just so you know... I've put this blog on hold for now as the content is largely covered in my articles for Peters' eGazette... it may get resurrected in the not too distant future

TED for Ed

We're all familiar with TED and many of us use the videos in our classrooms.

TEDEd is a new collaborative space for educators worldwide, with videos on a range of subjects, and complimentary material enabling you to customise and 'flip' lessons.

The best way to use TEDEd though is to get involved yourself - think about submitting your best lesson(s) to the team so the whole world is in your classroom!

Collaborative life-long learning is the future of education, TEDEd is just the start...

chop-chop

Sometimes you just want to show part of a Youtube video, not the whole thing, but it's fiddly trying to get the timing right. With TUBECHOP you can easily choose when you want a video to start and finish. Just enter the URL (or do a search), select the times and chop - this generates a unique URL and embed code which you can then link to or embedded in a webpage. The link even works with Prezi so it's great for presentations.

number crunch

WOLFRAM ALPHA is an amazing online tool that crunches numbers in ways you previously couldn't imagine, and it's not useful just for science or maths. Use it to work out the nutritional value of your cheese sandwich, compare statistics on different countries, do your algebra homework, find out how many other people have you name or words for your crossword puzzle. There are loads of examples on the site - enjoy!

Pery Interesting

PINTEREST is a visual social network tool that's proving very popular especially with creative types and shopaholics.
It's quite simple - just create a board on a particular theme and add some images that you like (the pin it button is useful for this). People can then comment and/or re-pin the images, making the whole thing very active and social. It's also a great way of discovering new stuff, either by following people or just searching the site.
There are possibilities for education and libraries here too ~ including as a way of recommending books, planning a teaching/reading space, bringing together historical images for a humanities class, collecting recipes for food tech or having a 'library' of Visual Thinking prompts (I see I think I wonder).

snip snip

The SNIPPING TOOL is a nifty addition to your PC toolbox. Open up this program (find it by searching in your start menu then pin it to your task bar) to capture part or the whole of your screen. From there you can highlight, draw on, email, copy and/or save the image. Handy for making tutorials or sharing resources, it's simple, quick and extremely useful!

taming Google

Pretty much everyone uses Google to find stuff on the web but there is so much more to it than the simple search engine.
With GOOGLE CUSTOM SEARCH you can create your own search box and specify to which sites you want Google to search. The search results can be hosted on your own page or on Google.
This is extremely useful if you want students to focus on content rather than the search, and for 'controversial' topics. For instance I use it with grade 6 when they are researching Early Humans (try searching homo erectus).
It is also a useful tool for adding a search function for your own website, so readers can find information quickly and easily.

not normal

XTRANORMAL is an easy to use web tool for creating simple animations. Choose your characters and  background, add text, gestures, accents and expressions. Great for those who don't like speaking in front of a group or if you want to present information a little differently. It can sound a little robotic but it's fun and simple to use. Allow a little time for the finished video to process, then share, embed or post to youtube or twitter.