Here’s a simple, inexpensive activity teachers can use to begin a discussion of surface tension. Give each group of students a small, clean container (a Petri dish will work nicely), some water, and a dropper containing some mineral oil into which has been mixed a small amount of liquid detergent. Have the students pour some water in the dish. After the water has come to rest, have them place a small drop of the oil/detergent mixture on to the water. Then wait for the oohs and aahs to start.

Your students will observe the drop beating like a heart. Then have the students cover the dish. The beating will stop.

Recently, scientists at MIT explained that the throbbing is the result of evaporation-induced variations in surface tension. The detergent changes the surface tension of the water. The changes in surface tension cause the drop to expand, then contract, and repeat the process every couple of seconds until the detergent evaporates. The beating stops when the dish is covered because the detergent cannot evaporate.

There are various tools that can be used to make a screencast. Basically, a screencast is a video, often with a voiceover, of your computer screen. "What's that any good for?" you might ask. Well, you could use it to record a mini-tutorial! For instance, Mr. Fjelstrom of the aptly named Mr. F's Geometry Blog 2007-2008 used a screencast to do a quick review of sector area:

How did he do that? Well, he used PowerPoint to make the presentation, screencasting software to record himself working on the computer, then Apple's GarageBand and video editing software for the music and special effects.

We can make a plain but useful screencast using Screencast-O-Matic and PowerPoint. You will also need a microphone attached to your computer if you want a voiceover. Here's how:

Step 1. Create a PowerPoint presentation of your content.

Step 2. Create an account at Screencast-O-Matic. A java applet will load and configure itself so you can begin recording. Choose an audio input if you have a microphone attached to your computer.

Step 3. Click the "go" button to create a screencast. Start the Powerpoint slideshow, then click on the red record button at the bottom of the screen to start recording.

Step 4. Present the slideshow as you normally would and press the blue square at the left of the screen when you're done.

Step 5. Upload the screencast to the web and Enjoy!

Here's a silly demonstration of what can be done (it's silly because it just repeats the steps above):

Caveats: The screencast runs slowly because my computer runs slowly. There's also no audio because I don't have a microphone at work.

If Screencast-O-Matic doesn't work for you, you can use Camstudio to create the screencast. There are also various alternatives for sharing your screencast on the web: YouTube and TeacherTube.

You also don't need to use PowerPoint. You can scan in your content to your computer and treat your computer screen as a digital blackboard.

It’s easy to see how technology has a place in science and math classes, but it’s harder to envision how technology fits into an English course. How can computers be used—beyond word processing and online research—to teach English language arts skills?

To answer this question, consider why English courses usually include peer editing, small group work, and discussions. It’s because it has long been known that students learn when they are able to share and communicate ideas and make meaning together. Now think about some of the major uses of technology—to help us gather, share, and construct information together. Technology actually fits quite well with the goals of an English course.

Here are some specific ways teachers can use technology in the English classroom.

Writing

Bulletin boards for peer conferencing. In-person peer editing sessions are great, but why not take a few of them online? The NCTE journal Voices from the Middle recently ran an article, “Technology Took Kit: Improving Writing: Online Bulletin Boards,” about how online bulletin boards such as Nicenet can be used to help students respond to one another’s writing. Online bulletin boards are useful because they allow students to read each other’s work at their own pace (whereas a student might only get five minutes to read a peer's essay in class), because they allow students to read multiple writing samples, and because they allow students to converse using computers, a medium with which they’re very familiar and comfortable (due to all their practice with IMing and e-mailing, of course).

Online poetry tools. The Poetry Forge allows students to create poetry together. Students can experiment with the site’s metaphor tool and found poetry tool.

Blogs or personal Web sites. Students can create their own blogs on specific ELA topics (e.g., a specific genre of writing), or a class can create a blog together, with a different student posting each day. A popular and easy-to-use blog hosting site is Blogger (yes, the one used by AmscoExtra!). You don’t need to know html to be able to do this.

Discussion boards for literature conversations. Through Blackboard, students can have online discussions (moderated by teachers) about books they’ve read. This is a great way to spark new discussions or continue discussions started in class but cut short by the bell.

Web Quests. Teachers can create WebQuests that lead students through different sites to gather knowledge on a specific topic. Popular sites for creating WebQuests are WebQuests and Filamentalit. These work especially well for interdisciplinary projects.

Wikis. A wiki is a collaborative site that allows people to construct knowledge together. (The most famous one, of course, is wikipedia, an encyclopedia whose entries are submitted by the public.) English teachers can create a free wiki with their class through Pbwiki for Educators.

When I read a few weeks ago that one of my favorite books, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, is being turned into a movie to be directed by Sean Penn, with the soundtrack for the film by Mr. Edward Vedder himself, I immediately went out and found a copy and began to re-read the book. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this particular book, it is a true story about a young man named Chris McCandless who, after graduating from college, gives away all of his money to charity, hitchhikes around America, and then makes his way to Alaska and enters the Yukon wilderness on his own. Needless to say, the young man was unprepared for what lay ahead of him, and unfortunately for him and his loved ones, he perished during his adventure.

A common expression that was often used to describe less intelligent people – “bird brain” – seems, fortunately, to have fallen into disuse more recently. This may be because researchers have come to realize how intelligent many birds really are. Just as you cannot “judge a book by its cover,” it turns out that you cannot always judge the power of a brain by its size. The brains of many bird species have their own kind of intelligence. And don’t forget, birds are social creatures that have been around for tens of millions of years, so they must be doing something right!

One of my best friends from childhood always had birds--first parakeets, then a cockatiel. Her cockatiel Igor had a great personality, introducing himself politely (“Hello, I’m Igor”) and saying “Pretty boy,” even though she swore she never taught it to him! This started my interest in birds. About 20 years ago, I wandered into a tropical bird shop in Manhattan. I was drawn to an African Grey parrot that was sitting out on a perch. I walked up to the bird and said hello; he looked at me and started making the most plaintive sound I had ever heard: “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ooh.” It seemed as if he was saying, “Oh, you don’t know how bad it is. Oh, you don’t know how bad it is.” All anthropomorphizing aside, it was obvious to me that he had some kind of thoughts or feelings. He seemed sad, lonely, and painfully bored. I stayed by him for awhile, making soothing sounds back to him. Then I left the shop feeling perplexed.

Years later, I read about the research of Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a Harvard professor who raised an African Grey named Alex. While much research has been done in trying to communicate with dolphins and higher primates (chimps and gorillas), and some work has been done on the intelligence of crows and ravens, relatively little had been done with parrots. It was always thought that, as another expression goes, they simply “parroted” or repeated words they had heard, with little comprehension of their meaning. Well, Alex and his owner soon began to change the way the world of science thought about parrots.

Dr. Pepperberg developed new ways of teaching words to Alex. He learned more than 150 words; he could categorize words, do limited counting, and identify shapes, colors, and objects. Because African Greys are social birds, Alex could learn by watching the actions of those around him. Over the past few decades, Dr. Pepperberg has published the results of her work with Alex in various scientific journals. According to a recent article, Alex could “express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills [were] about as competent as those in trained primates.” Without learning words from his owner, would Alex also have expressed his boredom as “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh” – like the African Grey I had seen in the pet shop?

Sadly, Alex just passed away at the age of 31, apparently of natural causes. Dr. Pepperberg is continuing her research with two other African Greys. But I’m sure she’ll never forget the special personality of Alex, whose last words to her before he went to sleep were “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

For more information on Alex, visit The New York Times web site. -- Carol

Writer’s block. We all get it, both famous writers and the rest of us, who’re not famous enough.

I bet even Stephen King gets it, as prolific as he is. One of his methods for promoting creativity is blasting rock music as he writes. But there must be times when even that doesn’t work.

For writers, there’s no greater feeling than writing up a storm. You lose track of time, forget to eat. If workers are tearing up the street outside your window, you vaguely hear something going on. If the phone rings, the caller wonders what’s wrong with your voice. You sound all gaspy, and confused. The point is, you’re in an altered state of mind and intend to stay there.

Then there’s the opposite. Staring at a blank sheet of paper or computer screen for hours. Heart pounding, sweat creeping down your face and back, though the a/c is blasting. The a/c is dripping, you realize. Plop, plop, plop. Despite fluffy cushions, your chair never felt so uncomfortable. It's like in that fairy tale, “The Princess and the Pea,” where she felt one small pea through a zillion mattresses. You actually wish the phone would ring.

You want to write, but the words just won’t come. You feel like a complete failure.

But who are you failing? Not you, yourself. Eventually the words will come, in their own time. In fact, the story may write itself. The point is, you can’t rush “genius.” You can’t force out the right words like you can squirt the last of the toothpaste out of the tube.

Since I was five, I’ve been writing . . .my way. Growing up, I read a lot of books by so-called professionals who had plenty of advice for budding writers. My favorite was the dreaded, “You must write every day.”

I didn’t. I still don’t. Years of sitting, staring at that blank page, counting those drops of icy water, taught me one thing: I don’t have to do anything. And I realized something else: those periods of “not” writing, of sitting there thinking of anything but what belongs on that page, are times of planning. Plotting.

Years ago, I heard Joyce Carol Oates speak. She told us something I never forgot. If a writer is just sitting, staring out the window, daydreaming . . . that’s writing. She said if your friend calls & asks, “Am I interrupting you?” you have the right to say, “Yeah, you are!”

Now, why argue with the best?

Before

After

Whenever a friend or family member complains of lower back pain (which seems to be happening more frequently these days), I find myself mumbling, “Well you know, this just proves we weren’t meant to walk upright anyway.” All jokes aside, my background in anthropology and evolution has provided me with plenty of opportunities to read about the possible reasons, and probable mechanisms, for the origins of bipedalism (that is, walking upright on two legs) in early humans, or hominids. And it has also made me more interested in the ecology and behavior of primates.

Years ago, while vacationing in the Yucatan, I stopped by a roadside zoo as part of a day tour. Although the experience was a bit disturbing (I thought the caged animals might have been better off living free in the nearby jungle), I did make a surprising observation. In one large cage, there were two or three monkeys. I noticed they would walk upright, for a minute or two at a time, along the horizontal branches in their cage, with their arms held up to help them balance. I had never seen anything like that! They were walking in a bipedal manner – and by choice (i.e., they weren’t trained monkeys in a circus act).

It has long been thought that early hominids made the transition to bipedal movement several million years ago, but only after they moved from a tree-dwelling, or arboreal, lifestyle, in which they moved on all fours, to a ground-dwelling lifestyle, while still doing some tree climbing. And this was how I had been trained to think about evolution from the four legs to the two legs modes of movement in hominid evolution. (By contrast, the large ground-dwelling African apes – chimps and gorillas – move in a manner called knuckle-walking.)

So it was with great interest that I read the recent article “Red-Ape Stroll” in the 8/4/07 issue of Science News. The headline on the cover of this issue was “Walking Tall: Upright Evolution in Trees.” Whoa – I thought of those Central American monkeys again! It appears that primate researchers in Sumatra, Indonesia, have recently observed some orangutans walking fully upright through the trees – while reaching up to grab a branch for extra support and balance – as they foraged for fruit. The anthropologist who observed this now proposes that bipedalism evolved in a common ancestor of all living apes millions of years before early hominids made the transition from the trees to the ground. In this case, says her colleague, “you can’t rely on bipedalism to tell whether [it’s a] human or another ape ancestor.” Scientists in agreement with this argument even say that such a shared bipedal ancestry possibly “explains why orangutans’ feet resemble people’s feet more than they resemble the feet of chimps or gorillas” even though we are more closely related to the African apes. However, other anthropologists counter that “our upright stance derived from a knuckle-walking ancestor [since] the legs and knees of early hominids more closely resemble those of African apes than they do those of orangutans.”

The debate continues. Either way, it is interesting to see the flexibility of behaviors among our fellow primates – and that there are always more discoveries to be made in nature. See http://www.sciencenews.org/ to read the original article.

I’m an editor. I like words. I think it brilliant that defenestration is part of the English language, that acquiesce does NOT sound like “aqueeze,” and that silhouette is spelled with an h.

Still, math words can drive me nuts. There are math words that are chronically mispronounced. There are also math words that refuse to roll nicely off the tongue, words that I cannot even pronounce in my head (the horror of it all!).

Of the first variety, I am liable to cudgel you upside the head if you say:

1. the name Euler like “You-ler” as opposed to “Oy-ler,” or

2. “Pie-tha-GORE-ean” when talking about the Pythagorean Theorem.

At the moment, I am stumped (and moderately obsessed) by rhombicosidodecahedron, which happens to be an Archimedean solid with 20 regular triangular faces, 30 regular square faces, and 12 regular pentagonal faces. Despite my best efforts, I can’t figure out how to say this word. There is NO pronunciation guide ANYWHERE.

So, Readers, your task is to help me pronounce rhombicosidodecahedron – or face blog entries of increasing decrepitude as it slowly leeches away my sanity.

Many thanks.

In the world of academics, it is common for scholars to make contributions to their field of study. However, the scholar who succeeds in creating a new academic discipline is a rarity. On August 4, 2007, Prof. Raul Hilberg died at the age of 81 in Williston, Vermont. Prof. Hilberg is widely credited with helping to pioneer the field of Holocaust Studies, which examines the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II.

In the world of middle-school science education, there are two trends that seem to take turns falling in and out of favor with educators: the “pancake” or layered approach and the “spiral” or integrated approach. In the pancake approach to science teaching, each year is devoted to just one area of science, so that the student takes life science, earth science, and physical science separately in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades (hence the pancake stack image). The order in which they are taught may vary by district or school. In the spiral approach, topics from all three areas of science are taught each year. This way, the student learns a mix of topics from the different fields of science, with the material being revisited at a more advanced level each year (hence the spiraling image). Recently, this approach has started to find favor again in some school districts.

Amsco has responded to this renewed interest in the spiral approach to science teaching by developing a new three-book, middle school textbook series. The first two books in the series, Amsco’s Science Grade 6 and Amsco’s Science Grade 7, have just been published. Coming soon is Amsco’s Science Grade 8. The topics covered in this series correspond to those of the National Science Standards; the books can be used with any middle school integrated science curriculum. Each chapter of these books is divided into numbered lessons that give teachers the flexibility to teach the lesson in one or more days, depending on their students’ abilities. The chapters also include vocabulary lists, career-planning features, science news features, special boxed features, skill exercises and activities, and crossword puzzles.

A crossword puzzle is an effective way to review new vocabulary. Science vocabulary can be especially difficult for students because there are so many unfamiliar words to learn. One fun and challenging way to reinforce vocabulary terms is by having students complete a crossword puzzle made up from the words they have just learned in a particular chapter or unit. Below is a sixth-grade-level crossword puzzle using words related to topics in science. If you like the idea of teaching vocabulary with crossword puzzles, you will be pleased to find one at the end of every chapter in Amsco’s Science Grade 6 and Amsco’s Science Grade 7. (Amsco’s Science Grade 8 will also have a crossword puzzle at the end of each chapter.) More information on Amsco’s Middle-School Science Series can be found by clicking the link to our Web site.

Lori Langer de Ramirez began her career as a teacher of Spanish, French and ESL. She holds a Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics and a Doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is currently the Chairperson of the ESL and World Language Department for Herricks Public Schools, in New York.

Lori is the author of AMSCO’s Cuéntame – Folklore y Fábulas (a folktale-based reader with activities). She has also written numerous articles about second-language pedagogy and methodology. Her interactive website, www.miscositas.com, offers teachers over 40 virtual picture books and other curricular materials for teaching Spanish, French, and ESL, as well as multicultural education.

Lori has presented workshops at professional conferences both in the US and abroad. She is the recipient of the Nelson Brooks Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Culture, several National Endowment for the HumanitiesMexico, Colombia, and Senegal, and a Fulbright Award to India and Nepal. Her areas of research and curriculum development are multicultural and diversity education, folktales in the language classroom and technology in language teaching. grants to study in and develop lessons about

Lori currently lives on Long Island, NY, with her husband Ramón Orléy and her son, Nikolás.

Don’t use “I.”

Use personal examples.

Back in the "old" days, if you wanted to reach out to your class electronically you basically had two options: e-mail or a cheesy one-page Web site. (The sites were cheesy because everything was done by hand, so unless you were a Web professional, the result usually wasn't very good.) But my how things have changed in only a few short years. Not only does it seem that everyone is online, but online tools abound and are very easy to use. One such tool is a blog.

I’m the physical science person on Amsco’s Science Team and I don’t really like to think about creatures that remind me of flying mice. I know enough biology to understand that bats will not get tangled in my hair if I go out at night when they are out and about, and they will not try to drink my blood and turn me into a vampire, but I still don’t like them. So why am I blogging about global warming and bats? It’s not that kind of bats; its baseball bats!

I recently read an article in The New York Times and saw a segment on the evening news about the effect of global warming on the growth of white ash trees in the Northeast. White ash has been used for decades to make the bats that are favored by many batters. Scientists report that as temperatures rise, the ash wood may turn softer because of a longer growing season. Baseball bats need to be dense yet flexible, not soft. It is already known that ash trees that grow in the warmer Southeast are softer due to the longer growing season there. Therefore, their wood is not used for bats.

Some fear that eventually the ash may disappear from the Northeast. The United States Forest Service predicts that in a worst-case scenario, the white ash population will decrease and shift farther north.

It is often difficult to engage some students in the study of science. By finding unusual examples of how science affects something in which the students are interested, you can catch their attention. Changes in the environment affect us all in many and sometimes unexpected ways.

Can a slim, attractive four-book vocabulary series establish a romantic relationship with a standardized test?

Vocabulary for Success, Courses I – IV, is the perfect match for state assessments and college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT! This charming program builds students' vocabularies and teaches them how to use words more effectively. Through poems, paragraphs, or dialogue, students encounter unfamiliar words in context--as they do in the real world. Then, through concise writing and skill-builder activities, students deepen their understanding of the new words and master their usage in both writing and speaking.

A vocabulary program that gives students the tools to figure out unknown words and to write concisely will strenghten their performance as test-takers.

But don't put a limit on your students' success! Remember that reading a wide range of materials (novels, short stories, nonfiction, newspapers, poetry, magazines, etc.) will improve students' reading comprehension skills, enhance their vocabulary, raise their scores, and lead to success. Vocabulary books and test-prep books are valuable resources, and, if they’re high quality, they will improve students’ key skills. They are not, however, a substitute for reading for pleasure. Both approaches are necessary, and they compliment each other.

Consider the following innocuous scenario: a researcher stakes out a high school prom and asks the young men and women how many people they danced with that night. The researcher finds that, on average, the men reported that they had more dance partners than the women.

"But the numbers should match," the researcher says. "Either the men are exaggerating or the women are underreporting. If there are an equal number of men and women at the prom, then the two averages should be the same."

Is the researcher correct? The answer depends on what you mean by the word "average." If you use the mean, the type of average that most people remember from high school (the sum of the data divided by the number of pieces of data), then the researcher is correct. However, if you use the median or the middle number of the data, then the researcher is NOT correct. It is possible for the median number of dance partners for men and women to be different. (If you're mathematically inclined, you can leave your own example of this scenario by clicking comments below. Bonus 1: Show that if the numbers of men and women at the prom are the same, then the mean number of partners must be the same. Bonus 2: Give an example showing that if the numbers of men and women at the prom are different, then the means can be different.)

So far it's been all fun and games, but then mathematics meets the news media in a cruel pairing reminiscent of a dating show gone wrong. As Gina Kolata of the New York Times reports in a recent article, many studies have observed that, on average, men are more sexually promiscuous than women. To "set the record straight" (and forever establish the equality of the sexes in this bizarre race), Mrs. Kolota turned to David Gale, a respected ex-mathematics professor at the University of California in Berkeley, who "proves" that it is logically impossible for men to have more partners, on average, than women. But as we pointed out earlier, this is correct depending on the type of average used in the studies. (If the mean was used, then there might be something wrong with the results, but if the median was used, then the results are fine--at least from a mathematical point of view.)

The studies in question used the median. As Homer Jay Simpson would say, "DOH!" But the story doesn't end there. Other media organizations (such as Scientific American, out of all publications!) picked up on the article without any simple fact checking and just assumed that Prof. Gale was right. (I guess they figured they should leave the basic math to the experts. They're experts after all, and reporters don't lie or make mistakes.)

It just goes to show the need to teach our students to develop a basic "number sense."

The following conversation could have taken place:

Reporter: I found a math professor who says he's debunked years of research with one simple proof.

Editor-in-Chief: I don't know, it sounds too good to be true. Did you check it yourself?

Reporter: I'm in only in charge of the science news, chief. I'm not a rocket scientist!

Editor: I thought you said it was simple. Did you at least check it with other math experts?

Reporter: No time!

Editor: Well, you did say he was a math professor, right?

Reporter: Math professor emeritus.

Editor: Whoa! No way!

Reporter: Way!

Editor: Publish!

Scholars and students of history usually focus on either political history or social history. But where is the dividing line between social and political history?

Noticing a Trend—When I first studied history in high school and college, political history was still the norm. It follows the fortunes of people in power on the national, state, and local levels, and leaders in the business world. In the United States, these people have historically been mostly white men. Before the 1960s, there were not many scholars working in social history, and few courses in social history. But the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the feminist movement changed all that. The history of people who had not been in power—African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and women—began to be emphasized. This trend in college history departments and courses gradually filtered down to the high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. Nevertheless, interest in political history has remained strong.

Checking the Books—Amsco’s U.S. History and Government: Readings and Documents, by Margaret Moran, contains many documents in social history. It also has many political documents, both official and unofficial. (For information about this book, visit our Web site.) Here is an excerpt from one document. Is it social history? Political history?

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the African coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon connected with terror, when I was carried on board. . . . The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration . . . and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died. . . .


--from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavuus Vassa the African. Written by Himself, Angelo Costanzo, ed. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2002.

At ten years old, I was taken home [from school] to help my father in his business, which was that of tallow chandler and soap boiler. . . . Accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling the molds for cast candles, attending the shop, going on errands, etc. . . . I disliked the trade and had a strong inclination to go to sea, but my father declared against it. . . . I was passionately fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was laid out in the purchasing of books. . . . This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already one son of that profession. In 1717, my brother James returned from England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. My father was impatient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded and signed the indenture, when I was but twelve years old. I was to serve as apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age.

As I returned to the camp . . . , I saw the people hurrying out, and some of our party along with them. I asked them what was happening and they told me that one of the Hindus had died, that a fire had been kindled to burn him, and his wife would burn herself along with him. . . . In the sultan’s [lands, Hindus] ask his permission to burn her, which he [grants] them. The burning of the wife after her husband’s death is regarded by them as a [praiseworthy] act, but is not compulsory; only when a widow burns herself does her family acquire a certain prestige by it and gain a reputation for fidelity. A widow who does not burn herself dresses in coarse garments and lives with her own people in misery, despised for her lack of fidelity, but she is not forced to burn herself.

--from The Great Travelers, Milton Rugoff, ed. London: Routledge, 1960.

I was married at 23, and went into a colliery [mine]. . . . I have a belt around my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep, and we have to hold by a rope; and when there is no rope, by anything we can catch hold of. There are six women and about six boys and girls in the pit I work in; it is very hard work for a woman. The pit is very wet where I work, and the water comes over our clog-tops always, and I have seen it up to my thighs; it rains in at the roof terribly. My clothes are wet through almost all day long.

--from Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XIV. London, 1842.

It is back-to-school time! For Amsco editors, that means publishing books that teachers and students will use in the classroom. For teachers, it means planning—short-term, long-term, first-day, first-week. . . For students, it usually means tearing through the last of the summer reading list, assembling the all-important outfits, and shopping for school supplies. After browsing online, here is my back-to-school wishlist:

WordLock($5.98)
Instead of struggling to remember a tricky three-digit combination, with WordLock, an innovative letter-based lock, students can pick a word to remember instead. The locks are available in six colors.

Zwipes ($3.86–$23.59)
The name evokes antibacterial handwipes, but Zwipes are actually a cool new line of notebooks. They have rewritable plastic covers, an erasable marker that clips onto the notebook, a privacy flap, and pocket dividers. Zwipes come in assorted colors and in sizes ranging from small planners to one-subject notebooks to big 6-ring student organizers.







Book Sox (about $4)
After all the creative work we put into designing attractive books, it is a
shame that students have to cover them, but that is the rule in many schools. Students can make covering books fun and easy with these stretchable, washable, reusable fabric covers. The bright, colorful designs are available in a range of sizes to fit all textbooks.


Splat Calculator ($6.29)
This kooky calculator may not be able to graph a quadratic equation, but it can perform the four basic functions, as well as calculate percents and square roots (if you know what buttons to push!). It comes in pink, green, blue, and purple. Throw it against your locker door and—splat!—it will stick because it’s magnetic.

Dr. Grip Pens ($9.95, refills $1.95)
Students who constantly lose pens may want to opt for a twelve-pack of Bics, but for those who can hang onto one long enough to get their money’s worth, Dr. Grip is the “prescription for smooth writing.” It comes in electrifying neon barrel colors, but with black ink that teachers will appreciate. (Colorful ink refills are available for writing journal entries and love notes.) The ergonomic cushion grip makes responding to extended constructed-response questions a little less painful.




Pilot Pencil #2 ($0.95)
No one loves bubbling in answer sheets, but with all the standardized tests on the calendar, students should have a couple of these long-lasting, inexpensive mechanical #2 pencils in their backpacks. They come in 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm sizes, have a cushioned tip, ribbed finger grip and are refillable. Who doesn’t love the classic yellow?