Looking For Teaching Ideas?

At last, Articles For Educators has undergone the same painful process which The Problem Site underwent a month ago; the site has been transferred to a new and better server, which will provide more stability and scalability.

Articles For Educators is a website devoted to providing lesson plans, classroom activities, and educational theory articles. Each article on the site was written by an educator. Some are college professors, some elementary teachers. Some are from the United States, others are from Argentina, Israel, Singapore, and other locations. For some, being published on the Articles For Educators website was their very first publication, others have books, CDs, DVDs and other media in publication already.

If you are an educator, and you are looking for a new idea for your classroom, take a trip over to the site and check it out. Or perhaps you aren't looking for ideas, but instead want to share your ideas. Consider signing up for a free membership account, and submitting an article. It's a painless process, and your colleagues from around the world will be grateful to find your ideas online.

The newest section to be added to the site is the Learning Disabilities directory, which was just created last week, and has two new articles. One is about schizophrenia, and the other is about the development of the brain.

Also, if you are in the field of Christian Education, you may find the following series of articles valuable: Spanning The Ages. This is a series of articles I wrote myself; it is the basic outline of a seminar I will be teaching this weekend at a Christian Education Conference in Southern Maine.

Speaking of which, I need to finish up here and get back to work on my preparations!

Is It Scrabble?

Is it Scrabble? No. It's Word Builder. Word Builder is the newest in the recent line of games to be added to the Quote Puzzler word game site. At first glance, you'll think Word Builder is Scrabble, but as you begin to play it, you'll realize there are some differences.

For starters, this is a solitaire game. You are not competing against other players; you're just trying to get the very best score for yourself. For another, there's no guesswork involved. You don't have to think to yourself, "Oh, I hope I get a Q on my next draw..." because you get to see all the tiles at the beginning of your game.

There are other differences: You can reuse double word and double letter squares. At any point during the playing of the game you are allowed to have non-words in the grid, provided you turn them all into words before you submit your solution. You are allowed (if you are a subscribed member on the site) to query the dictionary three times during the game, to find out if the word you want to play really is a word.

This game is free to play. You can purchase a yearly subscription to the site and gain access to additional features, including the addictive Quote Puzzler Word Game. If you don't subscribe, you can still play Word Builder, In And Out, My Secret Word, and Cross Phrase, although you will not be eligible for any prizes.

Product Review - Amazing Aha! Puzzles by Lloyd King

Lloyd King's puzzle book: Amazing "aha!" Puzzles. 317 lateral thinking ("outside the box") puzzles that you've never seen before.

When I first saw the description of the book Amazing "aha!" Puzzles by Lloyd King, the phrase that caught my eye was "brand new lateral puzzles". I was skeptical. After reading a plethora of Lateral Thinking Puzzle books, I had my doubts that Mr. King had over three hundred original, non-derivate puzzles. You know what I'm talking about; the original puzzle talks about blue cars and green cars, so someone changes to red and yellow bicycles, and then calls it "original". Like I said, I was skeptical.

But, as it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. These are not derivative puzzles. These are not the same old puzzles wrapped in a different wrapper. There are over 300 puzzles, and so far (although I have not yet gone through all the puzzles) I do not find myself thinking "Oh yeah, I saw this puzzle in Book X."

The book is nicely laid out, with simple but effective artwork to supplement the puzzles. Many of the puzzles rely on the artwork (matchstick puzzles, shape puzzles, etc). I would guess that about 75% of the puzzles have a visual component, which is just fine, but you should be aware of this if you are thinking about buying this book in order to read the puzzles to a group of students. Fortunately, since the artwork is generally fairly simple, you can recreate it on a blackboard, overhead transparency, etc. for a group to look at. Also, it is good that most of the puzzles are "visual", since King is at his very best with his visual puzzles.

The solutions at the back are clearly labeled and easy to find, which is a nice change from some Lateral Thinking Puzzle books, in which the process of finding the solutions is at least as difficult as the puzzles themselves. Of course, that does increase the temptation to quickly flip to the back of the book and find the answers!

During the weekend that I was reviewing this book, I had taken a group of teenagers from my church away for a weekend camping "retreat". While we were away, I invited them to look at the book and offer their comments. One boy said "I don't like it; they're too hard", while others said exactly the same thing I had said; it's nice to see a book that doesn't just repeat all the tired old puzzles that we've seen fifty times already.

As a mathematician, one of my favorite puzzles in the book is this one:

Next Please What number comes immediately after the following? Hint: It contains seventeen digits! 12,215,308,523,345,916

Can you figure it out? Scroll down to the bottom of this review to check your answer.

My one complaint with this book is that a few of the puzzles require specialized knowledge. For instance, a couple puzzles rely on the user recognizing Morse code, one requires that you know the name of an album by a well known musical group, and a couple require some knowledge of the French language (fortunately, the ones requiring French knowledge do contain veiled hints to that effect). Not a big deal, because there are only a handful of puzzles like this in a book of over 300 puzzles. Of course, once you realize there are some puzzles like that, you find yourself thinking "I wonder if this is one of those puzzles." And then, of course, you give up a little more quickly. So I wish there was some sort of notation next to puzzles that required some "specialized" knowledge.

Ultimately, the best use of this book is going to be in group settings, in which the teacher/leader can look at the solutions and then recognize which of the puzzles are best suited to the group. If you visit the Amazon.com page for this product, you can find a review in which a reader has written up ways to effectively use this book in a group setting.

Purchase This Resource At Amazon.com

If you would like to write a guest review of an educational product, please use the Contact Page to tell me what you want to write about.

Next Please Solution King has very cleverly made a puzzle which is so incredibly simple that you automatically assume it is far more complex than it really is. He has not given a series of numbers; what he has given is a seventeen digit number, but because we expect a difficult problem, we assume the commas are something other than digit separators. So the correct answer is: 12,215,308,523,345,917.

Educational Site Reviews

It's that time of year again. College students in Education classes have been assigned to pick an "educational website" and write a review. What is good, what is bad, what has educational value, and what doesn't.

I look forward to this every year, and I dread this every year. I look forward to it because mostly the reviews the students write about games at The Problem Site are very positive. I dread it because I don't take criticism well.

This year, as in previous years, students are reviewing Hangman, but this year is different, because there is a new and improved version of the game on the site. This year students have many more games to write about, including My Secret Word and the Scrambled Word Puzzle.

One student writes that the directions for the Scrambled Word Puzzle are not very clear. That's probably true; I've always enjoyed designing the games more than writing the documentation - I'll have to go back and look at that again.

At one university, students are given a form they have to fill out, with questions about the site. One question which stumps the students every year is something along the lines of "Does this site meet the needs of its target audience?" This stumps the students because nowhere on the site do I state the target audience. In fact, some games are designed for elementary students, some are designed for middle school and high school students, and many are suitable for adults as well (I've stumbled across two or three adults' blogs which report every day on their results for the Daily Puzzles.) So the students typically "guess" what the target audience is, and then say "Yes, this is suitable for its target audience."

It's very circular reasoning, but it works for me.

Another thing has changed in the site reviews this year. Many reviewers are expected to comment on the "motivation" for the site. Students answering this question have always answered that the motivation is "altruistic", because the site is entirely free. This year, although everything is still free, students are referring to the site as a "commercial" site. Why? Because there are now "Google Ads" on the site. Whether or not this makes the site "commercial" is up for debate - according to "Zeal" (a wonderful, but now defunct internet directory):

If all you can do on the site is buy merchandise, learn about products and services that a company sells, or find companies that offer goods or services, then the site is commercial. Sites that do not offer goods or services but whose main purpose is to direct users to such goods or services may also be considered commercial.

According to another definition, something is "commercial" if it is: sponsored by an advertiser or supported by advertising. According to that definition, The Problem Site is now a commercial site. But, of course, that changes nothing about the educational value and content of the site.

Finally, let me just say "Thanks!" to all the college students who have taken the time to play the games and write your reviews!