English and MFL teachers should definitely check out the Inanimate Alice resource – it’s free so go take a look!

The presentation was videoed too, you can see it on YouTube here.

Related posts:

1. Video – Inanimate Alice BETT 2012 Presentation
2. Inanimate Alice – a digital novel
3. BETT 2011: Teachmeet Takeover

Inanimate Alice Presentation from BETT The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

The theme was to demonstrate several alternatives to the Science write up (which are also applicable to other subjects too). Do we always have to go away and write it up in the usual manner – method, results, conclusion etc. Sometimes there’s a place for showing what you know in a different format – try telling the story digitally.

There are many ways to do this, in this presentation I show just a couple that you might find interesting.

The links to the sites/software demonstrated are :

• Go Animate
• Xtranormal
• Toonlet
• MonkeyJam
• JellyCam
• Zu3d

Hope you liked the presentation – and if your students make any cool videos using these tools, please let me know!

Feel free to use at other TeachMeet events if you want to – just let me know if you do.

Photo Credit : Writing in the Journal by redcargurl

Related posts:

1. TeachMeet Bedford 2011 Presentation
2. TeachMeet Takeover Talk pt1
3. Teachmeet Essex 2012 – Sign up now!

Now Let’s Write It Up : A Teachmeet Presentation The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Once installed, a new toolbar appears which lets you add different types of question to your PowerPoint presentation. Students can interact with these via wireless mice.

You can buy wireless mice quite cheaply (£10 or less) and get a powered USB hub for about £15. You can even chain several USB hubs together if you wanted every student to have access to a mouse. Alternatively students could do this in groups, with one mouse per team.

When you run the show, you designate one mouse as the teachers mouse. This lets you control the show. Until the show is run, any mouse can control the screen – so there is a risk of your computer being hijacked by a classful of mice! You might wish to not give out the mice until the show is running – or unplug the USB hub until you’re ready to start!

Mouse Mischief provides a lower cost solution to class polling than a full class set of voting handsets, although with more limited uses. The Microsoft site contains lesson ideas, downloadable presentations, and links to support resources and videos.

Download Mouse Mischief now and take a look.

Related posts:

1. Spice up images with Big Huge Labs
2. Mini Wireless Keyboard and Touchpad Gadget
3. Control Your IWB from your iPad

Spice up Powerpoints with Mouse Mischief The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

All the links in the presentation can be found at : http://delicious.com/dannynic/essentialmedia

Delegates who attended the conference can download the original version from the Prairie Rose School Board files area.

Related posts:

1. Essential Digital Resources for your IWB
2. Essential Digital Resources – TMTakeover Talk
3. Teacher2Teacher Conference 2011

Essential Digital Resources for your IWB (2011) The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Creating a “Capzle” is easy via the website. You can upload photographs and videos or blog directly onto the site. You have a lot of control over the background colors and themes to be used with the capzle. Users can also add an audio track to be played in the background as their capzle is viewed.

There is also a Capzle iPhone app which lets you upload images from your phone straight into a Capzle.

I had a quick play with the site and produced a short test capzle : View my Test Capzle Here

Adding video is tricky in that you cannot just import files from YouTube. You need to upload video files. Maybe in the future this feature will be added. This does limit it’s use as a way of collating resources that students have found online on a given topic.

The terms of the Capzle website state that under 13s cannot register, so this is something to use with children above that age. There are social network aspects to the site so it’s best to restrict it to older children.

For educational use, this is another tool which could be used to produce simple presentations – collating images, videos and text into one presentation document. Pupils could produce Capzles on particular topics in the same way they might produce a powerpoint or prezi presentation.

Capzles looks like an interesting tool – and it’s worth bookmarking as another online presentation solution.

Related posts:

1. New IWB Presentation
2. 8 Great Online Presentation Tools
3. Whiteboard Tips Presentation

Capzles – digital storytelling and presentation tool The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Prezi

Prezi lets you create very engaging presentations that pan and zoom from page to page. You can create non-linear presentations quite easily. Prezi lets you embed images and video too. You can view the presentations that you have created online, and also download them in a Flash player format to play offline. Here’s some ideas on how to use Prezi.

Here’s a Prezi I produced to introduce the Science course on the PGCE orientation day.

PhotoPeach

With PhotoPeach you can create a rich slideshow in seconds. It also allows background music, captions, and comments so you can elaborate on your story further. It’s quick and easy to use. It doesn’t have a lot of fancy effects, but for a simple slideshow it’s worth considering.

Animoto

Animoto lets you create photo slideshows and put them to music. A wide range of creative commons music is available. Short videos can be produced for free, longer ones require a small payment. There is an educational version available.

It’s very simple to produce cool-looking presentations quickly, like this:

Zoho Show

Zoho Show allows you to create presentations from scratch or upload existing ones created in PowerPoint. Zoho Show also allows you to export your slide shows into a variety of formats, including HTML, PowerPoint and .pdf. Zoho Show is part of a much bigger suite of online applications that you might also find interesting.

Empressr

Empressr is a free online storytelling tool that allows you to create, manage and share rich media presentations online. Upload your video, images and audio to get started creating cool slideshows. If you have your own website, blog, or social networking page, you can either post a link or embed your Empressr. Empressr also has charting and table tools.

Image Loop

A very simple free tool for taking photographs and turning them into a slideshow. You get some customisation options, but they are a little limited. Finished slideshow can then be embedded into your blog, wiki or VLE.

Google Docs

Google Docs has a pretty useful presentation tool. You can create a presentation from scratch or upload a PowerPoint. The strength of the Google presentation tool is that many users can collaborate on a single presentation. The best examples of this are the “Ideas to Inspire” presentations sparked off by Tom Barrett. Each presentation is the combined efforts of many different teachers from all over the world.

Slideshare

Slideshare lets you share your presentation easily with students after the lesson, and also lets you embed your presentation into a blog/wiki or the school VLE. It’s slightly different to some of the others in that you start with a Powerpoint presentation and then upload it to Slideshare.

Local Software

As well as these online options, it’s also worth considering using the free software already installed on your computers such as Movie Maker or PhotoStory which will both produce your own photo slideshows without having to be tied to an online connection.

And remember, presentations don’t have to be like this:

Related posts:

1. Prezi announce Educational License
2. Capzles – digital storytelling and presentation tool
3. Prezi

8 Great Online Presentation Tools The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

The theme of the talk was – Essential Digital Media for your Interactive Whiteboard. The full list of links I mentioned (and a few that were left out because of time) can be found here: http://www.delicious.com/dannynic/essentialmedia

The whole presentation was filmed by Sarah at Iris Connect (thanks again for the use of your stand) so hopefully I’ll be able to post that here when it’s uploaded after the show.

Related posts:

1. Essential Digital Resources – TMTakeover Talk
2. TeachMeet Essex Talk : 6 Lesson Starters
3. BETT 2011: Teachmeet Takeover

TeachMeet Takeover Talk pt1 The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

By using this technique you could run through a presentation and capture it with your own voice over the top. It could allow teachers to record parts of a lesson, or to create revision guides. If coupled with the interactive whiteboard it would also record all your handwritten annotations as well. You’d need a longer microphone lead, or you could plug a USB microphone into the USB port on some newer smartboard models.

Even better, you could get pupils to create their own screencasts to demonstrate what they know.

I used the Smart Recorder bundled with Smart Notebook to record my lesson starters talk the other week.

Here’s an example of a screencast produced by a teacher to demonstrate mathematic principles, it comes from the Mathademics YouTube Channel:

In Smart Notebook

Look for the small blue/white Smart Notebook Icon in your system tray, or look in Start -> Programs -> Smart Technologies -> Smart Notebook -> Smart Recorder (or similar path)

The Smart Recorder tool will open and look like this:

By clicking on the narrow button next to the record button you can choose whether to record the whole desktop,  a chosen area or a chosen window, depending on what you want to demonstrate.

Hitting the record button will start the recording. Hit the stop button when done and it will ask you for a filename and save the file. Still need help? Here’s a guide I found.

In Promethean ActivInspire

From the Promethean Toolbar click on Desktop tools.

This will minimize the ActivInspire software and leave the small floating tools icon. Click on this to open it up and select the screen recorder tools. Again you can choose whether to record the whole screen or a chosen area.

What to screencast?

Using the screen recorder tool, pupils could:

• Make audio stories – move clipart characters on the “stage” of an IWB page to tell a story.
• Explain how they carried out a particular piece of work
• Make revision guides
• Produce instructional guides
• Make a tourist guide to their area combined with Google Maps / Street View
• Role play in a foreign language

and much more.

In both cases the recorded screencast can be used as-is, or could be edited in video editing software such as Movie Maker to add other elements before being published. Upload to YouTube to share with the world, or put onto the school Learning Platform / VLE to share with a smaller audience.

There are other pieces of software out there that will do screencasting, but if you already have one of these two boards you should already have something on your computer which, for free, will do the same job!

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Screenr – Free Screen Capture software
2. Senteo Software Update
3. Using your Whiteboard Software at Home

Screencasting with IWB Software The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Although this presentation was delivered mainly to Smartboard users, and the original presentation produced in Smart Notebook format, the information is very useful to any IWB users. Or even teachers who have a projector and no board.

So I have uploaded the presentation to Slideshare if you would like to take a look.

All of the links from the session can be found here : http://delicious.com/dannynic/t2t. The links in the presentation don’t work I’m afraid…. long story.

One thing that is worth mentioning is that if you now do a Google Image search you can click on Advanced Search to bring up more options. You can then specify what Usage Rights you want – so basically searching for Creative Commons images.

I also like the fact that in the basic Google Image Search you can now also specify the colour of the image you want. So you can narrow down your search for a Flower to yellow flowers, or red flowers. Don’t just search for Elephant – look for Pink Elephants!

Try it out, it’s very cool. Click on the coloured boxes to the left of your image search to change colour.

Related posts:

1. Essential Digital Resources for your IWB (2011)
2. Essential Digital Resources – TMTakeover Talk
3. New Google search by image

Essential Digital Resources for your IWB The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

And also they’ve simplified the Prezi editor so that it has half the menus of its predecessor, but having more features. They’ve made text editing easier  and introduced YouTube integration.

If you haven’t played with Prezi before – do check it out. It allows for presentations with much more impact than bullet-point-covered PowerPoints. And well done again to Mark Clarkson for getting them to agree to the educational license pack!

Related posts:

1. Prezi
2. NeoK12 Educational Videos
3. YouTube Launches New Site for Teachers

Prezi announce Educational License The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom