Interactive Whiteboard Activities from Scholastic
The Scholastic website contains, amongst other things, a section with interactive activities that you can use on your whiteboard.
The activities cover a range of topic areas from languages to maths to science and they’re quite a mixed bag in terms of the type of activity.
You can access the resources here.
As I’ve said before a full-screen feature would be good – just to make these easier to use on an IWB, some of these are quite small and so would be fiddly to use.
Thanks to Liam M for sharing the link via Twitter.
Read MoreOnline Educational Games by Preloaded
Preloaded are a creative studio who have made some great online educational games for other websites, and you can find them all in one place on their own site.
For example science teachers might be interested in Wondermind which is a game about the brain/neuroscience written for Tate Liverpool, inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll. Thingdom is a fun science game written for the Science Museum which I’ve written about on the blog before.
There are also some great historical games such as High Tea and 1066, as well as games helping teens understand mental health and complex issues such as death (The End). Plus many more
You can see all their games at http://preloaded.com/work/
Read MoreFuturecade – online games from the Science Museum
The Science Museum has launched a suite of online games designed to raise questions about the future of medicine, robotics and technology. Their ‘Futurecade‘ features four titles exploring topics such as geo-engineering and synthetic biology.
Futurecade‘s four games – Bacto-Lab, Robo-Lobster, Cloud Control and Space Junker – are based on scientific research happening today. Use them as a stimulus to engage your students in a fun, interactive way, and get them thinking about how technology might impact on their future.
For example, in Batco-Lab, players must engineer their own E.coli bacteria to make useful products, while making sure that no harmful mutant bacteria are accidentally unleashed on the world. Cloud Control, allows students to guide Flettner ships which brighten clouds so they reflect sunlight and lower the Earth’s temperature.
Futurecade can support the teaching of How Science Works and help your students consider the applications and implications of science.
Teaching resources are also available, and can be found here, including science background notes and teacher briefing notes.
Take a look at http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/futurecade to play the games. And if you haven’t seen the other great resources on the Science Museum site, visit their teacher resource area and take a look!
Read MoreInanimate Alice – a digital novel
I can’t believe I’ve not written about Inanimate Alice before. Set in the early years of the 21st century and told through text, sound, images, music and games, Inanimate Alice is the story of Alice and her imaginary digital friend Brad.
This “transmedia” story is told over 10 increasingly interactive and complex episodes. Created around a high-quality text, the story is suitable for the deep-reading and re-reading necessary for academic investigation. The production is unique in that the complexity of the story as well as the interactivity increases with each episode, directly correlating with Alice’s age and developing technological proficiency as the game designer she is to become.
Through embedded puzzles and games, together with the creative inspiration, Inanimate Alice makes the reader a direct participant in telling the story. The story is available in French, German, Italian and Spanish too.
Several episodes are available now, with more to come in the future. I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the content so far.
The Inanimate Alice website has downloadable resources for teachers and parents. On the Promethean Planet website you will find a teachers guide to using Inanimate Alice as well as teaching resources for using it in the classroom, including flipcharts, a mindmap and user generated content.
Also look at Alice’s School Report : Whiteboards.
Find out more at http://inanimatealice.com
Read MoreTriptico – 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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Plink and Tonecraft – two music tools for Chrome
Music teachers might be interested in these two Google Chrome based web apps from Dinahmoe Labs, both of which would work really well on an Interactive Whiteboard.
Plink is a simple HTML5 interactive music generator. Simply log into Plink, choose a name, then hit “OK”. Your name, along with other users’ names, will appear on the screen and start generating music. Press and hold the left mouse button (or press on your IWB) for any length of time to play a note or series of notes. Move the mouse up and down to change the pitch. Change instruments by clicking on one of the colored boxes to the left.
Try it here : http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/
Tonecraft lets you build up tunes by placing blocks onto a grid. The Y-axis represents the pitch of the tone, the X-axis represents the time and the different colors represent different instruments. The Z-axis makes it possible to layer sounds and to create what ever visual structures you like. You can generate simple tunes from just these few building blocks.
Try it here : http://labs.dinahmoe.com/ToneCraft/
Both Plink and Tonecraft require the Google Chrome web browser to work, so this may mean you can’t run it in school without having a chat with your network manager.
Read MoreYoung Science Investigators Project Kit from BP
The Young Science Investigators (YSI): Project Kit is a free interactive Science resource for 7-11 year olds from the BP Educational Service. It invites pupils to become Young Science Investigators, using the cartoon characters Beepy, Dev and Kate with a focus on science at work in the real world and scientific enquiry skills.
The kit is based around three curriculum topics : Electricity, Forces and Materials.
The kit contains practical, hands-on activities, animations and worksheets for pupil use. It also contains guidance for teachers, lesson plans and curriculum links to both KS1 and KS2 as well as the First and Second Level of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence
It’s a cute resource with some useful activities for students to use. You need to register with the BP site to access it, but it’s free to do so.
Find out more at : www.bp.com/bpes/ysiprojectkit
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Space and Moon Animations
McGraw-Hill have produced some very interesting animations and interactives on the subject of Space and Earth/Moon. They appear to be aimed at KS5 and above, but you will find that quite a few can be used to demonstrate concepts lower down the school such as this Lunar Phases Interactive
View the Animations here, and the interactives Here.
Thanks to @jobadge and @psychemedia for the link via Twitter
For KS2/KS3 don’t forget to take a look at Earth Moon and Sun, The Childrens University of Manchester and also the Day/Night Demonstrator from ICT Games.
Read MoreInteractive 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
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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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