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!

Magic Pen Game

No, not related to my earlier post about the Smart Magic Pen, but more related to my post about Phun the other week.

Thanks to Science Punk for linking to another fun little Real Physics application called Magic Pen.

Magic Pen is like Phun in that you use a crayon to draw objects that then behave on the screen as if they were real. Balls roll, oblongs topple down under gravity etc. This time, there's an actual objective. You need to get the little ball to the flag. You might need to just roll a ball into it to make it move, or you could build a more complex solution.

It's very neat, and would be great on an IWB as a lesson starter activity.

Play Magic Pen here: http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/

Animoto Education Program

I've talked about Animoto before in the last few months(here and here), and I think it's a great way of producing professional-looking slideshows.

Even better now is the announcement of an Animoto Education Program. This is great news and means that educators can use Animoto with their classes for free!

Contact Rebecca at Animoto via the address on this page to find out more.

In Plain English

Here are some great videos to watch because a) they use plain English and b) I love the clean presentation style. They cover some of the new Web 2.0 tools that have really enhanced the way people use the internet in the last few years.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English



Podcasting in Plain English



RSS in Plain English


You can find all their videos, covering Twitter, Social Networking, Photo Sharing and, erm.. Zombies on YouTube here. Or go to the CommonCraft site to download high res versions to use elsewhere.

Smart Lesson Toolkit

A while back I wrote about the beta version of the Smart Lesson Activity Toolkit, which was a fantastic way of adding interactive elements to your Smart Notebook page.

Well, with the release of Smart Notebook 10, the full version of the Lesson Activity Toolkit has been released.

If you don't yet want to upgrade to version 10, but want the new Lesson Toolkit, then you can download it separately via this page. Installation instructions can be found there too as well as some videos on how to get the most out of it.

Download YouTube Video

I've given a few links before to sites that allow you to download YouTube videos.

Well now I have another one to add to the list. This Script can be added to the toolbar of the Firefox web browser. When you see a video you want to save, click the button and then the page changes to allow you to save the file as an .mp4 video file.

All the instructions are on the page and it seems relatively straightforward. The thing to remember is to change the filename from .htm to .mp4 when you save it.

Obviously it goes without saying that you need to be aware that you may be infringing copyright by storing these clips - but this does provide a good workaround for those teachers who want to show a YouTube clip in a lesson where the school have blocked YouTube access.