Resources

Some resources I have used and liked in the past. I see I include Scratch for making games at the bottom - I'm experimenting with Kodu now http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

Cool Tools for Schools is good place to start looking

Lesson Starter

Bing – The Microsoft Bing start page is great. Every day a new high quality picture from around the world is used for the start page. You can use the image for discussion and hidden in the images are clues to where the place is in the world - an interactive class mystery.

Quikmaps lets you doodle on Google maps - draw lines, add smilies etc

Generating tools

The generator blog helps you to find generators you may find useful

Here are a selection (thanks to Ollie Bray for some of these):
cooltext generator
wizard text generator
newspaper generator
photo flying flag
smoke signal generator
education jargon generator

Wordle generates “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. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Pictures

Gimp This is an excellent piece of photo editing software – similar in features to Photoshop.

Blibs Just upload your photo and you can add special effects including animation effects

Tuxpaint This is computer art software designed for children.

Flickr Enables you to store pictures or do a search . Just search a keyword, select the pictures you want and click slideshow for an instant lesson starter

Photosynth This program enables you to make a 3D representation of a location - e.g. your classroom with all the displays, or a visit to a place of interest - it also has a search facility for you to find 3D representations of places relevant to your lessons

Autocollage - Just select all the pictures you want to use from a folder such as 'My Pictures' and the program does the rest

Picasa This program also allows you to creat a collage, turn photo into films and to create slideshows

Design and send your own e-cards with this simple to use program suitable for Year 1 +

Deep Zoom – This programme I discovered through Ollie Bray. It is a way of layering pictures without loosing the overall quality. Here is an example of a lesson starter by Ollie Bray, teaching geography in Scotland: http://www.blip.tv/file/1889767/.

Stuart Balls has created tutorials on using Deep Zoom.

Animoto creates videos from pictures. A classteacher in East Lothian made this great video to send home to parents to show them what the class had been doing

Comics

Comics are a great way to get reluctant writers writing and to help pupils to understand structure and sequencing as well as use of speech.

Pixton and Comic Brush are both free and web based

Animation


Monkey Jam Just drop in photos in order and the software does the rest, or create pencil and paper stop motion animations. It is extremely simple to use.

Another free web based resource is GoAnimate. to create cartoons and animations really easily.

Google Sketch Up
A free 3D modeling package from Google is currently being used in lots of Hounslow Schools.

For example, St Marks

and Strand on the Green Junior School

Google Earth

Google Earth tips and tricks:spinning the globe, measuring distance and the historical imagery layer.

Communication

Another site I found through Ollie Bray is Wallwisher which allows the user to place 'virtual post-it notes' onto a web page. A Geography teacher from Glasgow set his class the task:
"You are allowed ten minutes research time. After this, share one fact (or more) with the class about the Amazon rainforest that you didn't know before. Credit your sources (e.g. Found in wikipedia)"
Students then had to post their fact on the class wall wisher site as homework and credit the source where the fact had been obtained from.

Computer Gaming and Control

Scratch - create and share games. This supports much of the primary curriculum for control technology and is useful in secondary schools as well. Play some of the example games, then try adapting one before launching into your own game design.

Stories

Storynory has loads of audio stories for free. There is a link at the top that tells you about the translation tool for a selectin of languages for your EAL pupils and the ability to highlight text as the story is read

Sebastian Swan books for Key Stage 1 and resources for teachers

Thanks to Simone from Feltham City Learning Centre for a couple of great links

Blabberize is a fantastic tool for making pictures talk

Create your own music with JamStudio

A few more great links:

Weebly for buliding your own web site really easily - and they host it as well

TubeChop for editing films on You Tube