A few times recently at conferences or on training days I have referred to ways of making an internet search more accurate and on target. A few of you have asked for some more guidance with this.

1. Banish tension by using extensions.

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One of the best ways to search for a file is to add the file extension, or file type, you are looking for.

(All file extensions are preceded by a dot (or full stop) and tell the computer which program or programs are to be used to open that kind of file.)

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This can be useful when looking up movie files, images, sounds, and many other document formats.

For example, if you are doing your science planning and are about to spend hours making a PowerPoint presentation about the parts of a plant, save your time.

Try a search for “parts of a plant” and you will come up with hundreds of results.

However, now add “.ppt” (one of the file extensions for PowerPoint) and you will find many, and, some of them, very good presentations about plants and their anatomy. (You could also use “.pps”)

Below are just some of the main “file extension” labels you might find useful in narrowing down a search.

If you are looking for an audio clip, try the name you want (e.g. dog barking, or the name of a TV theme) and one of the following extensions (remembering to put a “dot” before the group of letters)
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Films and movie clips might be followed by one of these extensions:

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Pictures or graphics:
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Word documents:

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Flash files e.g. whiteboard activities:

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There are many other file extensions, but these might get you going to begin with.

Happy hunting!

Do let me know of any obvious (or less obvious) ones I’ve missed.

Thanks Geoff for the reminder of .pdf for… well… pdfs.

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At the recent Able Gifted and Talented Conference in Derby, I met some pupils from Chellaston Junior School who did a super presentation about the philosophy they had been doing back at school.

I asked them a few questions and here are their really excellent and thoughtful answers:

“Four members of our class attended the conference and spoke about the work we’ve been doing on     P4C. Tim asked the following questions and after much discussion, this is what we thought:

What if mountains were dogs?

The earth would shake violently.
They wouldn’t fit in your house.
It would be really hard to walk the dog.
I’d hate to see the mess they leave behind.
There would be enormous fleas.
They’d crush your house.
You’d have to buy a massive kennel.
People would die if they stamped on them.
They’d scare the cats away.
Mountain climbers wouldn’t know whether they were climbing a mountain or a dog.
Use the dog’s tail as a slide.
It would drag you along on walks.
They’d smash and ruin towns and cities.

How does P4C help us in our other lessons?

It helps us to think of strange things for a story.
It helps our imagination to run wild when we’re drawing.
It helps us to think of better questions.
It allows us to think about what it’s like for other people, not just ourselves.
It makes us think about what would be the right thing to do.
It has shown us the importance of thinking”.

Well done all!

As Confucius said: If your plan is for one year, plant rice; If your plan is for ten years, plant trees; If your plan is for one hundred years, educate the children.

After the Hertfordshire ICT conference, I had an e-mail from Geoff Bannister, of Hobbs Hill Wood Primary School, saying “The doorways of doom was a great concept. I’ve spent the last couple of days creating my own ‘Doorways’ type-thing for my school website.”

Dare you take the challenge HERE?

Geoff has also taken up the idea of an interactive tour of the school and made his own virtual tour of Hobbs Hill Wood Primary.

Geoff wrote: “Taking the idea from the graphic adventures of old, I created a virtual tour of my entire school. Imagine the magestic vistas seen in Myst, but instead of being set in a weird “alien” world, it’s set in a primary school in Hemel Hempstead.

There’s no problem solving, or any cleverly incorporated videos of characters, but surely it’s just as awesome! Or maybe not.(It’s a shed load of linked pages not dissimilar to your doors of doom.)”

Well done and thanks Geoff! You definitely deserved the Lego Darth Vader we managed to find for you!

Although it has been around for quite a while now, I still enjoy having a fly in “Goggles”.

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Now, we have the opportunity to do a bit of ground based wandering by driving through the streets of your local town, city or village, with Google Drive