More to explore

Hello again -

I've found a few new interesting sites that are worth exploring in a few free moments of your time. I'll outline each below:

http://www.wallwisher.com
This looks like a very usable tool for all stages, where as a class you can create a 'wall' where each student can 'post' something. Whilst it sounds like it has been done before, this is quite original in the way it displays the information and quite appealing to a teenage audience.




http://www.vimeo.com
A different kind of YouTube, in that it is more for personal and educational use - you're only allowed to post something you've made or shot yourself, and does not allow students to access the distractions that exist in YouTube.




http://www.voki.com
At this site, you can create a Virtual you! It can be just like yourself in real life, or can be some crazy looking robot - the purpose is that you can teach communication skills, themes, topics, expression and all kinds of things without the embarrassment of reality getting in the way. Have a think about how you could use this...




http://www.wordle.net
This site basically gets all the words from a document, a web page, a blog or a feed and arranges them in various ways in a graphic. Go there and see what I mean. This is useful in any number of ways, including showing key words in a document or for  creating posters or presentations. 




http://screenr.com/ 
Lets you record something you're doing on your screen and give it to students or colleagues to look at. Quite handy and engaging. 





www.ipadio.com
Use a phone to broadcast live to the internet! This might sound ridiculous, but think of the possibilities for assessment, particularly oral presentation... you simply go to the site, join up and give your session a pin number and then dial this 'free' number' 1800-031439 and you're broadcasting!

Timelines

Hi again,
Another website for you try. This is the best timeline builder I have seen so far on the net, it offers much more flexibility that timetoast, the last one I reported on. Timelines are an excellent way for students to visualise and arrange events graphically and have use across all KLA's at some point.
http://www.preceden.com

Enjoy!
Nathan

A must-visit site for teachers

Hi again -
I was just forwarded a link to a site that is one of the most powerful and simple sites I've visited. I think all teachers should look at it, whilst some of the humanities teachers could use it in almost every unit of their work.

It basically pulls together data on each country and can display it graphically various forms, producing some highly interesting results. You can also slide along a timeline to view how the results have changed over time, adds another dimension to the results. Enough, explaining, time to start playing!

http://www.gapminder.org/

I hope you enjoy it!
Nathan

Discovering more of Web 2.0

Hi again everyone,

I have just been looking at some more tools that we all might like to experiment with and found a couple of really interesting ones.

1 - http://www.creaza.com/ is an amazingly powerful site that could really be handy for editing audio, video and creating animations and cartoons. Certainly worth a look if you're keen to do something down that track.

2 - http://www.polleverywhere.com/ is little more controversial, but could be quite brilliant and effective. I'd be really keen to hear some feedback from people on this one to see if you would consider using this in your classroom, so post a comment and let me know.

Year 5 Visits

Hi again,
www.redz.com , www.search-cube.com, www.taggalaxy.com

Year 5 students from around the region visited our College today and we showed them some of the wonders of the web. They are really keen to start using some of the more graphical search engines which present them with results that are not just in plain text. If you want to have a look at some of their thoughts from their day at the college, visit http://piratepad.net/year5mdcc

Year 5 visiting our College.

Sites to start with...

Hi everyone, 

Welcome to the Teaching Technology Blog. For the first installment, I thought I would give you some websites to play around with. The best way for learning most of these things is by playing with them, so try a few of them and let me know what you think. You'll be surprised how great some of them are - particularly some of the search engines down the bottom!

PRESENTATION SOFTWARE!

www.prezi.com - an online presentation maker that really makes an impact.

www.tripwow.com - turns basic elements into a snazzy presentation

SITES FOR USE IN VARIOUS CLASSROOM SITUATIONS

http://www.timetoast.com/ - An excellent timeline maker

http://www.gizmoz.com - put yourself in the digital world!

http://www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbookdeluxe/index.php - make a flipbook animation on the fly

http://www.youblisher.com/ - turn PDF's into much more interactive and sylish documents

www.flippingtypical.com - choose effective fonts for assignments

http://museumbox.e2bn.org/ - create a collection of resources on a subject, arranged very interestingly.

http://animoto.com/ - Turn photos, music and video into a professional looking movie trailer

http://www.khanacademy.org/ - a wonderful site for Maths, Science and some other areas full of DIY videos.

REALLY INTERESTING SEARCH ENGINES!

www.wolframalpha.com - performs calculations and returns really interesting data on your search terms

www.spacetime3d.com - graphical interface to search engine

www.redz.com - gives a scrubbable interface to the search

www.search-cube.com/ - gives results in an interesting cube

www.taggalaxy.com - searches through flickr content to find relevant images

YOUTUBE TOOLS:

www.tubechop.com - lets you chop apart a youtube video

www.keepvid.com - lets you download youtube videos

www.quiettube.com - lets you take away all the surrounding (distracting) content around a youtube video