Posts made in December 18th, 2007

Dress the Snowman

Posted on Dec 18, 2007 in Subject Resources, Useful Links | 0 comments

A quick plug for my rather festive drag and drop activity to Dress the Snowman.

I also produced a Xmas Matching Pairs game.

IWB and Learning Research

Posted on Dec 18, 2007 in Interactive Whiteboards | 0 comments

Thanks to the NAACE mailing list yesterday I was made aware of some more research into IWB’s being undertaken by Cambridgeshire County Council into the use of IWB’s in the Primary Classroom.

Only the first phase has been carried out yet, looking at the patterns of interactions when the teacher is leading sections of the lesson using an IWB. There are lesson observations of Literacy, Numeracy and History lessons with reflection on each.

The study is not yet complete, there is a phase 2 yet to come, but it will be interesting to come back later and see what the finished study finds.

You can find the research here.

A real world desktop

Posted on Dec 18, 2007 in Useful Links | 0 comments

A colleague shared this link to Bumptop with me last night (thanks Paul!). It’s a ”real world’ desktop interface where you can spread files around on a 3d desktop environment that models how we spread files around on our real desks.

It’s an interesting idea, and with the lassooing and gestures I could see this working well with an IWB or tablet.

I’m a little concerned about just how busy the desktop would get – given the large number of files I have. I wonder if each ”desktop” would be a different folder to streamline things. Also there’s a reason I can’t find that much on my desk, I have stuff all over the place. I do much rather prefer the rigid structure of a file directory, it does make it so much easier to find files that I am looking for.

You can see a video of the desktop in operation below and sign up to be considered for beta testing of bumptop at www.bumptop.com.