Google Apps - free apps for education

Google Apps looks like it might be one of the winners from the google lab.

With an easy to use interface and a great range of "apps" this could be the new way I get things done. It's like the app store or google play.

What is it? - Google apps uses the chrome web browser as a base and apps are downloaded into it the browser. These apps are sometimes online websites but can also be stand alone of line applications using Chrome as their base.

What is on it? For educators and students... Quite a lot, from on and off line note taking, to classroom management tools to on line IWB software that allows you to collaborate in the cloud. A couple on my starting list include - Biodigital, realtime board, gynzy and Google Drive. There are few that have been ported over from android but most are specifically for full computers. To honest there is more than enough for education, looks like I have a lot of material to review - and most will work with IWB's and Touchscreens.

How do you get it? First download and install google chrome, then once you are up and running go to the far right hand side near the top and click on the 3 bar icon, head down to settings, then click on extensions and scroll down to "get more extensions" - to make it easy to get to your apps you can also install the Chrome App Launcher which makes it easy to get to your apps on your has a shortcut to all the downloadable apps.

Or just go to: https://chrome.google.com/webstore

Amazing website and resource

One of those stumbleupon gems...

Water Life - Produced by the national film board of Canada it is the story of the great lakes. But it is the creative design of the website and atmosphere of the site that is absolutely amazing. Sometimes I just have the music going in the background. Brilliant user interface that is both original and fun to explore without being so esoteric that you cant get back to the beginning.

If you want to see how a multimedia site should be done - this is a great example of some super Flash animations and interactions.

Learning areas - Science, SoSE, Maths, and as a great example of digital media.

Khan Acadamy - upgraded

A couple of years ago I talked about the Khan Acadamy and how this Salman Khan had put together a huge amount of instructional videos just using his brain and a wacom tablet and made them free for the world via YouTube...

Well you should see his organisation now. With a new TED talk where he explains how it all started and what you can do now with classes and as a teacher - this has to be one of the revolutions of education.

His tracking software and the re imagining of school classrooms one of the great synergies of technology in eduction. This is what technology is for.

To have a look, set yourself up and to get a little brain food - head over to http://www.khanacademy.org/

free online room planner

One of my "stumbleupons" came up with this: roomfulexpress

It's an online room / space planner.

This would be a great way to map out your classroom or school office and it works nicely with IWB's. Gives your students the overhead perspective on things.

It also has some nice outdoor objects, prints without logging in doesn't save unless you set up an account. Also all measurements are in feet and inches - so a maths activity to convert to metric would be in order.

Graphing mathematics - Free CAS

There was a discussion on echalk today regarding a school's migration to Apple Macs and how their maths teachers were resisting the change so they could still use FX Draw on their PC's so that they could create graphical functions for printing and class use.

I was immediatly interested why they would still use a paid for program when there were quite a few free and open source alternatives.

So here is the list I came up with that were free and cross platform.


Going from simple to complex....

the open source Mac / PC - Maths Trax from NASA

http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/mathtrax/index.html

the open source cross platform geogebra (my favourite)

http://www.geogebra.org

or the open source cross platform C.A.R Metal

http://db-maths.nuxit.net/CaRMetal/index_en.html

or if you really want to freak them out - the free open source cross platform Maxima and Sage

http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

http://www.sagemath.org/

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

gapminder.jpg" style="border: medium none ; display: block;" width="240" height="169">Image by guspim via Flickr

I have blogged about gapminder before - a great way to visualize data over time. Only problem is is that the information is still very dense, plus you have to be online to access this application.

So for a different application try StatPlanet. You can use it online or there is a download version as well. It only looks at 2000 and 2005 data, but maps it out on world and regional maps. the statistics are from the same place as Gapminder - UNESCO.

You can also down load software to make your own maps and charts with your own data.

This is great for both mathematics and Society and environment. It work well on an IWB as well so great for introducing a topic or statistics.

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Primary Maths

Keepad Interactive has now got the rights to Mult-e-Maths software and it is now available to customers. Its a great tool to use with either an eBeam or a Graphire tablet. Every time I do a demonstration, teachers are blown away by it's simplicity and ease of use.
You can get a trial of it here.

For those of you who can't get there hands on it - there is another option.
Math playground This has a range of games, manipulatives, and videos that work great on an IWB or tablet.

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Language and Maths activities for your IWB

With NAPLAN coming up soon there are teachers looking for the edge so they can give their kids that extra oomph in the tests.


Spellingcity
If you are using spelling lists and an IWB this is perfect. Simply put your wordlist into the home pages and it automatically makes 11 different flash spelling games from your list - saves on a whole lot of work. You can also do it to automate your spelling tests as it says the word and puts it in a sentence. There are also a whole bunch of premade lists.

You need to online for this gem.

2+2
This is a downloadable program for lower school maths. With over 20 different activities (many that you can do with your IWB) 2+2 math for kids is a program aimed to help children's education in the area of basic mathematical skills.