Cacoo

Cacoo is a free online collaborative diagram designing tool. This application has great potential for students planning projects together as well as creating mind maps and visual thinking diagrams.

Useful Teaching Resource - A Visualiser

I purchased a visualiser for our school and have found it to be an invaluable resource for teaching. It is basically a modern version of the old overhead projector.

All you need is to plug it into a power socket and into a digital projector. It projects anything placed under the camera onto the screen, books, student work, models and 3D objects. You can take screen shots, record video and split the screen for a variety of purposes. It is a great way to share student work, share a story, observe a student editing their work, project a lesson on a hand held device and many, many more applications.

Latest Sir Ken Robinson talk from TED

Maths Resources

A colleague at school told me about an Australian based mathematics website called "Smartkiddies". I team teach in a grade 3/4 class and have enrolled two classes into this site. It is well worth a look, not only can you find an amazing range of resources relating to all areas in the maths curriculum, but you can also assign different tasks to different children, leave messages, track students and their achievements as well as engaging children in games and activities. Here are some other useful maths based websites:

Tutpup: Great for practising time tables and number facts.

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives: An excellent site and really supports interactive whiteboard use.

Small Blue Printer: Perfect for space and measurement.

Free Rice: Practise maths for a worthy cause.

Bamzooki: A fantastic problem solving activity

Other general maths game sites:

Maths is fun

FunBrain

Cool Maths Games

A Celebration for ACEC2010

Here is a video recapping the fantastic conference we organised for ACEC2010:



And yours truly accepting award for ICTEV Teacher of the Year 2010:

Teaching videos site

A website in the United Kingdom, Teaching Videos, has a great range of educational videos well orginised into useful categories. Here is an example from the ICT area on social networking:

ACEC2010

Texting and Literacy

I found this on TeacherTube and found it interesting.

Interactive Whiteboards

I found a couple of sites that have some links to activities and applications that can be used with an interactive whiteboard.

http://www.avenelps.vic.edu.au/interactive_whiteboard_sites.htm

http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/

ACEC2010

HURRY!



Only 25 days to go! Check out what is on offer at the ACEC2010 website.

Useful Math Resources

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has a comprehensive collection of interactive mathematical activities for use in the classroom. They work extremely well with an Interactive Whiteboard. The place value activities are particularly useful.

Small Blue Printer

This great free program is great for students in the area of measurement in mathematics. Students can design a floor plan of their classroom, home, etc and then wander through in 3D mode. There is also an option for a more detailed plan with plenty of options for them to choose from.

History of the Internet

Found this great video about the history of the Internet, following is an interesting (albeit sexist) video about future predictions in 1969.

Pencil - Free Animation Software

Pencil is a free software tool for creating hand drawn animations. It is free and very easy to use. Visit their website for download and examples of its potential.

Quest Atlantis

Following on from the success of SuperClubs Plus, another social networking site for students aged 9 - 16 years is called Quest Atlantis.

"Quest Atlantis is a virtual reality software program created by Indiana University professor Dr. Sasha Barab. Virtual Reality Software is a software program that creates a three dimensional world with multi-user environment. This particular program, Quest Atlantis, includes games and a story line to assist children with both reading and decision making. This particular model places students in the role of junior scientists, political advisors, business managers, and national park rangers. Students tackle a variety of subjects trying to solve problems in this virtual world.

The greatest results have been seen in students who are the poorest performing readers and with disadvantaged students. These students are typically the hardest to reach, and the program has given them incentives and rewards for their work. These students often do not enjoy school but now have great interest due to this interactive world. The game style approach appeals to the students and keeps their interest." Courtesy Wired Educator