Posts made in February 27th, 2009

E.gg Timer

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 in Interactive Whiteboards, Resources, Software, Useful Links | 0 comments

Now my favourite online timer is still the fab music-playing one over at classtools.net, but I’ve just found a new one that is very cool because of its simple efficiency.

It’s called E.gg Timer and it can be set to whatever time you want simply by adding the time to the URL: http://e.ggtimer.com/

So if you want a 30 second timer, go to http://e.ggtimer.com/30

If you want a 2 minute timer go to http://e.ggtimer.com/2minutes

Or for a 1 hour timer go to http://e.ggtimer.com/1hour

It’s that simple.

The timer doesn’t play music, or tick as the time counts down, but you do get a nice simple count down with a beep at the end when the time is up.

This would be useful when giving students a set time for a task – and as it’s silent it would even be ideal for tests or exams.

Wall of Words

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 in Games and interactives, Interactive Whiteboards, Literacy Resources, Resources | 0 comments

A quick link to a fun activity for sentence construction and punctuation – The Wall of Words.

Pupils have to arrange the words into a sentence, and put the correct punctuation at the end. If they are right, builders add it to the wall, and they then get a new sentence.

It’s a nice, fun activity that could be used for a starter or plenary, or for some independent study. It’s a shame there’s no fullscreen mode, but that’s a gripe I have about quite a few flash games these days.

Play Wall of Words here.

Word Wall is produced by Pearsons, and the link at the top of the page took me to a Pearsons links page that took me to two other Pearson sites I hadn’t seen before. FunBrain.com and Poptropica

FunBrain has a number of Flash games and online books and comics

Poptropica is a virtual online world in which pupils can travel around and play games.

Both look like they are worth an explore.

Primary Maths Games

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 in Games and interactives, Interactive Whiteboards, Numeracy Resources, Resources, Software, Tutorials and Guides | 1 comment

Thanks to Jonathan Lurie on Twitter who sent me some links to a collection of primary maths games hosted by Oswego City School District in New York. These are fantastic to use on the IWB for lesson starters or plenaries. Go here and add it to your bookmark list now!

The games are in flash format and range from simple resources such as Class Clocks for telling the time, to fraction painters, number squares and Ghost Blasters. One of my all-time favourites is Billy Bug. Lovely for teaching simple coordinates. Make sure you have the sound on. He’s so cute.

These resources are all produced by Mark Cogan. Mark produces several excellent websites over here in the UK which showcase the resources he produces for Numeracy (and now Literacy too). If you haven’t seen any of his stuff before then you are really missing out.

The main site is PrimaryGames.co.uk, but once you’re on any of his sites it’s easy to find the others. Check out Teaching Money, Teaching Fractions, Teaching Time and Teaching Measures. Each site features evaluation versions of the activities that you can try out – they are just watermarked to encourage you to buy the full versions (and I recommend that you do!)

Resources were originally sold on CD to run on your own school networks, but you can now also access all of them online (for a very reasonable annual fee) at www.interactive-resources.co.uk

All of these games would get my Fingerfriendly seal of approval! Highly Recommended.