Category: 2) Useful n Interesting
Magic Town
Magic Town is an interesting, free, app full of great picturebook characters and stories.
Created by a group of “parents, educators, authors, illustrators, software engineers, game designers and children’s media specialists”, with a mission is to use storytelling to help children develop a lifelong passion for reading and learning.
All About Explorers ~ Or is it?
“On May 2, 1947, John Cabot set sail aboard a magnificent cruise ship named The Matthew with a crew of servants, and an abundance of DVD’s to keep the crew entertained”.
All About Explorers was designed, to help children discover the importance of checking the voracity of information they find on the web, & this site is almost complete fabrication.
Registering is free & lesson plans are available to download.
With links, from the fabricated facts, to more solid “info”, it is then up to the pupils to work out the “truth”, or “innacurate” information, & through this, begin to gain respect for the need to assess the validity of what we are “fed” on the net.
Button Bass ~ Sound experiments
We have mentioned Button Beats before. They have now changed their name to ButtonBass yet still produce some remarkable, simple, & fascinating musical experiments.
The GreenFrame player is just one of the interesting sound tools you can explore. Record, and trigger, your own sounds, and mix them with prerecorded samples.
Try the cubes, mixers, keyboards, drum kit, guitars, or audio recording studio.
There are many musical machines, and gizmos, that enable remarkable invention.
The site is supported by panel adverts but free otherwise. What are you waiting for? Go on and and get playing.
Linaker Primary School & Children’s Centre ~ Day 3 ~ A Digital Leaders Challenge
The last, of three, full on days at Linaker Primary School and Children’s Centre, in Southport, in Sefton.
Today saw another, new, step taken in the age of adventure, with the newly appointed “Digital leaders”.
The school recently “hired” 15 Digital leaders (7 in year 6, 8 in year 5) who have already set up and logged into Blogger accounts, and started in their support of teachers, fellow pupils, and each other, throughout the school. Thanks to them for their support today and “here’s to the up-for-it explorations of today”.
What fun was had, in the lands of technology today! Exploring uncharted territories, discovering distant digital domains, and generally stretching technology in wild and wondrous ways.
We set foot in the high~ways, low~ways, no~go~ways, by~ways, here~ways, share~ways, there~ways, slow~ways, up~ways, down~ways, under~ways, wonder~ways, no-wonder!~ways, plunder~ways, try~ways, wonder-why~ways, explore~ways, never~before~ways, your~ways, my~ways, our~ways, oh~the~power~ways, who’d~have~known~ways, should’ve~known~ways, newly~truly~alone~ways…
To tell a tale, of any kind, is a challenge. To do so, with access to the wondrous opportunities that technology offers, these days, surely makes it simple?! Well, it does produce a lot of potential, but also introduces challenges of their own.
The children showed some remarkable, mature, problem solving techniques, through which we all learned a lot ~ the mark of great digital leaders. To teach is to learn. To be open to learn teaches us a lot.
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.John Cotton Dana
“Digital Leaders” is a fascinating concept, and one that is gathering strength, and pace, in schools far and wide now. The Digital Leader Network, draws together those who are exploring the ideas, power and potential, of this movement.
Empowering learners, teachers and sharers of discovery in so many ways.
The Digital Leader Network is a collaborative blog where digital leaders and teachers can showcase the inspirational work that is going on in their schools. It was started by passionate teachers in 2012 and has gone from strength to strength thanks to the community of people who contribute to it.
The network aims to spread the good work of digital leaders far and wide in an attempt to create more sustainable solutions to ICT developments in schools. Each Thursday at 9pm (gmt) members of the network join in #DLchat, on Twitter, and share their thoughts, ideas and what their digital leaders have been doing.
Have a read of this collaborative document where people have shared their experiences of starting digital leader projects in their schools.
The challenge today? To carry on a story of discovery, in small groups, and retell that tale with the support of some inventive, digital delights.
To work in a group adds additional challenges that these children experimented with ways to master ~ finding a common path; valuing strengths and supporting weaknesses; assessing the best way to allot time, resources, and “man-power”; getting something “done well”, inventively and in the most remarkable and effective way.
Well done all. More to follow…
MIT App Inventor
The MIT App Inventor is a Google supported platform where you can get to create apps using just drag and drop. It enables you to customize the look & feel of your apps, add buttons, attach objects and much more. (Requires a Google account).
ePubBud ~ Free children’s eBooks
ePubBud collect free Children’s eBooks for the iPad, nook, and other readers. Browse eBooks files others have shared and import them for free.
You can also create an eBook write, edit, and publish your own masterpiece. Alternatively, upload any document you want to read, share, or publish, and they’ll convert it to an ePub. You need to create an account, but then your books are set free.
The Periodic Table of Videos
Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century – but this modern version, Periodic Videos .com, has a short video about each one. Yes ~ all 118! ~ AND, like neutrons, there’s no charge!
All these videos are created by video journalist Brady Haran, featuring real working chemists from the University of Nottingham, but they say their job’s not finished: “Now we’re updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments, plus we’re making films about other areas of chemistry, latest news and occasional adventures away from the lab”.
They’ve also started a new series – The Molecular Videos – featuring some favourite molecules and compounds.
Education Innovation Conference & Exhibition~Manchester iThink Therefore iPad & Raspberry Jam ~ February 2014
A long way in the distance, we know, but it’s good to plan ahead & book early eh?
We are delighted to confirm that we will be delivering a keynote speech at “The Education Innovation Conference & Exhibition, (EICE) 2014″ event at Manchester Central on February 27th next year, as part of their 2 day event. (27th/28th Feb 2014)
Achievement through Innovation
Now in its second year, EICE aims to help education professionals to raise levels of achievement by making more effective use of innovation and technology. It will feature over 50 free practical workshops and CPD seminars, delivered by some of the most inspiring individuals within education. The event will also include discussion and debate from ministers and sector leaders.
New features of this two-day event, will include a dedicated ‘innovation in practice’ centre, where educators will showcase the latest ideas and demonstrate how they put to practical use to raise achievement.
Education Innovation is proud to be co-located with the iThink therefore iPad 2014 conference and the Raspberry Jamboree festival.
Event manager David Ventris-Field said: “Building on the success of last year’s Education Innovation, we’re really focusing on how innovation can be used to raise achievement with lots of practical, hands-on workshops and some inspirational speakers. We are delighted that Tim will be working with us once again to make Education Innovation a huge success.”
Find out more at www.educationinnovation.co.uk and follow the show on Twitter at @EICEManchester
Here’s our post about EICE 2013 and see other pictures and video from 2013 at www.facebook.com/EICEManchester
A brief break in transmission ~ Did you Sir? Did you miss?
The blog is taking a few days break, as we are going to be overseas for a couple of weeks, in a place with very limited internet. “Pedal up. Thinband”.
Planning, sharing, repairing, preparing. In the meantime, did you miss, Sir?
“A cracking day” with The Hampshire District 2 Heads
Thank you to Bruce Waelend, for sending his thoughts on our day of practical fun, with the Hampshire heads:
What a great day!
The normal format for head teacher conferences is that someone will sit and talk to us about whatever it is – safeguarding or how to spend the Pupil Premium or zonal defence in lacrosse!
Normally there’s a PowerPoint involved and a fair wad of paper handouts.
Speakers tend to be into three categories: there’s the ‘hilarious and inspiring at the time, but I can’t remember a word that they said now’; the ‘serious and interesting with no jokes and lots of research evidence, which leave you feeling that you really need to read more about this but, even if you get the book, don’t’ and finally there is the ‘genuinely inspiring at the time and also has a huge impact in the long term, even to the point of helping you to see the world differently forever’. The third one is rare.
This was none of those. Instead, it was really refreshing and different, forcing head teachers to get off their behinds and do some of the stuff that we are constantly asking children to do – writing, working together, facing deadlines and presenting. However, this was all done in the context of using a range of great free, web-based tools in a real writing context.
I certainly had to face what we ask children to do all the time – the reluctance of working in a group (I’d rather have done it by myself initially), struggling with a task that has just been presented to you that you’re not exactly confident with, and then working with a group of people to produce something under pressure.
I’d quite forgotten the way that you seem to have so much time until you realise that the last few grains are heading to the bottom of the sand-timer.
It was excellent – rather unlike our finished presentation. 
I’ve been to great meetings where people have given me all kinds of resources or ideas that can be freely used from the web but without having a context in which to use them, they are rather easily forgotten.
Not so here. I’ll remember Tiltshiftmaker, Tag Galaxy, Morfo (one shown to me by a colleague in our group), Tagxedo & Psykopaint because we used them, or at least tried to.
I’ll be able to recommend them, knowing that they work – or at least I know the problems associated with them.
So thanks Tim and Sarah – a cracking day, which got us off to an excellent start to the conference.
Bruce Waelend ~ Hampshire District 2 Headteachers’ Conference, Sandbanks
Google StreetView Stereographic ~ Joyous mini worlds
Something we have used for quite a while now, and involve as just one step in the process of bringing worlds alive, with the schools we work alongside, is the wonderful Google Street View Stereographic. This joyous gem makes your very own, free, explorable, mini planets!
Visit your location, in StreetView Stereographic, & then learn to fly, as it is possible to move around within your world.
Just one way remember, but a fantastic stimulus for talk, discussion, talk for writing, and a whole lot more. Fun!
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
