September 11th – Education Programme and Schools Competition
The 9 11 London Project is a new UK educational charity that has been set up to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and to ensure that the legacy of those events is one that builds hope from tragedy. Its purpose is to ensure that this and future generations have the opportunity to be taught about the events and to understand the causes and consequences of 9/11, in the US, UK and across the world.
The website contains educational resources for History, PSHE/Citizenship, RE, English/Drama and Art/Design. There’s also an image and film bank and interactive timeline of the events of the 20th century leading up to 9/11. A section of the site offers guidance on teaching controversial issues such as this.
Check out the resources at : http://www.911educationprogramme.co.uk
Competition
In addition, the 9/11 London Project website is currently running a competition offering students the chance to win a trip to New York this September (8-12th), which will include a visit to the 9/11 Memorial. The winner in each category and the two runners-up will all win a trip to New York for the 11th anniversary. In addition each of the two category winners will receive £1000, plus an additional £1000 for the two winners’ schools.
All students have to do is say how they think 9/11 changed the world. The website wants them to use their imagination and send in an original, creative and thoughtful piece of work as either a 5 minute film or a 1200 word essay.
You can get more information here.
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 MoreAdobe Education Exchange – resources for teachers
The Adobe Education Exchange hosts a range of free, peer-reviewed teaching and learning resources, developed by Adobe Education Leaders, educators who are already integrating technology in to classes with great success who also use the Exchange themselves to find inspiration for creative teaching activities.
For example the site contains guidance on teaching code for games design and app development which supports collaborative learning, or lesson plans for effectively teaching photography students panoramic techniques.
For more information or to sign up to the Adobe Education Exchange visit: http://edexchange.adobe.com.
Free teaching resources from EdComs
The Edcoms teachers website is a great free new resource site for teachers. The site initially launched with with 40 free, high-quality teaching resources, for both primary and secondary teachers with more to come each month.
The aim of Edcoms teachers is to bring together all the free educational materials that EdComs has created for various clients all together in one place, including their resources produced for BP which I’ve reviewed on this site in the past. The 40 resources available at launch includes online activities, resources for interactive whiteboards plus worksheets and games. New resources will be added monthly, so keep an eye on the site for new stuff.
It’s free to register with the site, and any teachers registering with the new site before December 15 will get the chance to win a free place at the Learning Without Frontiers 12 conference in London in January.
As I’ve said before; EdComs has regularly produced some excellent resources for both primary and secondary classrooms that are great for use with an interactive whiteboard as well as for supporting independent student work. It’s definitely worth taking a look at their site and seeing how you can use their resources in your classroom.
Take a look for yourself at : http://www.edcomsteachers.com/
Read MoreThe Kid Should See This
The Kid Should See This describes itself as “Off the grid-for-little-kids videos and other smart stuff collected by Rion Nakaya and her three year old co-curator.” It’s a great eclectic mic of videos and other weird stuff that might provide “awe and wonder” in a lesson, or that you might want to bookmark for those times you want to show something a little different. Mostly embedded from YouTube so you’d still need access to show in school.
Take a look at : http://thekidshouldseethis.com/
hat tip to Jonathan Wylie for the link.
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Succeeding with Science
Created by Sellafield Nuclear Power Station, the Succeeding with Science website contains many different interactive activities and downloadable resources. There are resources here for both primary and secondary (and post-16) teachers on a number of different topics such as electricity, states of matter, carbon footprints and radioactivity. There’s also information about the Sellafield nuclear power station itself.
There are some great resources here, most of which will work well on an interactive whiteboard.
http://www.succeedingwithscience.com/
Read MoreEspresso Whiteboard Photo Galleries
If you are an Espresso subscriber in the UK you already know how brilliant it is for videos and interactive activities. What you might not be aware of is a slightly hidden set of image galleries that are really useful for use on your IWB. They are tricky to find, which is a bit of a shame. Here’s how to find them.
First – go into Espresso in your usual way (either in-school or via your Home Access link). Then you will need to go into the Staffroom. To do that click on the coffee cup icon in the top left hand corner of the screen.
If you are asked for a password use “espresso” as the username and “sal” as the password to get into the staffroom.
Click on the drop down box labelled “Other Features” near the bottom of the staffroom page (on the left) and from the options, choose “Whiteboard Photo Galleries”
On the Whiteboard Photo Galleries page you will find a selection of zip files full of images to use in your presentation or whiteboard software. Instructions are given for Smartboards, but they can be used in Promethean software or even dropped into PowerPoint.
Right click on each link and choose “Save target as” to download the files to your computer. Unzip the files to access thus images inside.
If your school doesn’t yet subscribe to Espresso, you can find out all about it, and request a free trial here : http://www.espresso.co.uk/
Read MoreEssential Digital Resources for your IWB (2011)
Here’s an online version of the Essential Digital Resources presentation that I gave at last week’s Teacher2Teacher conference in Canada. This is a longer version of the presentation I gave at TeachMeet Takeover in January.
All the links in the presentation can be found at : http://delicious.com/dannynic/essentialmedia
Delegates who attended the conference can download the original version from the Prairie Rose School Board files area.
Read MoreSmart Notebook Video Guides
Here’s a short post to highlight three video guides I produced a while back which outline three different things that you can do with Smart Notebook to produce simple lesson resources.
The ideas can be carried across to other IWB software, but the videos show how to do it in Smart Notebook.
Making a Rub and Reveal activity
How to use pen to mask text so that you can then use the eraser tool to remove the pen and reveal the text that is hiding behind. Good for cloze procedures and labelling diagrams.
Making a Plenary Circle activity
How to create a simple activity which can be used at the end of a lesson where the children make sentences to show what they have learned.
Making a Pictogram with infinite cloner
A simple idea for using the infinite cloner (drag a copy in ActivInspire) to create pictograms using simple images from the gallery.
I have plans to create a few more of these guides when I get the chance, plus to produce some step-by-step guides for the main types of IWB. Watch this space.
Also, I’m aware this is an older version of Smart Notebook… I’ll update, but the buttons will pretty much be the same.
More guides can be found in the Guides section of this blog.
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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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