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?
Tag Galaxy August 26, 2009
Etherpad August 26, 2009
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.
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.
Vocaroo December 19, 2008
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!
Smart Notebook 10 October 13, 2008
The latest version of the Smartboard software is definitely worth downloading. There a number of new features and an enhanced gallery, but by far the best thing is the new Lesson Activity Toolkit. This enables you to create, really simply, little interactive games to use with your children. If you have at least one Smartboard in your school, why not put the software on all the children’s computers: it doesn’t have to be used on the board, and children can use the Lesson Activity Toolkit to make fun games for each other. Your technician can download the program from here.
Rick Riordan in Swindon! October 13, 2008
Rick Riordan, the author of the fantastic Percy Jackson series of books about the son of a Greek god living in modern America, visited Swindon on Friday 3rd October. He was interviewed by Year 6 pupils from Wroughton Junior School. Click here to hear the interview, or read more about Rick Riordan and his books at www.rickriordan.com and www.percyjackson.co.uk.
SwindonWiki launched August 27, 2008
Announcing a new site: SwindonWiki! This is to replace my previous links site, freeict.com. The purpose is for me to be able to share links and documents easily, as the previous site was, but also that any Swindon teacher or TA who wants to can contribute too. Please have a look, and if you would like to contribute, please contact Anna Fairhurst (afairhurst@swindon.gov.uk).
SWGfL Media Gallery March 25, 2008
The South West Grid for Learning Media Gallery is a developing tool which aims to overcome the two problems with children using Google Images: breaking copyright and the possibility of coming across unsuitable images. The gallery contains pictures, sound and video, all of which can be saved into your favourites, and if you register you can upload your own content for children to use throughout the South West: by doing this, you are guaranteeing either that you hold the copyright or that you have the permission of the copyright holder for children to use it.
Wikis March 18, 2008
A wiki is a website to which anyone can read and write. The purpose is total collaboration: what I have written is not mine but ours, so you are free to change it. The most famous example of this is, of course, www.wikipedia.org. This is a collaborative encyclopaedia written entirely by its readers, who also monitor it for accuracy and impartiality. It has nearly 3 million articles in English alone.
So what is the potential of wikis for schools? Uses I have thought of include creating your own encyclopaedia, connected to a specific topic or just what the children are interested in, collaborating on ideas (such as collecting ideas for how to investigate a problem in Science) or collaborative writing: I write the first draft, you edit it, I re-edit it, and so on. Children will soon become keen editors, building up their ability to spot and correct mistakes and improve writing style, and there are all the usual advantages of a potentially worldwide audience in giving a motivation to write clearly and well.
A good place to start is http://pbwiki.com/ (Peanut Butter wiki), which allows users to create wikis which can be edited by anyone who has been given the password. Only the person who set up the wiki can change that password, so any security breaches can be swiftly dealt with, though it would be excellent e-safety training for children to get used to policing their own site, deleting any unhelpful changes. PBWiki has video help files at http://pbwiki.com/videos/.
Find my Swindon Wiki at http://swindonwiki.pbwiki.com/. Please contact me for the password and then contribute freely on all things ICT!
