Group items tagged

Angry Birds is a wonderful game for teaching all sorts of maths and physics. Play an online version of Angry Birds Rio. Play full screen at http://www.physicsgames.com/flash/angry-birds-rio.swf http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Educational+Games

This is a superb online recording tool where you can make a 30 second audio recoding at the touch of a button. Just share the short link to share your message. There are apps for mobile devices and a bookmarklet for quick access. It's a wonderful way to give homework/instructions and for students to ask questions when away from class. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

OK. I think this will be great news for many schools who are still clinging to Windows XP. Microsoft will keep supplying anti-malware updates to Windows XP until april 15, 2014. The March 2013 date caused an outcry among many and we've been working hard to update all the XP machines with extra RAM so they could go to Windows 7. But with the machines working so well on XP many of us wonder why we should dispose of machines that work so well especially in cash crunched times. Take your time - you've got a little longer although for us in the US if they'd go through June 2015 it means we can get 2 more school years out of XP machines. In a sign of the times, it can make all the difference between some kids using technology and some not.

Will you help Silvia Tolisano's students by letting them know what screencasts you want them to record? Thank you for taking a moment. This is a great project she's doing for these 6th graders. She does such a wonderful job of helping students develop an authentic audience.

Wonderful article from @aknill about SOLO.

Obama will do a "Presidential Hangout Roadtrip" as he has a "virtual whistlestop tour" - wondering if Skype will howl at this one. ;-) One thing is for sure, more people will activate their Google Plus handles trying to get in on the action.

The Egyptian section of the National Museum Scotland has a wonderful set of interactive resources and games that bring this ancient culture to life... so beware of the mummies! http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/History

If you use Dropbox for automating your assessment and grading there are so many wonderful tings you can do with Sortmy box. For example, if you have a "turnin" folder that all students can access, you could sweep the files out of there and put it in a private folder for grading. Or, you could move all picture folders to a certain place. This is a very cool app for organizing dropbox, expecially if you want to consolidate pictures or videos.

A wonderful collaborative real-time drawing space which connects to your Google Plus account, allowing you to illustrate, explain and teach remotely across the world. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A wonderful story site for younger children where the readers play a platform game with Rex the dinosaur to follow the storyline. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

This is a wonderful site for designing lesson plans and collating resources to push out to an iPad app for students to access and interact with. You can put together websites, videos, audio, documents, images and instructions. You can make quizzes for your students to answer to provide you with instant feedback about how they are doing. Your students can make their own notes about the lesson from within the app. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/id467088232 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

More and more people are throwing away their USB memory sticks (but probably just losing them down the back of the sofa) in favour of cloud storage. This is a wonderful storage site, download and multi-platform app which is very similar to Dropbox. A synced folder sits on you devices and can be updated and accessed from any device. You can generating a url to share folders or files with other people. It works just fine on a computer with Dropbox already installed and the free account gives you 15GB of storage. That's enough storage where 'tidy' filing schools might begin to migrate their school network storage to the cloud for free - and that's exciting. Additional storage is available for a price. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

These heartbreaking words from a teacher in the UK. As the world tries to improve education by the numbers, the world has forgotten kids aren't numbers. They are precious, individual and unique and deserve education systems that celebrate and encourage that. OK, teachers, it is time to man the media - you are the media now! Are you fed up yet? It might not be you right now, but if you don't speak, it will be, wherever you teach, such stories impact us all and the profession we care for so much. "As a teacher, I vowed that I would work hard to nurture my students, to make each and every student feel valued and for them to know that they have a voice, and a place in the world. However the last two years have made me feel like that insecure 14-year-old again: I have lost my confidence because of the overly-rigid current education system. We are constantly being told we are not good enough and that we are not doing enough: enough intervention, enough rigorous marking, enough sustained and rapid progress. What excited me the most about becoming a teacher was discovering the hidden talents and sparks of genius in my students. However, it breaks my heart to say this, but I feel that I no longer have time, nor am I encouraged to make these discoveries. We are so caught up with data and so many progress checks that we don't give our students the time to shine. I wonder what would happen if the greats of the world like Einstein, Gaudi, Picasso and Martin Luther King were to attend school in 2013, would they be able to cultivate their talents and thrive?"

Remember one thing as you look at these scores - not all students are tested in many countries and in many countries only the brightest go to school. In my opinion, these tests have some serious flaws. For example, I don't play cricket - my scores would be low -- I don't know that I'm so upset about that. While math, science, and reading are important -- standards vary greatly between countries -- so unless we're going to prep for PISA scores. Also on another note -- comparing "Shanghai to nations makes me wonder - I'm sure there are certain cities in the US that would do very well on such a test. Anyway, I want to look deeper, but I think before we rattle cages and get too upset, the report should be looked at deeply but not only the report - but the test. I remember getting upset that my kindergartener scored in the 60th percentile on "environment" only to see that he missed that a judge was supposed to be a guy in a grey wig (who does that) and couldn't identify a subway turnstile (we live in a town of 5,000). Since that time, I always want to see the test. Lots of people will be talking about this so look at it and be prepared to answer questions. This is the post from Aljazeera so you can see what other countries are saying about the report. "Asian countries have topped the rnakings in a global education report which evaluates the knowledge and skills of 15 and 16-year-olds around the world. The report by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), published on Tuesday, shows that children from Asian nations continue to outshine their western counterparts in maths, science and reading. The city of Shanghai topped the table in the three-yearly reported which tested more than 510,000 students in 65 countries. Children in Shanghai were, on average, the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling ahead of the majority of nations tested."

If you want to learn some very cool things here is a synopsis of watching more than 70 hours of TED talks with links. I love these types of summary posts (any wonder?)

A pinterest board to inspire educators of the best of quotes and inspiration. We become what we think so fill your mind with great thoughts. This is a wonderful board to follow from Edutopia.

A wonderful web toy where you can design your own funky festive tunes by clicking on the robots. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Winter+%26+Christmas

This is a superb environmental game which is reminiscent of the early SimCity games. Build a wonderful town, manage your fossil fuels wisely and keep the inhabitants happy. A free sign up is required. ictmagic.wikispaces.com/PSHE%2C+RE%2C+Citizenship%2C+Geography+%26+Environmental

A super web-based drum machine which works on most modern devices. Create wonderful music tracks and download as a WAV file.

More and more people are throwing away their USB memory sticks (but probably just losing them down the back of the sofa) in favour of cloud storage. This is a wonderful storage site, download and multi-platform app which is very similar to Dropbox. A synced folder sits on you devices and can be updated and accessed from any device. You can generating a url to share folders or files with other people. It works just fine on a computer with Dropbox already installed and the free account gives you 15GB of storage. That's enough storage where 'tidy' filing schools might begin to migrate their school network storage to the cloud for free - and that's exciting. Additional storage is available for a price.