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.

Cassiopeia Project

The cassiopeia project

This is a great collection of free high quality videos to be used in science classrooms. It goes from general science to quantum mechanics. You can easily download them and keep them on your hard drive or server with no restrictions.

New eBeam Software

Just a quick one...

eBeam software has been updated with some bug fixes - namely sound.
Please go to www.luidia.com and download the new eBeam interact software.

Links to Universities using TurningPoint ARS

This comes from my colleague over in Sydney. Several universities are using TurningPoint extensively in their courses to get engagement from their students.

here is some more information about HOW they are using it

The following links have information about TurningPoint:

University of SA: Macromedia vodcast on preparation and use of TP Keypads in lectures:
http://breeze.unisa.edu.au/ars

University of Sydney: Faculty information on how to set up receivers on lecture room equipment. (out of date – TP 2006)
http://www.usyd.edu.au/ict/audiovisual/elearning/interactive_technology.shtml

Macquarie University: General interest site on TurningPoint (largely reference to US site)
http://www.mq.edu.au/learningandteachingcentre/blog/2008/10/03/turningpoint-student-respons
e-system/

Farming from the blogosphere

I claim no credit for finding these - all farmed from other peoples blogs....

http://www.playcrafter.com/ Make your own flash games

http://animoto.com/ Converts your music and photos into a awesome music video

http://preezo.com/ Create presentations and online collaboration

http://www.lessonwriter.com/ English automatic lesson writer – awesome

http://www.whiteboardmeeting.com/ Whiteboarding software to use with Skype

http://www.turboirc.com/tplot/ Graph plotter in 3D if you need it.

http://www.wpclipart.com/index.html Free public domain clipart

http://www.golemgame.com/ 3D Phun with more

http://www.wunderworks.com/home/ Multiple Mice on your computer – jusT add more USB mouses.

http://www.freeprintable.net/ good for backgrounds and ebeam

http://www.hellopdf.com/download.php PDF to work converter.

http://www.printablepaper.net Printable paper – good for backgrounds with ebeam

http://www.virtualbox.org/ A bit advanced – allows you to run other operating systems within windows (eg linux)

http://teamviewer.com/index.aspx shared desktop

http://www.exploratree.org.uk/ thinking templates

http://quizshow.sourceforge.net/index.html who wants to be a millionaire

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ - wink screen capture and tutorial maker

http://www.blockposters.com/ - print really large pictures

http://zencub3d.com/ - ez 3d animations

Dance and Sing

Do you like to dance and sing - of course you do!

I've just found two open source projects that let you do just that.

Stepmania - If you have ever been to Japan or walked past a Timezone (for those of you who live in Perth) you would have seen the "Dance Dance Revolution" coin-op game that is really popular - this is an open source version which is insane. Imagine this on a projector in your in your classroom and all the kids stepping out to the beat- you can hook up an inexpensive playstation mat and have one student leading them all. This is great for fitness, co-ordination and music (moving to a beat).

UltraStarDeluxe - Karaoke (empty orchestra) This is similar to the PS2 Singing program "sing star" - This allows you to create your own karaoke track or download them from the website - sing along and try and mach the pitch and timing of the song. Great for music/singing classes and making them more interactive and involving technology.

The great thing is as these are open source so you can give copies to your students without falling foul of the copyright police.

on screen keyboards

While I was at the AASE conference last years someone asked me about different type of on screen keyboard for use with an interactive whiteboard.

I just came across this little gem - Click and Type. It has many fuctions of a expensive on screen V keyboad - but is free.

http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/