Archive for November, 2011
myBrainshark
myBrainshark is another way of putting a PowerPoint, or presentation online, to store, back-up, or share with others.
This is a free service and could be worth investigating.
@ SchoolForum on Technology & Learning Trends, Berlin
The 3rd Berlin Forum on Technology & Learning Trends for Schools, titled Learning with Digital Media.
The School Forum has become the dedicated pre-conference event for teachers attending Online Educa Berlin. It is a platform for teachers, headmasters and experts from the world of technology and learning, to experience a combination of thought-provoking speeches and discussions, and a range of interactive demonstrations about useful and fun tools, projects and resources for teaching. Find the programme here.
We delivered a keynote talk, alongside Dr. Katja Kantelberg, expert in didactics and school education; and Wolfgang Willburger, Europaschule Hall, Austria, creator of the project “digital school bag” Continue Reading
Visionmapper
“Thinking systematically about a range of future possibilities can help us to be more considered in the decisions that we make now; and these decisions can help shape the future we want to bring about.”
Dan Sutch, Futurelab
Vision Mapper is a huge free online resource to support long-term planning in education. Vision Mapper provides a wide range of inspirational material and team activities to support long-term planning and decision making.
Mapping Our World (Oxfam)
Mapping our World from Oxfam, is a whiteboard teaching concept for 8 to 14 year olds, which explores the relationship between maps and globes, and how different projections influence our perception of the world. It challenges the idea that there is one ‘correct’ version of the world map.
It shows that the sizes of countries and continents are not always shown accurately on world maps & helps develop an awareness of the relative sizes of countries & continents.
The Gall-Peters Projection map could be thought to be (generally) more accurate about its depiction of true country or continent size, than Mercator’s map, but it also opens up a lot of discussion, about developing countries for example.
Here is a large scale, printable, Peters map. and here is an interactive Peters map.
Come with me on a journey…
Thank you to Julian Silverton, Middle School Science teacher, at Ecolint, Geneva for his reflections on a session:
48 students aged 11 and 12, carrying no passports, but equipped with a pencil, paper, enthusiasm and creativity sat, expectantly, waiting for the journey to begin. Yet, somehow, without us knowing it, it already had.
In front of us, projected onto the screen (though we would forget that it wasn’t real) we saw a tranquil scene……mountains in the background, a rocky landscape, a lake, some buildings – one with a smoking chimney – birds flying around Autumn trees. 48 pairs of eyes… what’s going to happen?
Tim Rylands (like dry lands, but without the duh), asked how they felt, what they saw, smelled, heard. What is going to happen? Where was this place? Was it even on Earth? One student commented it looked like a video game, (and others questioned why we could smell it!) …another that it was an alien world, maybe Saturn, but whatever and wherever it was, the scene was set for some creative writing. Continue Reading
Superlame – speech bubble maker
With the Superlame speech bubble tool, you can add life and comments to a picture with great ease.
Add zaps, kerpows and thwacks too!
Whilst there are many comic creators, this tool is quick and easy, quite simplistic, but powerfully intuitive. Bubbles can creep outside the edge of your picture too. A useful tool when investigating speech marks, or story planning?
Teachers Media – lesson starters (and more)
Teachers Media is provided by the team behind Teachers TV.
This site contains a free library of over 3500 high-quality videos to support teaching and learning in your school and classroom.
- Stream all the 3500 Teachers TV videos at the highest quality
- Easily search and navigate the Teachers TV archive
- Access and download documents and other resources linked to the videos
- Use the popular Behaviour Challenge interactive training tools
One good example of a discussion starter is this film on posting pictures without people’s consent.
(This service is only available in the UK at the moment)
Rob Ives.com – Paper Animations
Thank you to David Eldridge for a nudge towards his friend Rob Ives paper animations site: Rob Ives .com.
Some of the individual techniques could be a great inspiration when pupils are doing a moving toys type D.T. unit, or creating Christmas novelties perhaps. Watch the stage by stage instructions or animations too.
The International School in Geneva, Day 3
Our third day of this latest visit to The International School in Geneva, in Switzerland.
We have been doing a lot of experiments today, as ever, and more so. Well done to all those who took off and flew with new formats, new locations, new challenges, new outcomes, new techniques, new tempos, new “newnessnicity”.
We look forward to writing up the results of the innovations soon. In the meantime, thank you to James Smith, teacher, for jotting down his thoughts on some of the aspects of “around and before”. Continue Reading
As well as our events, we like to share interesting, and more often than not, FREE tools, resources and ideas, some old, some new, and we hope you might find something useful. We'd love your thoughts. Tim & Sarah
