A brilliant, easy to use short film/animation site. Excellent for unit intros, transition activities etc. Make your own film in no more than 60 seconds - so easy.
What it is: Boy's Life Magazine is a great place to reach those boys in your class that are reluctant readers or writers. On the Boy's Life site, you will find a Comic Creator where students can create a comic strip. The Comic Creator is easy to use, offering enough tools for boys to really customize their comics but not SO many that they get lost in the forever search of pictures. A great balance!
How to integrate Comic Creator into the classroom: The Boy's Life Comic Creator is a great little tool to help your boys connect with writing and story telling in a way that they enjoy and understand. The tool is simple enough to use as a writing station/center on classroom computers. The comic does need to be created in one sitting, there is no way to save and come back to a comic later. Completed comics can be printed off and shared.
This site is the Homepage for NSW and is jam-packed with brilliant links for parents, teachers and kids too! The audiofiles and videos are excellent teacher professional development with titles like: Talking with Text, Numeracy at Home, Using the Empty Number LIne and speakers like Prof. Freebody discussing Literacy in our schools! Many of the links could be worth advertising in our schools' Newsletters/Bulletins as we head up to NLNW activities!
This blog entry includes links to sixteen of the best websites pertaining to internet safety for kids. Some are US-based, however, it provides a great starting point for those schools who are starting to tread cybersafety as a priority.
An interesting writing tool, no sign up. When finished read others writing on the same word.
"simple. you'll see one word at the top of the following screen.
you have sixty seconds to write about it."
Canorus is a free extensible music score editor. It supports note writing, import/export of various file formats, MIDI input and output, scripting and more! Using a Qt4 framework Canorus offers a fast and modern GUI and cross-platformability. Canorus runs on Linux, Windows and MacOSX. Canorus is free (libre) software, licensed under GNU GPL.
Excellent site to grab movie clips, great search capabilities. Eg can search for characters/ mood/ setting etc. Excellent resource. Need to download clips at home as proxies currently appear to block.
A great site for teachers explaining David Hyerle's Thinking Maps (8 only); has great video clip too!Thinking tools are graphic organisers that enable students to engage in independent thinking and learning.
The Danish government says if the internet is so much a part of daily life, it should be included in the classroom and in examinations.
Sanne Yde Schmidt, who heads the project at Greve, says: "If we're going to be a modern school and teach them things that are relevant for them in modern life, we have to teach them how to use the internet."
Students are no longer required to regurgitate facts and figures. Instead the emphasis is on their ability to sift through and analyse information.
Some high schools in Denmark are beginning to allow students access to the internet during exams. Exciting stuff, and fantastic to see countries looking into more open forms of assessment. I will be interested to see how quickly other nations follow Denmark's lead in this regard. Tools like Diigo would be a fantastic method of preparation for student's sitting these exams.