Sketchlot – a shared web whiteboard for tablets
SketchLot is an interesting free website that allows teachers and students to share whiteboard sketches made on their tablet computers.
The application provides teachers and students with an online environment in which they can create sketches on their tablets easily and then share them with one another. The system works through a browser, so can be used on any web-enabled device. It doesn’t use Flash, so works fine on an iPad.
To use it, first the teacher creates an account and a class name. They can then set up each child as a user with a different password.
Sketching tools includes freehand drawing, straight lines, rectangles, color selection, erasing, and magnification.The teacher can then share these sketches with the children in the class. Children can log into their SketchLot accounts using the class code and the assigned passwords.
They can also create sketches of their own, and then share them with the teacher and / or other class members selectively. In this way a teacher could set a task for the children to complete, such as show their working on a maths problem, and then have all the images submitted to their dashboard to check/mark.
As well as using it to submit answers to questions it could be used for collecting ideas and brainstorming or collaborative mindmapping.
It’s an interesting idea, and if you have a class set of iPads or other tablets, I can see some useful ways that it could be used with a class.
The site is free to use, so it’s well worth setting yourself up with a teacher account and trying it out with a laptop or two.
Check out Sketchlot at : www.sketchlot.com
Read MoreThe Star Wars Crawl Creator
Here’s a different way to present your lesson objectives. The Star Wars Crawl Creator lets you turn any piece of text into the scrolling text seen at the opening of the Star Wars movies.
Simply enter your text, then hit preview to see your text, complete with the famous theme tune.
The site provides an embed code and a direct link so you can access your crawl in the future, or embed it into a blog or other website.
It’s great fun.
It would be a great way to provide a story opener, or to give the introduction to a science or maths investigation. Children could use it to write summaries to their own stories.
Check it out now via the Star Wars website here.
Read MoreClassroom Timers for your Interactive Whiteboard
Need to give the class a timed activity, but don’t have access to a stopwatch? There’s plenty of sites out there that will give you access to a countdown timer to help you keep track of the time.
Here are a few of my favourites:
Classtools.net
This is still one of my favourite timers. Select the time you want, and the corresponding music to accompany it. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, because of the music, but I find it quite fun. You wouldn’t want to use it during an exam though!
Online Stopwatch
This starts as a simple count up and count down timer. There are plenty of buttons below that change it into a lot more than that, even a working metronome. It’s a little advert-heavy though, but you can open the timers full-screen to get rid of them.
Online Egg Timer
This neat-looking timer lets you set three different timers to manage several different activities at the same time.
Countdown Timer
This timer looks like a regular kitchen timer you might use to time your dinner. Drag the dial around to the desired time, then click Start.
Time Me Stopwatch
This timer provides a nice, clear numerical countdown. Enter a time at the bottom, click Set and then start when ready.
Timer Pop
This timer looks quite basic, but does the job. Set using the buttons at the top in increments of 15 seconds, or 1, 5, 10 minutes. Then start the countdown.
Got any favourites I haven’t mentioned here? Add them to the comments below!
Read More
eQuizShow – Create Gameshow Templates Online
eQuizShow is a free website that lets Teachers and students can create educational quiz show templates like the TV game show Jeopardy. Created quizzes can be access online – and also shared with others.
It’s easy to build a quiz. You just need to enter a title, a password for editing, and the question categories. eQuizShow will then create a grid where you can enter questions and answers.
There is also a gallery of quizzes created by other teachers which you can browse for inspiration.
The site was created by Henry Wilson, a High School student in New York city.
It’s a handy free resource and would work well on an IWB. Would also be good to get students to create their own quizzes for each other as revision activities.
You can access eQuizShow here.
Read MoreEdcanvas – an online lesson designer
You could also take this further by asking students to collate their own canvases as they do research on a given topic
Blubbr : Create and Play Quizzes from YouTube Videos
Blubbr is a new, free, website that lets you create and play quiz games from YouTube videos. The site calls these “Trivs”. You can play trivs in different categories, from celebs and music to sport and education. These trivs can then be shared with anyone across the internet.
For example, here’s a video quiz about the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
Once you’ve watched a short piece of video, the first question will appear. When you’ve answered that question, you are presented with another piece of video and then another question and so on.
There are many Trivs already on the site, but since anyone can create and share them, the quality and content is quite varied. There’s an “Education” category, but it would be useful to see that divided up into subject areas. You can use the search tool to find quizzes on a certain keyword. The site is in Beta, so hopefully that will change in the future.
You can also make your own Trivs using the Triv builder tool. First you search for a YouTube video (would be useful here to have been able to put in a link to a video I’ve already found) and then add your question and possible answers.
The site only uses YouTube videos, so if access is blocked in your school that will be an issue. A teacher could create them for access from home though. You could get students to create their own Trivs for each other as a homework task perhaps?
To make your own Triv you will need to sign in with a Facebook or Twitter account which could be a problem in schools – although you could set up a generic Twitter account to use. I’d prefer to see the site make use of its own login system. Blubbr will gain the ability post things to your timeline – at present there’s no functioning “settings” page to disable this feature. I’m not a fan of things being able to post to my Twitter unless absolutely necessary.
Find out more at : http://www.blubbr.tv/
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Read MoreThe Hobbit Avatar Maker
As if I wasn’t already excited enough about the forthcoming Hobbit movie, there’s now a website where you can make yourself part of Thorin’s company of dwarves. Go to the Hobbit website to find out more.
You need a webcam for this – you can’t upload a photograph – line yourself up with the webcam, and choose from one of the different dwarven heads.
And you can end up with something like this:
Rather dashing I think 
You can even make a short movie if you wish.
You can share the image in several ways such as email and Facebook, but you like, fire up some screen-grabbing software and simply snip it and save it as a jpg.
Would be good to create class avatars, or just to create characters for their own Tolkien-inspired stories.
Looks like I’ve found another avatar maker to add to my growing list on Delicious, you can see the full list here : http://delicious.com/dannynic/avatar
Visit the site here and as always let me know what you think in the comments,
Read MoreQuickly Create Interactive Text Activities with Textivate
Textivate is a simple web tool which allows users to automatically generate a range of interactive browser-based activities based on any text of up to 500 words.
To use Textivate you simply type or paste a chunk of text into the text box on the textivate front page and click on the “textivate now” button to see the available exercises that can be generated from that text. The exercises are generated automatically based on the length of your text. You / your students are not expected to attempt all of the activities available for a particular text. You should choose those activities which are most suitable, taking into account the length and structure of the text, the age and ability of the students, etc.
Various different activities are produced, from drag and drop sorting to fill in the gaps. The activities are browser-based, and as well as your IWB should also work fine on tablet devices such as iPads.
Registered users of textivate can upload their texts to the textivate website and share it with others. It’s free to register.
When uploading a text to textivate.com, users can specify a title for the text, they can add tags to make the text easier to find later, and they can choose from 4 text types: Public, Shareable, Private or a special mode called MySite which only makes them accessible from a specific domain name.
Each exercise screen has a share button which gives you access to an embed code which you can use to embed that exercise into a blog, wiki, VLE or web page. You can customize the embed code and change the size of the embedded exercise.
For example :
You can also share activities via a direct hyperlink, like this: http://www.textivate.com/2×3-24djn1
Textivate is currently in beta, and is free to register. I’d highly recommend taking a look.
Textivate is created by the makers of TaskMagic and creates several activities that TaskMagic does.If you like what it does, you might want to go take a look at the full version of TaskMagic which does a whole lot more. It’s well worth a look.
Let me know what you think of Textivate in the comments.
Read MoreScreen Sharing with Screen Leap
Screenleap is a rather interesting website that lets you share your computer screen with anyone you want to for free. You go to the ScreenLeap website, click on the sharing button and the site will generate a URL. Share that URL with a friend and they’ll be able to see everything you do in a defined rectangular area. You can resize the rectangle to show all or just part of your screen.
This would be great for demonstrating to a friend or colleague how to carry out something on their computer, or showing them how something looks on your screen. Your shared screen can be viewed from any PC, tablet, or smartphone with a web browser. There’s no software to download or install.
You can test out ScreenLeap at www.screenleap.com
I’m indebted to Terry Freedman for making me aware of this website, helping him do a test run to see how it worked. You can see Terry’s blog post about ScreenLeap here and while you’re there check out the rest of his website too, there’s a wealth of good stuff there!
Let me know what you think of ScreenLeap in the comments.
Read More
About Me
Buy the book!
