo is available online.

 

Practice Makes Perfect

Tired of using the same tired math problems?IXL has thousands of online math worksheets for pre-K through sixth grade that cover everything from geometric figures to basic math facts. The problems can be customized to meet student needs and the teacher can get a progress report. It’s free for 30-days and costs $200 for the typical 30-student classroom.

Netbook Beater

If netbooks are too fragile for work at your school, think about One2OneMate’s StudentMate mini notebook. Practically indestructible, the StudentMate has a full-size keyboard, 7-inch touch-sensitive color screen and a pair of USB ports. It runs on Linux, comes with a slew of school software and has a full-day battery, so kids can concentrate on learning and ignore the battery icon. The best part is that the company provides a five-year warranty, compared to 1 year of coverage that’s generally provided with a netbook. It costs $300 and can be ordered with a cart for sharing it among classrooms.

Weather or Not

Forget about trying to teach weather and climate with charts of high pressure zones and average temperature and rainfall readings when you can let students experience the weather with an integrated weather station. The WeatherHawk Signature system consists of everything needed to record the weather, from temperature, humidity and air pressure to solar radiation, precipitation, wind direction and speed. It’s all shown on a clear and concise screen that students can read and interpret. It sells for about $2,500.
www.weatherhawk.com

The Table Projector

Projectors are always mounted on a ceiling, the classroom’s front wall or on a cart and projects images horizontally onto a screen, right? Wrong, with Circle Twelve’s DiamondTouch table, the projector is mounted above and points down, making for unique interactions between student, teacher and data. The table works with any projector, is touch-sensitive and is a great way to work with maps, artwork or writing sentences. However, at $10,000 for a 42-inch model, it’s a pricey proposition that doesn't include the actual projector.