Doctor Who Trailer Maker

Doctor Who has been a part of my life since I was a kid, hiding behind the sofa when the Daleks came on the screen. The "new" series is now on Season 4 and I've been really enjoying it so far, even if it does have that awful Tate lady (TATL) as an assistant.

The BBC have embraced a lot of the interactive features of the Internet, and their Doctor Who website is no exception.

The Comic Maker was pretty cool but I really like their Trailer Maker.

It allows you to make a 30 second trailer using clips, music and sound effects and then save your effort to share with others. It's great fun and has great potential for using with a class.

You can see my quick effort here. It's not much, but gives you an idea of what you can do with it.

I have a feeling the site won't be accessible outside the UK I'm afraid. But for UK teachers - get your class creating!

Embedding ICT @ Secondary Guides

Back in 2004, the DFES and BECTA produced an excellent series of guides which covered the use of Interactive Whiteboards in Secondary schools for each of the National Curriculum subjects.

Each document containsed a set of subject specific advice, guidance and examples to support more effective use of ICT in the teaching and learning of science. There is some great case studies in each one. I was pleased to have been able to have some input into the Science one - a colleague of mine wrote it and I provided some of the ideas.

A copy was, I think, sent to each school but when I do training sessions very few teachers have seen these. You can get them online, but they are rather buried in the quagmire that is the teachernet online publications catalogue. Some can still be accessed from the site, but others do not have an obvious download link or are out of print.

I've done some digging around, and here are the direct links to the pdf files for each subject:

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in English

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Mathematics

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Science

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Music

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Art and Design

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in History

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Geography

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Design and Technology

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in MFL

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in PE

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in ICT

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Citizenship

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in RE

Thanks to Hertfordshire Grid for Learning, who are hosting all of these files on their webspace.

Other good guides from BECTA include:

Getting the Most from your Interactive Whiteboard - A guide for Secondary Schools
Getting the Most from your Interactive Whiteboard - A guide for Primary Schools

If you are interested in getting some ideas for the use of whiteboards in your subject, or you want some materials to give to other teachers in your school to inspire or inform them, then it is well worth your while downloading these guides.

Improving my range

I've very much been a Smart and Promethean person when it comes to IWB's. I have occasionally had to train users on other boards such as CleverBoards and Hitachi/Cambridge Boards. I've always found the software for those two lacking, but I have usually been on older versions since I use whatever the school have installed at the time.

Thanks to some very nice people on the Hitachi and Sahara stands at BETT I know have copies of the latest versions of Lynx (for Cleverboards) and Starboard (for Hitachi) and I hope to be able to get my head around these in the near future.

Both have come a long way since I last saw them, and I would like to be able to develop some of my existing resources into these formats since it seems there is a lack of resources out there for users of these boards.

Watch this space, but it may be a while before I get a chance to do it.

BETT was great by the way. Just got back, and getting my breath back. Going up there again tomorrow afternoon. Write more later.

Pictogram and Jing

This was my first attempt at using a piece of software called Jing to record a mini-tutorial. The software worked pretty well and was quite painless. There's not many features, it records an area you choose and you can have a microphone on or off. That's it. But it's simple enough for me. it gives you a free video hosting account with Screencast to host the video on, or you can choose to save it and host it yourself.

It also takes screenshots, and the pics in the Art Attack post below were taken and automatically uploaded to Flickr using Jing.

Anyway, the best way of getting a feel for a piece of software is to use it in anger so I've made a tutorial that shows how you can very simply set up Smart Notebook to create a pictogram using the Infinite Cloner tool. I love using the Infinite Cloner for things like arrows to label diagrams and suchlike. Every time you click on an item it will be copied over and over again. it's great to do with images of coins for shopping tasks - drag out the coins to pay for an item that costs £1.63 or whatever.

One issue with Jing is that it seems to render the video actual size. So capturing a 800x800 area still produces a 800x800 video with no options (that I can see) to scale it down. Obviously putting that size video in my blog would totally bork the layout. So I'll just link to the video for now. I don't know if I am missing an option somewhere, so I'll have a play.

Until then click here to view the video.

Weather Kit

A quick post from the ASE conference to take advantage of the free internet in my hotel room.

I saw quite a lot of "interactive resources" today, but one resource I really liked was the Interactive Weather Presenting Kit from the Met Office.

It's not online, you need the CD-ROM. But you can apply for your own copy of the CD via the Met Office website.

This highly package is designed to consolidate weather and climate throughout Key Stages 2-4, and provides an ideal opportunity for the use of ICT in Geography. and Science. It uses Microsoft PowerPoint and comes with a range of master slides, four weather symbols sets, an image library and links to current weather data.

Just visit http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/resources/interactive_kit.html and fill in the form to get your own copy sent to you.