PYP ICT Class Resources

Moving on

2009-07-22T10:56:00.002+02:00

This blog is no longer being maintained. My attention has shifted to http://ictisocs.blogspot.com/

How to make a paper CD cover

2009-06-10T05:04:00.000+02:00

Listen to Fairy Tales

2009-04-24T08:11:00.000+02:00

Year 3 students are reminded that there are lots and lots of fairy tales and folk takes from around the world to listen to on our Netvibes page.

image from Wikimedia Commons

Who are we?

2009-03-31T19:05:00.005+02:00

Year 5 investigates Art and Artists as a Unit of Inquiry with the Theme "How we express ourselves". From a photograph, the students create paintings of themselves with our Visual Arts teacher. In ICT class they manipulate the same photograph to create new versions of themselves, using Image Tricks software

Here's the results, from our Flickr set:

Keyboarding redux

2009-03-26T12:51:00.000+01:00

I've written a few times about keyboarding in our ICT classes.

This week we started working at the BBC's Dance Mat Typing. Years 3, 4 and 5 have been using Type to Learn 3 for 15 minutes of each ICT lesson, and those who are going to be able to use "two hands and 10 fingers" are well into being able to touch type. It was time for a change. The BBC site was recommended to me (along with other sites) by colleagues at the recent ECIS ICT conference in London.

We had discovered that though the students might be very proficient keyboarders within the context of Type to Learn activities, when they used a computer to write in Word, (or any other occasion to enter text) many of them not only didn't use 10 fingers to do the job, they didn't realize that they could - or should! Keyboarding is not necessarily a transferable skill! Once again, we adults were caught short - we thought we had "taught" and the students had "learned" a skill!

Logo

2009-01-27T15:38:00.007+01:00

I've posted before about logo and programming activities in our classes: Phun, Pawns and Scratch. We have begun exploring Terry 2, by Kudlian Software, a program in our iBooks.

We began by "playing" the "games" on backgrounds which come with the program - move your turtle through the mazes, around the race course, through the dangerous waters, etc. Then we began to program the turtle ourselves, first with simple forward, backward, and 90° turns L and R. As you move up through the levels of Terry 2, your options increase.

Today's challenge was to make a snow-flake-like design. Here is Nicola's result:

Here are two snowflakes from Year 3 students, Luca and Pierre:

Club Penguin and Webkinz

2009-01-05T07:44:00.000+01:00

Wesley Fryer has written about his family's experiences with Club Penguin and Webkinz over this last school holiday in a post titled "A holiday lesson in ethics via Webkinz"

It's a long, thoughtful post, and I urge you - parents and students- to click through and read it. He describes how his children enjoy the sites, what they're learning in their time online, and one particular incident and its follow-up.

"Things that happen in the virtual, online world DO matter just as things we do in the real, face-to-face world matter. Perceptions shape reality. I explained to my daughter that her act of going into her brother’s Webkinz account and sending herself that coupon without permission was just like him going into her room and eating a box of chocolates that she received for Christmas, without permission. It was stealing, taking something that did not belong to her without permission, and it was wrong."

I know that many of our students are members of these sites, too, and that the same sort of learning and sharing takes place among them - we've talked about it in ICT class.

The post goes on: "While kids as well as adults can certainly waste a lot of time online playing games as well as consuming media in various forms, I think there is much more comparative value to my children participating in interactive, online environments like these rather than simply watching television passively. The advent of more streaming video shared on websites means passive TV watching CAN and does happen frequently when kids are online, but I’d say they spend at least 90% of their time online interactively DOING things rather than just “watching.”

We tend to overlook, or underestimate, the power of this online time ("just playing games"). Wes Fryer writes about this invisible part of our students' lives, and how we adults can and should involve ourselves.

Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media

2008-12-07T07:02:00.001+01:00

"Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives." (link)

The Final Report of this 3 year study is available at the Digital Youth website, in 3 formats: "The two page summary incorporates a short, accessible version of our findings. The White Paper is a 30-page document prepared for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Series. The book is an online version of our forthcoming book with MIT Press and incorporates the insights from 800 youth and young adults and over 5000 hours of online observations."

The study focused on four areas: genres of participation, networked publics, peer- based learning, and new media literacy. In examining these different areas, it drew from existing theories in literacy studies, new media studies, learning theory, and childhood studies that are in keeping with their ethnographic approach. The frameworks drawn from focus on social and cultural context rather than on individual psychology in understanding learning and media engagement. (Living and Learning with New Media | The MacArthur Foundation Section 1:9)

Among other finding, the summary describes how "youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online. In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity, youth create and navigate new forms of expression and rules for social behavior. By exploring new interests tinkering, and “messing around” with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and media literacy..." (Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project)

"To stay relevant in the 21st century, education institutions need to keep pace with the rapid changes introduced by digital media. Youth's participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking about the role of education. What, the authors ask, would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks?"

photo by pdcawley

Words, text, typograpy, animation = meaning

2008-11-29T11:12:00.004+01:00

[Television interview about typeface design, with Steven Heller, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones at YouTube]

We're going to begin working with typography, and visualitzation of words and letters...
William's Word Generator:http://alethe.net/words/
"Admittedly, these poems are gibberish. But they're visually interesting, and you're welcome to rearrange the words yourself for more proper poetry."

Another web site we will use is Wordle http://www.wordle.net/ "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes."
Here's an example of a Wordle:

Lastly, we'll watch some animations using letters and words...

[A short story made by a University student at YouTube]

Watch this Shakespeare Sonnet animation at YouTube;

...and try our own using iMovie.

Also visit:
(Type is Art is an interactive project showing the 21 distinct parts of letterforms.)

Mind-mapping the Human Body

2008-11-13T13:03:00.004+01:00

Year 5's are creating mind maps of their understanding of some of the systems of the human body - respiratory, skeletal, digestive, muscular, and nervous, using the Kidspiration program. Here are some of the results:

Lego Digital Designer

2008-11-13T11:04:00.014+01:00

Year 3 is exploring Lego Digital Designer, a program that lets you build with LEGO bricks on your computer, in 3D.

Lego Builder can be downloaded free for both PC and Mac.

Here's one of the Year 3 classes at work:

This video shows a few of the Year 3 students using the View mode in Lego Digital Designer, watching their creations "explode" and reassemble.

Observing the children marvel at this process, I remembered an archeology video I'd seen about how "careful mapping of a shipwreck can provide archaeologists with an understanding of where cargo was stored in a ship before it sank", and animation could "rebuild" the ship and place it's cargo in the hold. (link to the PBS/Nova Online story)

Read the whole story at Asia's Undersea Archeology: Brunei wreck
and click on this link to see the short video.

Using Microsoft Word

2008-11-13T10:55:00.002+01:00

All the classes have been reviewing how to use a word processing program, Microsoft Word. We've talked about how to open a new document, and how you don't have to tell the computer to start a new line of text, unless you want to start a new paragraph. We've looked at change fonts, colors, sizes of text, and alignment and spacing.

"Where can I get music?"

2008-10-26T04:59:00.008+01:00

Yes, there are free downloads on the internet, and yes, there is music that is "legal" for you to use - it is in the public domain, or the artist has licensed it with a Creative Commons license that allows other to use their work.

C/Net music.download.com You don't have to create an account. There are over 100,000 songs to download. There are many ways to sort the songs--song name, artist name, average rating, total listens, total listens last week, date added and date updated.

On Jamendo artists allow anyone to download and share their music. It's free, legal and unlimited. You will have to register for an account, and an email will be sent to you to confirm your registration. It's very easy to search using a tag cloud. Here's a widget from Jamendo playing the album Suerte by Pastèque (This album is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic License)

The FreeSound Project might be a useful source of sound for you project: "The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!" Registration required.

I foud a really neat HeartBeat sound on this page:

Oddio Overplay offers music in a very easy to use layout.

Enter the kind of music you want to find in the search bar; you are taken to a page of results. To download music, right clicking the link and choosing the SAVE option works with both Apple and PC systems. In some systems, left clicking prompts a dialogue allowing the user to choose to either open (play) or save (download) the file.
"The primary purpose of this site is to connect artists and audiences. Artists who want the world to hear their music offer it online for free. This music is completely legal for a listener to download and enjoy. Oddio also refers visitors to music archives, such as the United States Library of Congress, Opsound, free netlabels and the Internet Archive, that are using the Internet to allow the public to access their sound resources."

Soundsnap Soundsnap is a free online sound library and community for sound designers and producers. People can upload sounds and share them with the world.All the sound effects at Soundsnap are uploaded by creators. There are many thousands of audio clips already available. You can search for sounds via the search bar at the top, browse by category or browse by tag. On the sound 'teaser' click on the upper right corner an choose between mp3, wav or aif to download.

The Red Ferret site lists "1 Million Free and Legal Music Tracks" through a very long link list to portals, review sites, specialist sites, general music sites, record labels, non-English music sites, and bands offering mp3s.

PowerPoint

2008-09-27T13:54:00.003+02:00

Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 are working with PowerPoint - learning the mechanics: how to create a new slide, choose a template, insert an image, change fonts, etc.

Year 3 will put their drawings from Splosh, Image Tricks and ArtRage on their slides, and later write descriptions or captions. Year 4 will use the images of place they found through FlickrStorm and write the "story" told by each picture. Year 5 will use the screen shots they took from Google Earth work, using Grab. Year 6 is working on hyperlinks, creating very simple "choose your own ending" stories.

Within these projects are discussions about copyright, legibility, principals of design, and suitability for purpose.

Using Google Earth redux

2008-09-18T16:53:00.003+02:00

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote this post:

Using the free software application Google Earth can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. There are many websites with ideas, help, downloads, lessons, etc. Start with this introduction page , and this page about how to use Google Earth.

Google Earth Links
This page of the Google Earth Blog is devoted to providing links to important web resources about Google Earth, KML/KMZ, sightseeing GE's satellite/aerial photos, software tools, games, and more. For an even longer list of links, check out OgleEarth's links page.

Google Sightseeing
On the Sights by Locality page, you can find posts about particular sights around the world. Check out the Switzerland page.

Swiss Alps "Fighter" Tour in Google Earth
Of special interest for us is the tour of the Swiss Alps in a Swiss fighter plane, filmed for real, and then reproduced on Google Earth. You can read about how it was made, and see both versions here (embedded from YouTube).

It's September again, and Year 5 is using Google Earth again as part of their Unit of Inquiry into "How in the world do we know where we are?" First we learned how to navigate with Google Earth: how to use the compass wheel, how to zoom in and out, and to level off. We've learned how to add features, and out favorite is 3D buildings. We've learned how to use the utility Grab to take screen shots, and have taken screen capures of the whole Earth, our homes, and then interesting places. Here are some samples:

St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva, a 3D building in Geneva Earth

A screen shot of the Earth, in Google Earth

London, in 3D buildings, in Google Earth

We've talked about why some places have lots of 3D buildings, and others have none, and why some places we know exist (like our school!) do not show on Google Earth. Today's challenge questions was:
If you dig a hole straight down under the school, through the Earth, where will you come out? How do you know?

Line Rider in Sratch

2008-05-18T11:19:00.003+02:00

Bill Kerr, in Adelaide, Australia, has posted about a simple version of Line Rider he's developed in Scratch. Read his posts Part 1, and Part 2 to see samples and script.

In his posts, he says you may email him for step by step instructions at billkerr (at) gmail (dot) com

Using iMovie

2008-04-12T13:46:00.008+02:00

In Years 3 and 5 we're using iMovie to make very short animations. The students have created many pictures with ImageTricks image editing and generating software (and saved them into one file).

We import those files into iMovie, add some transitions, titles and credits.

In GarageBand we create a sound track, add import it into iMovie. Voila! A 10 second-long movie!

Here's my sample:

How many ways can you see a picture?

2008-03-24T14:46:00.005+01:00

Years 3 - 6 investigate the relationship between numbers and photo manipulation using Image Tricks software in our iBooks.

View this book full size at Mixbook The pictures are also online at Flickr.com

Questionaut

2008-03-18T12:02:00.005+01:00

There is a great game designed for 11 year olds to review their knowledge at the BBC Bitesize web site. Questionaut, designed by Samorost creators Amanita, is very beautiful. It takes the player on a journey to 8 islands in the sky. To progress from island to island you have to figure out what to do to get the questions, and then you have to answer the questions correctly.
If you miss a question, another and another and another replace it. The goal is to help you progress, not to knock you out. (It's a good idea to have a calculator handy.)

Here are some screen shots I took as I worked my way through the game.

On lline keyboarding practice

2008-02-24T08:07:00.004+01:00

In her blog Keying In, Kate Olson, who is a 4th and 6th grade keyboarding teacher at Longfellow Middle School in La Crosse, Wisconsin (USA), has pointed me towards some super online typing practice. Have a look at:

Airplane Typing Game

Fingerjig

Foggies Typing Game

Goalie

Keyboarding Links

Typing Web - Lessons

TypingGame-Punctuation,too!

Type Online UK

Keyboarding Practice Drills

(Be sure to check that your keyboard is working in the layout the game requires: US, British, etc.)

Phun

2008-02-23T15:00:00.005+01:00

After Scratch, (and Pawns and Alice) comes Phun.

"Phun is a playground for the creative mind where toys can be easily created.
Phun was created as a Masters in Science project by Emil Ernerfeldt for supervisor Kenneth Bodin, HPC2N/VRlab, Umeå University, Sweden."

For the moment, the program (download here) is only for Windows (including Vista) and Linux. A Mac version is promised soon. Be sure to read the FAQ page before you install the download in your computer.

This video is on YouTube (so not visible in school), but your can Download movie in higher quality as wmv (38.4 MB) or xvid (79.6 MB)

Although this video was added by the creator only 10 days ago, there are already more than a dozen other videos made with Phun on YouTube. Our Year 3 students should watch all these as part of their Unit of Inquiry into Simple Machines.

Keywords/Tagging

2008-01-02T08:24:00.000+01:00

"Collaborative tagging (also know as folksonomy, social classification, social indexing and other names) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content." (Wikipedia)

Here's a quick explanation (on YouTube, so you won't see anything in this space if you're at school):

This video from the Jackson County Public Library (USA) shows a basic concept of tagging - it's on YouTube, and cannot be embedded in this blog.

This video explains tagging in a different way:

There are many ways of classifying things. I might look at this photo I took of a river and think of the words river, frozen, and cold. You might think ice, grey, winter.

Tagging is very subjective. The words you choose to use as tags depend entirely what you see in a picture, or (if it's a web page) what you think a web page is about. That is why "social bookmarking" or "social tagging" is so interesting - someone else may see other things in the photo or web page, and by adding their tags, the possibility of finding the item with keyword search increases.

At the same time, the tagged description may be diluted, because of inaccurate or far-fetched tags.

My tag cloud on del.icio.us - an online social bookmarking site. If I were to go to the site and click on one of these tags, the list of all the web pages I have bookmarked and tagged with that word would open. On del.icio.us, the tag cloud is only visible to the account holder, though the saved webpages are visible to anyone. This is my page at del.icio.us

This is a picture of my tag cloud at flickr.com - a photo sharing site. If you were to go to the website, and click on "autumn", for example, all the pictures I have labled "autumn" would open. By looking at the cloud you can infer what pictures I like to put on the site - and tag. I have hundreds of pictures onine without tags.

Tag clouds can be a way to look at your own wrting.

Tag cloud generated from the posts at the SpaceQuest blog using http://www.tagcrowd.com/
The cloud shows 25 of a possible 984 tags.

created at TagCrowd.com

See a related post at August 28.

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young

2008-01-01T09:28:00.000+01:00

This article (by Brooks Barnes, Published: December 31, 2007 ) from the New York Times came to my attention through the Classroom 2.0 ning. It discusses how advertisers are targeting young kids in cyber hangouts like Club Penguin and Webkinz.

Photo from The NY Times

"Trying to duplicate the success of blockbuster Web sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz, children’s entertainment companies are greatly accelerating efforts to build virtual worlds for children. Media conglomerates in particular think these sites — part online role-playing game and part social scene — can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers."

"“Get ready for total inundation,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today."

The article describes the exploding growth in cyber-worlds created with children in mind.

"Behind the virtual world gravy train are fraying traditional business models. As growth engines like television syndication and movie DVD sales sputter or plateau — and the Internet disrupts entertainment distribution in general — Disney, Warner Brothers and Viacom see online games and social networking as a way to keep profits growing."

Here is an advertisement for Disney's online game "Pirates of the Caribbean" (on YouTube, so you won't see anything in this space if you're at school):

and this is a CBS News short from "The Early Show" on 6 April 2007 about Webkinz:

When you play these games, what are you learning? How is it like school (or not like school!)?

Using Scratch

2007-12-21T08:10:00.000+01:00

Following on our use of Pawns, where we had to understand a problem, and experiment with finding solutions, we will learn to work with Scratch.
Scratch is a visual programming language developed by MIT.

Watch this video: Scratch in 30 Seconds

Click To Play

"Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design."
Scratch is free of charge, go to this page. It is available for Mac OSX and Windows ( system requirements)
This animation describes the basics of Scratch:

Click To Play

There are other videos on the Internet about using Scratch.
This one is from a physics teacher in the US:

This video, on TeacherTube, describes how to program a game of Pong.

This video, on TeacherTube, was made by a Middle School student, and describes how to teach a Scratch sprite to walk.

This one is from Harvard University's extension school. Disregard the instructions and web address at the beginning of the video - they are out of date. About a quarter of the way through a description of the work area and ways of using Scratch begins - do watch these.

(This video can also be downloaded at Computer Science E-1: Understanding Computers and the Internet Harvard Extension School
Lecture 11 Programming)

If you download Scratch to use at home, you may also want to download this set of LEGO figures, donated by LEGO for use in Scratch projects.

After you make a Scratch project you want to share with other users, you can upload it to the MIT Scratch web site. As of today (21 Dec 07) there are 56,711 projects with a total of 1,014,169 scripts and 352,621 sprites created by 11,500 contributors of our 57,019 registered members.

Here is one of my favorites from the project gallery:

Learn more about this project

Click on this link to visit the Scratch web page and see our work in the CdN PYP Gallery.

PowePoint

2007-11-18T09:04:00.000+01:00

"How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death" by Alexi Kaptarev is intended for business people, but kids in schools (and teachers!) should pay attention, too.

| View | Upload your own

Playing "Pawns"

2007-11-12T17:28:00.000+01:00

One of the new software applications in our iBooks is "Pawns". It looks like Chess, but the pieces have minds of their owns!

"The object of the game is get pawns (whether black or white) to their wooden box. This is done by placing arrows on the board to tell them where to go. Along the way you must avoid obstacles and enemy chess pieces. Sometimes the enemy chess pieces can simply be avoided, but you may need to encourage them to capture each other instead!" Pawns won 2nd place in the OMG (Original Mac Games) 2005 contest. It is a free download for both Mac and Windows platforms.

Pawns is deceptively simple. The goal is to guide the chess pieces across the board, around the hazards (which may move) and collect keys. The player is given a limited number of arrows with which to build the path for the pawns. In order to do that, the rhythm and pattern of the pawns' movement must be understood, and accommodated.

We are playing Pawns because it is a precursor to computer programming, and a great exercise in problem solving and logical thinking. There is also a great deal of cooperative learning and planning going on when classes are at work on their puzzles.

Using other people's pictures in your work

2007-10-14T10:22:00.000+02:00

If you want to use an image in your work, it is very important that you have the right to use it. When you want to use a picture that you did not draw, or a photo that you did not take, you need to choose an image that is copyrighted in such a way that you have permission to add it to your finished product.

One of the easiest (and most interesting) ways is to use a website called FlickrStorm. Click on the "advanced" link, and choose the "non commercial" license. Then enter your key word, and watch the pictures appear! Download the search page of photos you have chosen, which will include the photo credit information.

Here are 3 videos (made for teachers) by David Jakes about how best to use the site.
Introduction to searching with FlickrStorm:

Part 2 - more about searching

Part 3 shows how to make sure you have all the photo credit you need from your downloads.

This slide from Konrad Glogowski's presentation at the K12 Online Technology Conference shows an interesting way to credit a photo. Notice at the very bottom of the picture, the photo credit is imposed over the image (it's the grey writing, but so faintly that it does not detract from the picture. This is a far more authentic attribution of authorship than a long list of links at the end of a presentation.

A Google Account

2007-09-29T08:48:00.000+02:00

In all the Year 6 classes, students will be opening a Google Account, specifically to be used as a tool in the classroom, in connection with their school work. Many (most) students already have at least one email address. Besides using email for "traditional" email purposes (sending messages), we are interested in the digital toolbox which a Google account provides. This is a free learning resource, available to everyone, and we will be working with our Year 6 students, learning how to take advantage particularly of email, the online Notebook, Blogger, Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools), iGoogle homepage, Reader, and Calendar.

This is also the opportunity for "good practice" in internet use - personal safety, netiquette, and digital citizenship. We will continually emphasize acceptable use guidelines. These accounts are to be treated as virtual classroom spaces - essential agreements for the classroom apply also when using these tools.

We will be using information and activities at these web sites:

http://pbskids.org/license/

http://www.staysafe.org/parents/kids/activities/internet_safety_quiz.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/help/safesurfing/

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

http://www.netsmartz.org/resources/pledge.htm

Using Google Earth

2007-09-29T08:13:00.001+02:00

Using the free software application Google Earth can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. There are many websites with ideas, help, downloads, lessons, etc. Start with this introduction page , and this page about how to use Google Earth.

Google Earth Links
This page of the Google Earth Blog is devoted to providing links to important web resources about Google Earth, KML/KMZ, sightseeing GE's satellite/aerial photos, software tools, games, and more. For an even longer list of links, check out OgleEarth's links page.

Google Sightseeing
On the Sights by Locality page, you can find posts about particular sights around the world. Check out the Switzerland page.

Swiss Alps "Fighter" Tour in Google Earth
Of special interest for us is the tour of the Swiss Alps in a Swiss fighter plane, filmed for real, and then reproduced on Google Earth. You can read about how it was made, and see both versions here (embedded from YouTube).

Zoho online tools

2007-09-02T15:00:00.000+02:00

Zoho.com offers a set of 14 production and creation apps on the web which keeps getting better and better. (You work on the web, not on your computer - you don't have to buy software to do the job).

You can try out the apps without registering,

Zoho Writer (online word processor), Zoho Sheet (online spreadsheets), Zoho Show (online presentation tool). Zoho Notebook (online notebook), Zoho Planner (online organizer), Zoho Creator (online data base), Zoho Wiki (online wiki writer)

If you think they would be useful to you for your school work, sign up for an account.

Tutorial videos on the Zoho site are on this page. They are also on YouTube:
Zoho Creator for creating databases
Zoho Viewer to view and share documents as web pages.
Zoho Notebook

Mind Mapping "The Swiss Army Knife for the Brain"

2007-09-02T09:09:00.000+02:00

Three Web-Based Mind Mapping Tools Reviewed posted at the Web Worker Daily blog reviews 3 online mind mapping tools: bubbl.us, Mindomo, and MindMeister.

The writer concludes by saying "MindMeister, with its smooth keyboard access, information-dense display, and export-to-outline capability, is my favorite of the three... MindMeister provides all the basic features you might look for in a web-based tool of this sort. I found the keyboard access mostly intuitive. The tab key adds a child, the enter key adds a sibling, and arrows navigate around the diagram smoothly. Saving happens automatically with no action required of the user. Nodes can be repositioned using drag and drop. You can share with write or view-only access."

All the Mac Minis and iBooks at school have Kidspiration installed. This software is a tool for combining pictures, text and spoken words to represent ideas and show relationships. (At home, ou can download a 30 day free trial of the software if you would like to try on your own computer)

In the video below, watch Tony Buzan, a leading authority on mind maps, talk about the brain, and why mind maps are a valuable thinking tool.

You can also see this video at Buzan's web site,iMindMap, but it still a YouTube video, and probably can't be seen in school.

This video, by Stephen Pierce (an internet business consultant), presents a slightly different look at mind mapping, (He speaks very fast!) as he talks about how to mind map a book (or text) as you read it.

Knowing your iBook

2007-09-02T07:38:00.000+02:00

A multilingual guide to the iBook model we use in class can be downloaded here as an Adobe pdf file from the Apple support site.

You can also open it in your web browser's window. From this web page, click on iBook G3 (14-inch) Multilingual User's Guide (Manual).

Web Literacy

2007-08-31T06:20:00.000+02:00

The 21st Century Connections web site posted a page about "Nine Needs for Web Literacy".
By Janice Friesen

"On the Web, much of what students read is not always fact - or at least not verified as completely accurate, and articles and blogs are often laced with opinion. So it is extremely important that students know how to evaluate information that they read. It is also important that teachers know how to help them."

Reading URLs for information
Looking for information about the Author
The "About" section of a Web site
Careful Reading of Websites

"Many websites are made to look like other sites on purpose in order to spoof the reader. One in particular is the spoof "World Trade Organization" site that was created as a criticism of the World Trade Organization. Compare it to the real World Trade Organization site. Read carefully and it is clear that the former is not the WTO site. But many adults and children are NOT carefully reading; instead they skim, find what they think are looking for, and move on."

Careful Reading of Email
Recognizing Advertisements

"Ads have really gotten clever recently. The animated cartoons draw your eye and often it seems like the right place to click."

Looking for Dates
Triangulation

"Students should know how to triangulate, which is a fancy way for saying finding three sources that agree on a fact. It is still possible to be wrong if you find three unreliable sources, but less likely. But be careful;; the three sources should not come from links. Often a Web page will have links to other sites that agree with it. Using these links is not triangulation. It is best when there are three completely different sources which all agree."

Being Skeptical

Read the whole article at this link. Can you find the date of publication for the page? Can you spot the adds? How can you tell where the links are on the page, and what they link to (without clicking on them)? What can you learn about 21st Century Connections?

The machine is us/ing us

2007-08-19T19:17:00.000+02:00

This video was created by Dr. Michael Wesch, cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the impacts of new media on human interaction Kansas State University (USA)

Just the text used in the animation is available here

An interview with Dr. Wesch is on a Slovenian business blog, Vibacom. Asked why he made the video, he said that he was "just trying to raise the awareness really. I just wanted to show how the web 2.0 looks like. Wanted to get people to innovate on the Net. To make people to see possible challenges. To make people start thinking about the social impacts of the Net, specially Net 2.0".

Schoolr

2007-08-18T21:38:00.000+02:00

Start page Schoolr (the R stands for research)is a start page with a set of search inputs to popular student resources around the web—like Google, Wikipedia, Reference.com, Spark Notes, text translation and unit conversion. Schoolr is a useful browser homepage for internet researchers. No ads, no registration, just use it. Make it your home page.
There is also a version in French. The author writes that he does not speak or read French, and is open to suggestions for the page. Maybe you have some ideas?

Social Bookmarking

2007-08-13T22:06:00.000+02:00

Click To Play

Google Guide Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet)

2007-08-12T22:58:00.000+02:00

Keep the Google Guide Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet) web page open under (or beside) your search window to help you find what you're looking for on the web more effeciently.

What's a Blog?

2007-08-11T07:53:00.000+02:00

Rachael Boyd, a teacher in New Zealand, has prepared these two presentations about blogging in her classroom. The first outlines the pedagogy behind the use of blogs, and in the second the children speak for themselves.

"Presentation on the benefits and reasons why we should let our students blog. Check out my edublog at: http://rachelboyd.blogspot.com for info and links to my class blogs. Hope you find it useful. Music is "English Channel" from freeplaymusic.com"

"Let the 6 & 7 year olds from Room 9 at Nelson Central School (New Zealand) educate you about what they think a blog is and why they love using them! This is the introduction to my presentation for a New Zealand Online Conference. This part is the student's voice. Primarily it's an AUDIO file, we didn't want to detract away from the children's voices. I've just chosen to upload it here as a movie for flexibility. Check out out class blog here at: http://room9nelsoncentral.blogspot.com/ Or our teacher's edublog at: http://rachelboyd.blogspot.com/ "

A Fair(y) Use Tale

2007-08-08T18:32:00.000+02:00

Synopsis

Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University created this humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms.

You can download (mp4) the whole film or watch it at youtube.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Scratch

2007-08-04T07:27:00.000+02:00

We have installed a new software in our iBooks, Scratch, from MIT. This information is from the Scratch web page:

"Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design."

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Intel Foundation, and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

It is available as a free download from this page, for both Mac and Windows

Learn about it by using the link below to the Scratch web page

Click video above or full screen

What is a Blog?

2007-07-21T07:16:00.000+02:00

The Wikipedia article for "blog" begins:

"A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order to maintain or add content to a blog. and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order...

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) or sexual in nature (Adult blog), and are part of a wider network of social media.

In May 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 71 million blogs.^[1]"

^{Blogs can be free, public or private, open or closed to comments. They are an ideal way to create web pages without owning web-editing software, or knowing a lot about creating web pages. All you need is an Internet connection.}

How to use a Mac computer

2007-07-21T07:06:00.000+02:00

At the Apple website you can learn the basics of getting around in a Mac interface. Click here to get started with Apple's 5 lessons.

This page describes the Mac keyboard we use with the classroom Mac Mini computers.

Video: RSS in Plain English

2007-07-15T12:31:00.001+02:00

From the producers: "We made this video for our friends (and yours) that haven't yet felt the power of our friend the RSS reader. We want to convert people and if you know someone who would love RSS and hasn't yet tried it, point them here for 3.5 minutes."

(This video may be blocked in school - see it at home!)

On this page of Orthogate (a blog for Orthopedic surgeons!)Dr Christian Veillette gives a simple explanation of RSS, and a good step by step guide of how to subscribe to a feed in Google Reader.

Video: Social Networking in Plain English

2007-07-15T12:22:00.001+02:00

"This video is for people who wonder why social networking web sites are so popular. One reason is because they solve a real-world problem: they make the invisible visible. We'll let the video explain how it works."

(This video may be blocked in school - see it at home!)

Click To Play

Video: Wikis in Plain English

2007-07-15T12:19:00.001+02:00

"We made this video because wiki web sites are easy to use, but hard to describe."

(This video may be blocked in school - see it at home!)

Google tools

2007-07-03T20:31:00.000+02:00

We are asking every Year 6 student to sign up for a Google account, in order to have access to Gmail, Google Documents, Picasa web albums, Google Notebook, Blogger, Google Groups, and Google Reader, for use in school work.

Watch the above Gmail video (outside of school) to learn more about Gmail, (and to get some good ideas for easy animation!)

Read what 9 year old Adora Svitak has to say about iGoogle in her post on the "Infnite Thinking Machine" blog:
"Although I consider myself fairly well-versed in technology, discovering iGoogle made me ecstatic. It's an absolute must-have if you want to keep floating on the all too murky surface of tech popularity..."

On-line survey tool

2007-07-03T19:53:00.000+02:00

You can register for a free basic account at SurveyMonkey
to create free online surveys for up to 100 respondents, and up to 10 questions.

Keyboarding

2007-07-03T19:42:00.000+02:00

We have Type to Learn 3 and 2T4Mac installed in our iBooks. Online typing programs can be found at

typeonline.co.uk
speed test, exercises, and a free online typing course.

typingpal.com
speed test, some free demo exercises, and paid registered typing course online.
Bubbles Game
"Your target is to burst the rising bubbles by pressing the character shown in them. The more bubbles you burst, the better score your score."

TypingTest.com offers a speed test. "After the short text typing sample, you will see your typing speed, accuracy and net speed."

"Asking students to use a keyboard to write without training them to use it properly limits what they can accomplish in the computer lab. It requires students to spend valuable class time locating keys instead of thinking about what they are trying to say... Students can be taught to type as soon as they begin using school computers, just as they’re shown how to hold pencils when they start writing. Correct finger placement and simple keystrokes, such as using the thumb for the space bar and the little finger for the shift key, can be taught even to very young students. They may still hunt and peck, but as they gain competence, they should begin to learn touch typing...When you expect students to produce well-written documents in a limited amount of time, it’s only fair to show them early and often how it’s done. And the simple truth is that students need to be able to type faster than they can write with a pencil. Otherwise, it’s not worth the class time to put them in front of a computer." - Doug Noon, Teacher Magazine: Reverting to Type, Teacher Magazine 1 May 07