pure chemistry

PERIODIC VIDEOS is my absolutely most favourite science resource online. The wonderful University of Nottingham Chemistry department have created a video for each element in the periodic table. Engaging and educational these are a great resource to get students excited about science.
PS: I can't resist also sharing this fab video from the EU about chemical bonds, wouldn't it be great to get students to re-construct this?

http://youtu.be/HDw4gk5pYl8

twittering

TWITTER is often portrayed as somewhat pointless, people telling you minute details of their not necessarily interesting lives. However for me it's probably my most important professional development tool.
Its power lies in conversations, not monologues. It's about collaborative learning, making connections and discovering new ideas, tools and ways of thinking.

My advice to make the most of Twitter...

• follow at least 50 people (otherwise you'll be talking to yourself)
• to find who to follow, look at other people's lists and on Twitter4teachers
• add yourself to Twitter4teachers
• use hashtags - like #edchat or #tlcat
• try a Twitter client like Tweetdeck (which also has mobile apps)
• Tweet!
  

perfect pictures

tired of low quality random photos on google image search? worried about infringing someone's copyright?
try FLICKR CC BLUE MOUNTAINS, my favourite place for finding creative commons (images that you don't need to ask permission to use - though you still usually need to cite).
it searches the huge flickr database of great quality tagged photos.
linking directly to FLICKR means you know who took the photo and when, information you need for your bibliography. awesome.

clear not cloudy

looking for an alternative to iMovie (especially if you're a PC user)? want to edit collaboratively in the cloud?
WEVIDEO may be the answer - a simple, easy to use, web 2.0 tool that allows you to upload, edit and share video without the need for software or mailing huge files.
Upload your finished work to youtube or your favourite social network. If you do a lot of videoing you might want to upgrade your account, there are various packages available.

tooling up

Looking for a Web 2.0 tool but not sure where to start?
Try GoToWeb2 - an easy to use directory of web 2.0 tools for everything from making a slideshow to collaborating on a drawing, from creating an animation to designing a website.
Each resource is tagged with keywords which means that you can search by clicking on one or more tags.
Have a browse around, you're bound to find something useful!

stuff your stuff

LIVEBINDERS is an extremely useful place to gather stuff together and share - whether it's images, pdfs, weblinks or videos.  Livebinders are visually appealing and can be used in presentation mode or embedded into a webpage (like Finalsite). The Bookmarklet for your internet browser (inc. iPad) makes it even easier to use. More than one person can collaborate on a binder, making it really handy for group work. Make your binder public or private, make more than one and create a whole shelf!

not just good

GOOD READS is something you'll be seeing a lot of at ISA in the coming months, as we'll be starting an Online Book Group using this website. Grade 8 will even be using it as a tool in their English classes. If you love reading you'll find it an amazing place to share your favourite books and discover new ones. Just make an account and start adding to your bookshelf. You can even link it in to your Facebook page to make reading even more social. And yes there's an iphone app!

think BIG

Frustrated at being stuck with A4 printing? Want your images to have a BIG impact?
Then Block Posters is for you! Upload and image (of course this would be text made in photoshop or alike), slice it up and then download the new images ready to print and put up.
Simple and BIG!

paintings 2.0

BBC Your Paintings is a wonderful new project from the Beeb, which aims to collect images of paintings from across the UK. With the involvement of 850 galleries and collections they are already more than 1/4 the way to the 200,000 painting target, representing 20,000 artists over 800 years. Search for a painting by theme, location or artist. This autumn sees the launch of a teacher blog that's bound to be useful for planning lessons. A brilliant example of the power of collaboration and public funding.

the other famous five

I thought I'd start the school year by highlighting my top 5 tech tools - things I that have transformed the way I work over the last couple of years and that I just could not do without...

Prezi - a fantastic way to present, visually appealing and easy to use, great for working in groups, encourages you to minimise text and maximise images, create presentations by brainstorming, no more death by powerpoint!
Dropbox - no more forgotten or corrupted usb sticks, wrong files emailed or in-boxes overflowing - a simple and easy way to store and share documents and images etc.
Delicious - find, organise, share - it's that simple, install the toolbar, import your favourite bookmarks, start saving stuff - you'll wonder how you ever did without it.
FlickrCC bluemountains still my favourite place to find beautiful creative commons images, like the one above.
Issuu for making even the most  boring document look slick, upload any pdf (you can pdf from word and powerpoint), also looks great embedded.

Wishing you a wonderful tech fulled year!


Image: Sage. Cookiecat at Computer. 11 Oct. 2005. Flickr. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/vickispix/85474986>.

Bangers and Mash

MASHPEDIA is an encyclopedia for when you need to know what is happening right now, pulling together information from Wikipedia, Youtube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, News sites, Blogs and Google Books. It's a great way of both understanding the background to a topic with text, images and video, and seeing what the latest news is relating to it. Very useful for students and teachers looking at current affairs or studying different types of infomation. Or just to have a good browse around...

two to tango

ONLY TWO CLICKS is a fabulous website which provides you with a platform to access your favourite resources and tools in a visually appealing way.
It takes a screenshot of your chosen websites or you can add your own images and text for comments.  Use it to share resources or just gather the stuff you use most regularly in one place.  Great for teachers to pull resources together for their students, or for students to share with each other.
Like most web 2.0 tools you can have a unique url (here's one I did earlier) so you can get/share to your stuff from any internet connected computer.
And yes, you can also use it on your ipod or iphone.

just peachy

PHOTOPEACH is a fab tool for creating slideshows online. Great for presentations or book trailers, it's so simple to use and free!
Upload photos (including direct from Facebook or Picasa), add text, choose music and you have a beautiful slideshow.
Share it with your friends or colleagues via email, twitter and facebook, you can even embed it into your blog, like this one I made in just a couple of minutes...

an additional feature is that people can leave comments - great for getting feedback!

faking it

Fakebook is a fun tool from Classtools.net, which allows you to create a Facebook-like profile - use it to collect and display information about a famous (or infamous) person - great for history or literary studies.
It's very easy to use and even searches for images etc direct from the page.
There are also some ready-made profiles to give you an idea, here's the one for Marilyn Monroe...

all about ME

FLAVORS.ME and ABOUT.ME are two similar and very handy tools which give you a personal platform for most of your digital life. With your own URL and a wide choice of feeds/linking tools (Twitter, Linked In, Delicious, Blogger etc) it provides you with a tidy but sleek way of putting all your online stuff in one place.
Here are my two, on balance I prefer Flavors me just because it has more options at the moment, but it'll be interresting to see how both services develop.

perfect publishing

ISSUU is a very impressive tool for displaying your documents online. Make an account, upload your pdfs, and publish. Send your issuu as a link or embed into a webpage or blog. You can even allow others to download your work. Very easy, very neat, very cool!

QR-ious?

You might have seen these funny looking squares around and wondered what they are.  To put it simply, QR codes are a straightforward, funky and effective way of passing information to people.

You can create a QR code to link to a website, pass on contact details, show a location or just information via plain text. I use the iphone app QR Flip Flop which works smoothly and quickly to create your qr codes which can be saved to your phone or emailed.
Take a look at the sites we've bookmarked too which include ideas for library and educational uses for QR codes.

pop it together

POPPLET is a fantastic free tool for gathering information and images together in one place, either as an individual or collaboratively. Mind map an idea, revise a topic, create a mood board or have a discussion - it's a really neat way of creating content online.  See their youtube video for a demo.  And yes, there's an (iPad) app for that.

you can tube

now youtube is open for students in school you might be wondering how to find the best stuff for learning
well how about youtube edu?
explore by subject or channel, it's a great way to discover new resources to enhance student learning
don't forget the brilliant TED talks also  has it's own channel
finally if this is still not enough for you - here's a fantastic list of 100 useful channels

arty not farty

This week saw the release of the stupendously beautiful GOOGLE ART PROJECT
The gallery tours are great but the real star is the art - choose by gallery and then the piece and zoom in - see how Rembrandt painted an eye or the almost sculptural thickness of Van Gogh's work.
If Google Earth changed the way geography is taught, imagine what art students could get from this?
The searching does need improving - you have to know the galleries if you're looking for something specific, and the French galleries are noticeably absent.
At the moment there isn't much contemporary work, though Chris Ofili's "No Woman No Cry" (Tate Britain) is there and what a piece to look at - you can even see the straw in the elephant poo!
This is an amazing project from Google labs, can't wait until it gets even better

HUGE-ly useful

TITANPAD is a fantastic real-time tool for collaborative thinking - create a 'pad' by typing in the url you want into your browser bar eg: http://titanpad/techtips and share the url with others.
Up to 16 people can add and edit a pad at any one time making it a great tool for brainstorming ideas or collecting information.
Use it for a debate - split your class into two - and have one 'pro' and one 'con'.
Or have different groups of students investigate a specific area of a topic to think about.
You could even use it for taking minutes in a meeting!
One last little tip - the URLs are case sensitive, so you can play around with that too