Adobe Education Exchange – resources for teachers
The Adobe Education Exchange hosts a range of free, peer-reviewed teaching and learning resources, developed by Adobe Education Leaders, educators who are already integrating technology in to classes with great success who also use the Exchange themselves to find inspiration for creative teaching activities.
For example the site contains guidance on teaching code for games design and app development which supports collaborative learning, or lesson plans for effectively teaching photography students panoramic techniques.
For more information or to sign up to the Adobe Education Exchange visit: http://edexchange.adobe.com.
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UK Students invited to compete in Robotics Championships
Here’s a competition that may be of interest to teachers of ICT and Design/Technology:
Young robotics enthusiasts from throughout Great Britain are invited to compete at the first ever VEX UK National Championship during The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, held at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre on 15 and 16 March 2012. Interested students are encouraged to sign up as soon as possible, as competition slots are expected to fill up quickly.
Debuting in the United States in 2005, VEX competitions have quickly become the fastest growing and largest high school robotics competitions in the world, with 10,000 students from 16 countries taking part in the World Championships at Walt Disney World Florida this year. This Championship, which is the only World Championship qualifying event in the UK, will see battle commence as secondary school teams from around the country go head to head with their own robotic creations in hopes of impressing celebrity host and judge Robert Llewellyn, widely known for his role as mechanoid Kryten in the iconic sitcom Red Dwarf and as presenter of popular engineering show Scrapheap Challenge, in order to qualify for the 2012 VEX World Championships in California.
The VEX UK National Championship marks the launch of the VEX Robotics Design System in the UK, a science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) focused platform that inspires students across schools and colleges to get involved in co-curricular and extra-curricular robotics courses. The program, already hugely successful in the US, is in its first year in the UK and aims to bring brand new challenges and skills to school children across the nation. The VEX System encourages key teamwork, leadership, and problem solving skills, as well as the opportunity to learn about STEM areas rich in career opportunities.
Teams of 6-8 students aged 11-15 are eligible to compete in the Championship. For those schools interested, subsidised VEX Classroom Lab Kits are available for £550.
Please visit www.vexrobotics.com and www.robotevents.com for more information and registration details.
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YouTube for Schools Launches
Following on from Septembers launch of YouTube for Teachers, comes the launch today of YouTube for Schools.
YouTube for Schools “lets schools access free educational YouTube videos while limiting access to other YouTube content. Students can learn from more than 400,000 educational videos, from well-known organizations like Stanford, PBS and TED, and from up-and-coming YouTube partners with millions of views. Schools can also customize their YouTube for Schools experience, adding videos that are only viewable within their school network.”
School admins and teachers can log in and watch any video, but students cannot log in and can only watch YouTube EDU videos and videos that their school has added. All comments and related videos are disabled and search is limited to YouTube Edu videos.
It’s an interesting idea, and only time will tell if this will convince many schools and local authorities to unblock access to YouTube and allow access in this way.
Schools can find out more and sign up at http://www.youtube.com/schools
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Free teaching resources from EdComs
The Edcoms teachers website is a great free new resource site for teachers. The site initially launched with with 40 free, high-quality teaching resources, for both primary and secondary teachers with more to come each month.
The aim of Edcoms teachers is to bring together all the free educational materials that EdComs has created for various clients all together in one place, including their resources produced for BP which I’ve reviewed on this site in the past. The 40 resources available at launch includes online activities, resources for interactive whiteboards plus worksheets and games. New resources will be added monthly, so keep an eye on the site for new stuff.
It’s free to register with the site, and any teachers registering with the new site before December 15 will get the chance to win a free place at the Learning Without Frontiers 12 conference in London in January.
As I’ve said before; EdComs has regularly produced some excellent resources for both primary and secondary classrooms that are great for use with an interactive whiteboard as well as for supporting independent student work. It’s definitely worth taking a look at their site and seeing how you can use their resources in your classroom.
Take a look for yourself at : http://www.edcomsteachers.com/
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Triptico – an essential interactive whiteboard resource for teachers
I have written about Triptico a few years ago, but it’s worth mentioning again since the site, and their resources, has had quite a revamp since then. Triptico has changed from being a website of online resources to a downloadable application which runs locally. Triptico uses the Adobe Air platform, so as long as your school network allows you to install it then you’ll have no problems. You might need to have a word with your technician just in case….
The Triptico resource application currently contains 20 different interactive resources – all of which are easy to edit, adapt, save and share. You can access them all with one simple download… everything is completely free – and you will receive updates whenever new resources are added!
There are some great resources that teachers will find useful for their interactive whiteboard. Each one can be customised and saved – ready to use whenever you need it.
Here are just a few:
Word Magnets has lots of different uses. You can create drag and drop sentences, adding adjectives to create “better” sentences. Or create a quick Fridge Magnet Poetry activity.
Find 10 asks the students to select the 10 correct items from a grid of 15 different things. The grid can be customised with your own items. Would make a fun lesson starter activity.
There are countdown timers, student name pickers, Image and word spinners. There is even a resource you can use when running a class quiz – keeping track of each team’s score.
You can view a screencast of the various Triptico resources here.
David Riley at Triptico has done a fantastic job in creating all these resources. And the fact that they are free is even more impressive. For the latest updates to Triptico then it is well worth following David on Twitter or go take a look at his blog.
I definitely think that Triptico is an essential download for anyone who has an interactive whiteboard, whatever brand you have. You can download your free version of Triptico here : http://www.triptico.co.uk/
Thanks to Jose Picardo, who reminded me about Triptico via his blog.
What do you think of Triptico? Let me know via the comments…
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YouTube Launches New Site for Teachers
Teachers who love YouTube will be interested to know that today YouTube have launched a channel specifically aimed at teachers : http://www.youtube.com/teachers.
It contains guides on how to use YouTube in the classroom, as well as curated video playlists that will be suitable for teachers to use. For teachers who have yet to really use YouTube it’s a great place to start. Experienced users may still learn something new.
You can also sign up to the YouTube Teachers Community and receive regular updates from the YouTube team, including tips and tricks for incorporating YouTube in your classroom, best practices from other teachers, and great new content uploaded on YouTube.
According to Mind Shift, the new teachers site is part one of two big YouTube projects for teachers. In the next couple of weeks, a bigger announcement will be made about huge changes that will address many of the concerns teachers have had about using YouTube videos in the classroom.
This still won’t help you if your local authority/school block access to YouTube for everyone. Try and get them to at least open it up for teacher logins – there are so many useful resources out there it’s a shame to block access.
Don’t forget that there is also YouTube Edu which has lots of educational videos on it as well.
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Free Logo Creation Tools
Here are three websites that let students create logos to use in design projects.
Online Logo Maker : http://www.onlinelogomaker.com/applet/logomaker/
LogoEase : http://www.logoease.com/LogoEase.aspx
LogoMaker : http://logomaker.com/
Each one lets you choose from ready made logos/shapes and then change and tweak the various components and colours and add your own text.
LogoEase and LogoMaker want you to register to get features such as saving – but you could bypass the need for this by screen grabbing the finished logos and pasting them into other drawing software. Online Logo Maker will let you download the logo as a png file without the need for registering.
All three use Flash so they are not suitable for use on iPads.
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10 Fab Flickr Groups for Teachers
Tom Barrett yesterday tweeted a link to another excellent “Interesting Ways” presentation: 28 Interesting Images to use in the Classroom.
This got me thinking about one of my favourite sources of images, the Flickr website, and how many amazing images there are on there. Many of which are able to be used by teachers under a creative commons licence.
One of the great things about Flickr is the social aspect with Flickr groups. Anyone can set up a group on any topic, and people can add relevant images to those groups. Not suprisingly there are lots of groups with images that teachers would find interesting.
So, in addition to the wealth of groups devoted to places around the world, or groups of animals etc, here are some Flickr groups that teachers might find useful :
Atrocious Apostrophe’s – photographs of badly placed apostrophes on signs and other places. Good for “what’s wrong with this picture?” starters.
Bad Maths – dodgy special offers found in stores. Again could use as a “what’s wrong with this picture” starter activity.
In Numerical Order – numbers in the real world. Sequential – no repetition of numbers. Inspire children to find numbers around them.
Images to teach languages – signs in lots of different languages.
Geometric Beauty – lots of shapes for maths lessons
Fractals in Life – again good for looking at shapes and patterns for maths.
Classroom displays – ideas of good classroom displays. Get inspiration from others.
The Physics Classroom Flickr Group – images for physics teachers
Life Sciences Teaching Resource – images for biology teachers
Abstract Faces (and also Found Faces) – some of these would make great story starter images… use as characters etc.
If you have any favourite groups – add themto the comments below!
Enjoy!
Image Credit : Lisa Stevens (@lisibo)
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Mathematics eToolkit for any Interactive Whiteboard
The Everyday Mathematics eToolkit is a collection of maths tools which you can access via your browser. It has a variety of different manipulatives for demonstrating a variety of maths concepts along with pen, text and line tools. There is also stopwatch, timer, and a calculator along with various backgrounds and other tools.
The fact that it runs in a browser makes it a very useful tool for users of IWB’s where their own packaged software is pretty limited, it also makes it platform independent so it’s useful in schools with several different types of board installed.
It’s very similar to the McGraw Hill Virtual Manipulatives that I wrote about last year, in fact it looks like a reskinned / updated version of the same resource.
It’s an interesting site, and well worth a look, visit The Everyday Mathematics eToolkit here.
Thanks to Jonathan Wylie over at The Education Technology Blog for the link
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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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