Triptico – 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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Pinterest – collate and scrapbook online resources
Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. I’ve been having a play with Pinterest this afternoon after stumbling upon it.
As well as create your own pinboards, you can also browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. You can search on topics such as Science, or Design and see what other people are pinning.
Although the site does not allow nudity or hateful content, you might find some of the language in a few of the posters could be a little adult, so I wouldn’t recommened displaying the raw Pinboard stream on a screen in front of a class….
Teachers could create pinboards of websites and ideas – either as a personal collection of things to use in their lessons, or they could create banks of things for pupils to use. At the moment I don’t think this would be something for the students to create.
For example, here’s a board I’m starting to create of practical science ideas: http://pinterest.com/dannynic/science-ideas
Pinterest gives you a button for your browser toolbar. Just click the button when you see something you like to add it to your Pinboard. You can add blogposts, websites, photographs and videos to your pinboards. When you pin a blogpost you can choose which image represents it on your board. You can also get a Pinterest app for the iPhone.
To get started, with Pinterest you need to request an invite. I did, and got a signup link pretty quickly. I like what I’ve seen so far, and I think it could be a useful way of building up banks of interesting ideas.
Go take a look : http://pinterest.com/ and let me know what you think in the comments
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Clipbank News Blast Launched
If you are a secondary school, you may already be a subscriber to Channel 4/Espresso’s Clipbank service. If you are, then you might not have noticed that there’s a brand new daily feature that has just launched called News Blast.
News Blast is a daily 60 second bulletin specifically for secondary school students. It is a joint project between Espresso and ITN. The Clipbank site will now be updated every day at around 8.00am during term time. Each bulletin has an accompanying full text transcript and can be accessed at a later date through an archive.
News Blast should greatly enhance the presence of Clipbank across the whole secondary school. Containing the latest news for that morning, the fast paced bulletin will be ideal for showing in assemblies, form tutor time, PSHE or Citizenship lessons, pre- or post-school clubs or on screens located around the school.
For example this morning’s News Blast featured these stories:
- UK STANDING: Cameron denies Britain is in decline on the world stage
- BLACK HOLE: Nasa finds evidence of youngest black hole in Earth’s cosmic neighbourhood
- FACEBOOK EMAIL: Mark Zuckerberg launches new messaging service to compete with Yahoo and Google
- SPIDER MAN: Australian man begins record attempt by living with 400 spiders
The History of Vaccines
Here’s a site that will be of interest to GCSE and A Level Biology teachers. The History of Vaccines is an informational, educational website created by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the oldest professional society in the United States.
The College has created The History of Vaccines to provide a chronicle of the history of vaccination, from the time before Edware Jenner, to the defeat of polio in the Western Hemisphere, to cutting-edge approaches to novel vaccines and vaccine delivery. The site aims to increase public knowledge and understanding of the ways in which vaccines, toxoids, and passive immunization work, how they have been developed, and the role they have played in the improvement of human health.
Interactive resources demonstrate how vaccines work, how vaccines are made, how to visualize risk, and more. Explore these activities to discover the past, present, and future of vaccination and infectious disease.
The site includes media-rich timelines on yellow fever, polio, smallpox, measles, diphtheria, and other diseases; the educational activities on how vaccines work, how vaccines are made, and how the scientific method is employed; the variety of articles on social and medical issues surrounding vaccination; and the gallery, which houses over 400 images and videos.
The History of Vaccines offers resources for use in biology and health courses. The content is targeted to high school students but can be adapted for use in other settings. Lesson plans are included.
It’s an excellent resource that’s well worth bookmarking: http://www.historyofvaccines.org/
Thanks to Aetiology for the link.
Read MoreScience TV and the Cheltenham Science Festival
The Times Cheltenham Science Festival is a five day celebration of science, engineering and the arts, with a reputation for getting the best brains in the country together to probe the most topical issues. It takes place in June every year.
Each year, film crews capture the best demonstrations from the extensive schools’ programme and bitesize versions of the most popular talks. These videos form part of these resource packs, which are designed for use by teachers, and are now available for download in school-friendly formats. These videos are made available via the Science.TV website
The first set of resource packs includes:
- The Big Bang with Maggie Aderin
- Herpes Virus – Friend or Foe? with Mark Lythgoe
- Chemistry with a Bang with Mik Jacobs
- The Art of Muscles with Alice Roberts
- Climate Change – Controversies and Consensus with Jonathon Porritt
The videos are hosted on YouTube, so you will need access to YouTube in school if you want to view these direct from the site within class. If you register and download the resource pack it does contain a windows media version of the video to play offline, along with a pdf pack of worksheets.
You can access the resource packs here.
There are many other videos and resources on the Science.TV site. You will need to register to access all of it, but registration is free.
Read More10 More Cool Teaching Resources for Your Whiteboard
Engaging students in some classroom topics can be difficult. But with the help of your interactive whiteboard you can get and keep your students interested in what you are trying to teach them. Here are 10 especially cool whiteboard resources for grades K-12.
Stellarium – This free planetarium software is perfect for astronomy lessons. Stellarium displays a realistic 3D sky, complete with planets, major moons, more than 600,000 stars, and constellations from 10 cultures.
Illuminations – Created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Illumination provides more than 100 interactive math games and activities for students in grades pre-K through 12.
FreeRice – FreeRice is an amazing trivia game from the United Nations World Food Program. Rice is donated to hungry people every time visitors answer trivia questions correctly. Trivia categories include art, chemistry, math, English vocabulary and grammar, geography, and language learning.
Signed Stories – Signed Stories features videos of stories being told with sign language and subtitles. Although the site is designed primarily for deaf children it would be useful to any classroom interested in learning more about sign language.
Sheppard Software – Sheppard Software provides a wide range of free educational web games for students. Covered topics include animals, science, chemistry, health, history, math, and vocabulary.
Fit Brains – Designed by a clinical neuropsychologist and brain health expert, Fit Brains is an online gaming platform with puzzles and other “brain games.” Players can track their progress and win trophies and achievements when they do well.
Tutpup – Tutpup is a competitive game site that allows students to play interactive web games with other children around the world. All of the games on Tutpup focus on math or spelling.
Spelling City – Spelling City is a free online learning platform with 10 learning games and more than 40,000 spelling words. The site also offers how-to videos to help teachers integrate Spelling City into the curriculum.
The Eco Zoo – The Eco Zoo is a 3D environment that can be used to teach students about environment, ecology, and eco-friendly living. Content can be viewed in Japanese or English.
NASA Space Place – This award-winning NASA website is a good place to find videos, animations, and games that teach kids about space science and technology. Nearly all of the materials on this site would work well with an interactive whiteboard.
Image credit : Cold by AriCee
Read MorePromethean Canada Resource Pack
With the 2010 Winter Olympics taking place in Vancouver/Whistler in a few weeks time, the eyes of the world will turn to Canada. With that in mind, Promethean have produced a great resource pack to teach your students all about Canada. This pack is for Activ Inspire only.
This resource pack contains 140 resources on the topic of Canada that can be used in your flipcharts. They are organised into four different folders:
- Canadian Dollars- images of 13 notes or coins.
- Flags- 14 flags of Canada including provinces and territories
- Maps- 67 maps of Canada, territories, great lakes and more
- Photos and Symbols- includes national anthem of Canada, polar bears, maple leaves, hockey and much more.
Download the pack from the Promethean Planet website here.
Edit – Also keep an eye on Ollie Bray’s blog as he lists various different ways to use the Olympics in your teaching.
Read MoreFun Primary Lesson Plans and Ideas
Here’s a fantastic set of ideas for teaching Science with fun, engaging practical lessons.
These resources are designed to make primary science teaching fun for everyone, including the teacher! They are easy to download and free to copy for use in the classroom. No special equipment or skills are required for any of the lesson plans or demonstrations. New stuff is added regularly.
Some great ideas here for whole lessons and teacher demonstrations.
Head along to the Surfing Scientist and find out more!
Read MoreSelenia Science Comics
Here’s a nice comic book resource. Selenia is a school girl from another planet. Her adventures can be used to teach about Science Investigations and Materials.
There are 7 comics on the site which can be viewed full-screen to make them good for use on an IWB. There are also games such as word searches and quizzes. Throughout the comics are questions posed by the characters which would be useful as discussion starters.
The teachers section provides guidance on how to use the cartoons as a way of introducing practical science investigations such as dissolving and air resistance. PDF worksheets are available which are ready to use with your class.
Produced by The University of the West of England, these resources are suitable for KS3 Science (11 – 14 year olds)
Visit Selenia here, and see what you think!
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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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