Interactive Flash Resources from Sandfield School
Sandfields School has produced some rather useful Flash resources that can be used on your Interactive Whiteboard.
These include clocks and timers plus games such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire. These come as downloadable Flash files which you can run offline.
There are also some useful PowerPoint templates for games such as Blockbusters.
Check out the site here: http://www.sandfields.co.uk/games/
Thanks to Rob Chambers (@RobGeog) for reminding me of this site via Twitter
Read MoreEducaplay – a multimedia resource creator for teachers
Educaplay is a free website which lets teachers create a wide variety of different educational interactive resources. These can then be linked to, or embedded into your blog/VLE
Activities that you can create include:
- Listen and read dialogues
- Jumbled Words
- Jumbled Sentences
- Matching
- Quizzes
- Image Maps
- Riddles
- Crosswords
- Wordsearch Puzzle
- Fill in the gaps
Educaplay is free to register. Once you are registered you can create any of the activities that Educaplay offers plus you can manage and download your own multimedia activities.
The English language version can be found at http://en.educaplay.com/ but the site is also available in spanish (http://www.educaplay.com) and french (http://fr.educaplay.com) versions.
This site should be of interest to anyone who wants to create interactive resources for their school VLE or class blog. You can also access the library of resources created by other teachers – so take a look and get inspired!
Hat tip to the Web2Wonders blog for the link.
Read MoreScience Flash Resources Archive
Back in the mists of time (1997/98) I had a personal website at www.dannynicholson.co.uk. There were several incarnations of the site over that time, and I started to add various teaching resources that I had made as I tinkered (badly) with things like Flash and suchlike.
Eventually I moved on to set up the Think Bank website, and then a few years back this blog. The old dannynicholson.co.uk site gathered dust and began to look more and more out of date. So a few weeks back I trashed the entire site, and replaced it with a new one that just pointed to all the online things that I do such as the blog, facebook, flickr and suchlike.
I was contacted today by someone who was still using some of the Flash resources on the old site, and was wondering where they had gone. Namely this animation about Enzymes.
So I have copied them across to the Think Bank website.
The best Flash resources have been linked to this page it includes resources for Secondary Science as well as some fun games for Primary children.
For science there are the following resources:
- Enzyme Presentation
- Science Quiz Index Page
- Homeostasis Presentation
- Colour Mixing Light
- Fractional Distillation Drag and Drop
For Primary this includes
The archive of the Flash resources from the old Dannynicholson site can be found here. Some are quite old and a little creaky now, but some people may still find them useful.
Read MoreMaths Manipulatives
Here’s an excellent resource for primary/elementary Maths from Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. It’s a flash-based set of interactive tools for reception up to year 8. It includes standard maths items, as well as graph paper and other backgrounds. It’s free, and well worth a look.
The tools also include basic IWB tools such as text, pen, a ruler/protractor and a timer. This would be quite handy for those without access to regularIWB software.
Access the resource here
Read MoreScience Storybooks
Just a quick post to flag up this fun little resource site for Science called Science Storybooks.
It contains a stack of Flash animations that can be used to introduce many different science concepts, some include songs that would provide a fun way to start a lesson.
The resources are completely free, and also contain links to lesson notes and other information. Well worth taking a look at.
Thanks to the iLearn Technology Blog for the heads-up on this resource.
Read MoreSmart Measurement
Jim Dornberg (@jdornberg) has put together a wiki of links to useful interactive resources for the teaching of measurement.
There are some very cool links which would be useful for supporting primary school maths sessions. The links are mainly flash-based, so are not restricted to just Smartboards – you could use these on any brand of interactive whiteboard.
Visit the wiki here: http://smartmeasurement.wikispaces.com/
Quizbusters – lesson starter or revision activity
When I was a teenager one of the big quizzes on the television was something called Blockbusters. People of a certain generation still find the phrase “Can I have a P please Bob?” amusing 
The basic concept is that two teams play against each other, trying to build a chain of colours across the board. Red team from top to bottom, and blue team from left to right. The team with control of the board picks a letter and gets a question where the answer begins with that letter. Get it right, and the hexagon changes to their colour. Get it wrong and the other team gets to steal it, and then gets control next turn.
Well you can now recreate the fun of Blockbusters with this great website – Quizbusters. There are a range of question sets to choose from for all subjects and for all key stages KS1 – KS5. You can even create your own personalised game by copying and pasting your own questions into the quiz editor. Once made, your quiz will be available to others to use as well.
Historically, team 1 was a solo player and team 2 was two players, hence the board is slightly shorter top to bottom. You might choose to just use two equal teams, or skew it a little.
This should make a great lesson starter or plenary activity – or a handy tool for revision when the exams approach. Click here to play now.
Read MoreTwo new digital storytelling tools
Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been all over the place this last few weeks…
But here’s two digital storytelling tools that you might enjoy, thanks to my amazing Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter.
First, thanks to @NikPeachey for the link to this great comic book creator based on the characters and scenes in Spore. It works similar to Comic Life, and lets you choose characters and vehicles etc and add speech bubbles. It’s great fun.
Thanks also to @web20classroom for this very cute Story Maker, perfect for a IWB. Aimed at younger students, it again lets you choose characters and scenes but will also update the text of the story depending on characters chosen and their actions. Go check it out!
Happy storytelling!
Read MoreSmart Board Games from PBS
Here is a collection of interactive SMART Board games for educators from PBS KIDS.
This is a collection of different Flash games to explore the curriculum from trusted programs such as Curious George, Super Why and Arthur. Although the site says it’s for Smartboards, it will work fine on any brand of Interactive Whiteboard.
The site offers games for Language Arts, Maths, Social Science and a painting game for Art. It’s aimed at the Primary / Elementary age group and some of these would make fun lesson starters or support tasks with small groups of pupils.
It’s an interesting set of resources, and well worth bookmarking. Here’s the link.
Read More
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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