Posts made in April 7th, 2009

Four Links

Posted on Apr 7, 2009 in Activity Ideas, Science Resources, Useful Links | 0 comments

Four quick links to share, rather than blitz 4 new posts.

1. Hunkins Experiments: Loads of ideas for Science experiments you can do in the home or in the classroom. Good for inspiration. Worth a look.

2. Wonder Boards – IWB’s in action: A summary of several of the main IWB’s on the market. Mainly a case study of each board being used in a different school rather than weighing up the pros and cons of each system, but take a read anyway.

3. Florida Citizens for Science – Stick Figure Contest: A quick head’s up about a science competition that may be fun to try with your students. Create a stick figure cartoon about why Science is important (for under 12s) or about the truth behind a false argument (for over 12s)

4. The Big Picture – Alasksa’s Mt Redoubt: On March 22nd, 2009, Alaska’s Mount Redoubt, began a series of volcanic eruptions spewing dust and ash over a large area. The Big Picture continues it’s excellent series of images with a set covering the eruption. If you want some up-to-date images of volcanoes for geography or for an Earth Science lesson, then there are some very impressive ones here.

Sketchcast is back

Posted on Apr 7, 2009 in Interactive Whiteboards, Resources, Useful Links, Web Tools | 0 comments

Sketchcast was a brilliant website that let you draw onto a webpage and record everything you did as a flash movie file.

You could even record audio to go alongside your drawing if you wanted to.The file you produced could then be embedded into your blog or wiki page and shared with the world.

Sadly, the website vanished without a trace last year, which was a shame.

Happily, it looks like Sketchcast is back up and running. There’s no mention on the site about why it vanished. Maybe that will be explained sometime.

It would be great to combine this site with your interactive whiteboard. Students could produce drawings to show how they have solved maths problems, or balanced science equations for example.

Given that the site has vanished in the past – you might not want to store a large amount of material here, and if you plan to use it in a lesson, do have a Plan B just in case (Smart Notebook and Activ both have built-in screen recorder tools you can use, they just don’t share the file so easily), but it is worth a play.

Take a look at the example Sketchcasts, and have a play to see how you could use it.