Tag Galaxy August 26, 2009

Tag Galaxy is a different way of exploring a topic through seeing what related pictures people have put on the Flickr images site. Type any topic or concept in, and it will coat a globe with images, which you can rotate or click on to enlarge. A good IWB tool to get children thinking?

Etherpad

Etherpad is a totally fantastic collaborative word processor. No logins required – simply click to start typing. Send the link to anybody else (by email, through a Learning Platform or simply by writing it up on the board) and they can start typing too, in real time, with each person’s additions in a different colour. At the end, export it into Word or a variety of other formats.

Great ideas website May 15, 2009

Jon Kitchen from Seven Fields has started a new website, Adventures in ICT, with lots of great ideas. Definitely worth a look.

IBoard February 5, 2009

IBoard is a new site for Interactive Whiteboard activities for Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Each LA has 70 free activities: visit the site here to use them. If you register your school, you get another 30 free activities, then others cost 99p each.

Northern Grid E-safety Games

To promote European Safer Internet Day, the Northern Grid have produced these games. The e-safety content is very good, though some children might not like to shoot ducks or squash a fly!

Picnik December 19, 2008

 In an earlier post I was singing the praises of Pixlr, a fantastic online photo editor. Picnik is another which is less sophisticated, so more suitable for younger children and, dare I say it, more fun! I’ve seen adults spend hours on this!

Vocaroo

 Vocaroo is a marvellous little online voice recorder program. That’s what it does: you record your voice, then you can send an email to your friends so they can listen to your voice. It’s also going to be ideal for Merlin or My First Place.

Myths and Legends October 13, 2008

Myths and Legends is another fantastic free resource for schools, provided by the South West Grid for Learning (but actually designed by their equivalents in the East of England). You can watch a range of myths produced by adults and children, with text to read, cartoons and some speech and animation. Then make your own with Story Creator 2: you can register your school, then all your children can have a go. It’s a great multimedia authoring tool in its own right as well as being superb for visual literacy. As an extra incentive, the excellent multimedia myths your children make can be published to the whole country!

Early Years websites

swindonwiki.pbwiki.com has a special Early Years page which has picture links to a range of websites suitable for young children. Why not put this as your home page, so that children can explore the different sites independently? If they want to go back and choose another site, they will only need to click the Home button. If you have any ideas for sites which should be on this page, please add a comment here.

Tuxpaint

Another great free program to download! Tuxpaint is a marvellous paint program aimed at the Early Years. Children can explore a large range of effects and produce great pictures. Because it’s free, you can also encourage parents to download it at home! Download from http://www.tuxpaint.org/download/.