Quick IWB tip – The Zip File Trick
Here’s a quick tip that I was reminded of after a question on Twitter today.
Let’s say you have a Smart Notebook file or Promethean flipchart which has lots of images in it, and maybe even some embedded flash files. How do you get those resources out to use elsewhere?
Well, if you select the file in your regular file management window you should be able to rename it. Change the bit after the dot of the filename that says .xbk, .nbk, .notebook or .flp and change it to a .zip instead. If you can’t see the extension on the end of the filename you may need to change your folder properties since Windows can hide these by default.
Once you have changed the extension to .zip, your computer now thinks it is a zip file. So now open it up inside WinZip or whatever software you use to open zip files with.
You will see a listing of all the assets inside the flipchart/notebook file listed as if this was just another zip file. You may even see an Images folder with all the picture files inside. All you need to do now is select out the images/flash files you want and copy/paste them to another folder.
And that’s it. You might want to make a copy of the notebook file before you do this in case you wreck it 
But it’s pretty straightforward.
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Whiteboard Challenge 1
Jess McCulloch asked me to develop some whiteboard challenges for project she is working on. The whole challenge site will be launching on August 11th – so if you want to take part visit the Whiteboard Challenge Wiki and see what you need to do.
This is the first of my Whiteboard Challenges. The infinite cloner is a Smartboard feature, but you can clone objects in Promethean software, or stack a pile of shapes over each other. You can read more about the challenge on its wiki page.
Whiteboard Challenge – Cloning from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.
The challenge is to investigate how you could use cloning in a lesson resource, and then try it out with a class
How can you use this? Try some of these out.
- dragging symbols onto weather maps / regular maps
- Shapes and tessellations – have a square and a triangle – how many different shapes can you make?
- Dragging labels onto diagrams
- Fridge Magnet Poetry – clone an array of connecting words
- counters on board games
There are other uses too, see if you can think of any
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Smartboard Video – Lesson Toolkit
Yesterday was my last day of training for the Summer. I’m off until September 1st. I’ll still be doing stuff for the blog and suchlike through much of August.
The last thing I needed to do this term was to film a session with myself and a Smartboard for my Smart Notebook 10 accreditation. A local school let me set up my camcorder and a colleague and myself filmed the necessary footage for Smart.
While I was there, I filmed some extra stuff for this blog, and also for a whiteboard challenge Jess McCulloch is developing (more on that in the future I hope). I’ll upload some of these videos over the next few days.
The first video is just a quick demonstration of the Lesson Activity Toolkit which is new to Smart Notebook 10.
IWB Tutorial – Lesson Activity Toolkit from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.
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Periodic Table of Videos
A quick post to share another interesting site for Chemistry I picked up from a discussion on the TES forums.
The Periodic Table of Videos has been produced by Nottingham University Chemistry Department. There’s a nice 3/4 minute video clip about each element. Some show reactions, others just talk about the elements.
From looking at some of the videos I would guess the most suitable age range for this would be A-level chemists, but some of the clips would be suitable for GCSE too. You may want to check them out before using with your class to see if their going to be suitable.
Other alternatives include Web Elements, and my particular favourite, Theodore Gray’s wooden periodic table site, home of the (in)famous Sodium Party where he sourced 3lbs of sodium and proceeded to throw into large buckets of water. If you’re ever showing the reaction of Sodium and Water and the students ask you to throw in a bigger bit – then these are the videos to show them!
Another favourite is the Brainiac Alkali Metals video, that apparently has now been debunked as slightly fake. A shame as its very funny. But I’ll copy it here anyway because it always raises a chuckle on training sessions.
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Copyright
I’ve been spending the last few weeks working on some resources for the new Diploma in ICT, specifically the Multimedia unit. It’s been taking up most of my non-training time, hence I’ve been neglecting the blog a little…
This week I’ve been looking into some of the copyright laws, because we want students to be aware of that when looking for digital resources for their project. I’ve been writing factfiles that explain the difference between copyright-free and royalty-free, and phrases like public domain and creative commons etc.
This morning I was catching up with my backlog of RSS feeds and this post from Lauren O’Grady caught my eye as it was on the subject of copyright
I’m still personally uneasy about how big business is trying to totally stifle all aspects of copying. I still think some element of music and video sharing is a way of generating business. Watching a youtube video of a new band to see if I like them and then going and buying their album – that kind of thing. And as always it’s the little guys who get thwarted by copy protection on things like games with legitimate versions not working properly, while the pirates can bypass most security anyway.
Anyway, this is a very thought-provoking video. Take a look, and maybe leave your comments on Lauren’s blog.
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Crickweb
Here’s a great site that all primary/elementary teachers who use interactive whiteboards should have bookmarked.
A former colleague of mine, Dan Bunker, has produced a fantastic library of Flash resources for many curriculum subjects plus some generic fun Flash games. There’s over 160 resources on the site available to use.
There are also 16 Promethean flipchart files that ActivPrimary users can download and use on their whiteboard.
I thoroughly recommend the Crickweb site, there’s certainly a lot of resources there and you should find plenty of things that you could use as lesson starters or as part of a plenary.
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Wicked Decent Learning
Just trawling my pingbacks via Technorati, and I noticed a link from a podcast site in the US called Wicked Decent Learning. Turns out they’d reviewed my blog as part of a section on Whiteboard websites.
They seemed to like it – which was good. Thanks for the good review guys!
If you want to hear the podcast, pop over to this page, and download it from there. It sounds like a decent podcast for teachers, whatever your interests.
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A few of my favourite things
Just jotting down my ideas for the mirandamod conference tonight. I plan on showing a few of my favourite tools, and probably the Flip video and USB tuner.
I don’t think I’ll fit it all into five minutes, but I’m going to list the sites I’d like to show below. One so I can find them later, and two for the benefit of anyone who’s reading this after the conference. I have also tagged them as Mirandanet on my delicious stream.
Possibly Seesmic too!
Not sure how long this will work, but you can see the conference online here.
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Digital Natives
Very quick post to point you in the direction of an interesting article in yesterdays Times:
How the Google generation thinks differently
Off up to London today to attend the Mirandamod Unconference. Hope to see some of you there, and if not, keep up via Twitter or Flashmeeting.
update: maybe found here too http://www.mogulus.com/mirandanet
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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