News update

Recently I was involved in delivering some professional development with regards strategies and techniques for teaching literacy.   As part of the programme I created a website for sharing ideas most of which had been gathered from pinterest among other online sources.

You can access the site and the associated pinterest board which I produced for the literacy programme below:

• Literacy Website
• Literacy ideas pinterest board

Now following on from this I have started a pinterest board containing ideas and resources relating to educational technology to be used in connection and support with this sharing it.  You can access the Edtech pinterest board here.

Jing

Another recommendation this time from the EdTechTeacher site.   The Mac and Windows based Animation and Video software suggested is called Jing.

Now this is one I personally have not as yet tried however I am going to make an effort too given the positive description provided on the EdTechTeacher site.   If you have a chance to try it before me then please let me know your thoughts and comments.

Literacy Ideas

Now this is a little off topic however I thought it worthwhile to share my Literacy mini-site with you.     We are all literacy teachers as every subject has its own specific and/or technical language which we must teacher our students.

The literacy site was put together following a literacy training event in order to facilitate the sharing of ideas and resources much in the same way that this site was designed to do.

If you are interested please feel free to pop over to the site and see if there are any useful ideas, or to comment.

ICT Champions

Following some discussions with teachers the ICT Champions website has just seen some changes to try and make it more usable.    The Apps and Software are now split into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for.   These categories can either be accessed by the categories down the right hand side of the screen or via the menu in the top right, where a series of sub-menus listing the categories have now been added to the Apps and Software menu.

I hope you find these new changes useful.

JellyCam

Another suggestion from @diemerpatrick on twitter.   This time it is an animation tool in the form of JellyCam.   Now JellyCam is specific to either Mac computers or Windows machines so wont run on tablet devices however it is an interesting program.

Basically JellyCam allows teachers (and students) to create an animation using a series of images where the images can be captured using a web cam.   So you can create a 2D or 3D model including characters, etc and then animate it by using Stop Motion techniques.   This means taking a photo, then moving the objects, then taking another photo, then repeating for every frame in the animation.    Think Wallace and Grommit, or Morph (for those of us who remember Morph…..Question is can you remember the children’s TV series he featured in?)

This strikes me as a really interesting bit of software, especially given the inclusion of Onion-Skinning which allows you to see the previous frame when setting up for the next one.   Overall I can see lots of possible fun uses of this software particularly with the students in control.

 

WeVideo

Recently I have been looking for websites to help in developing and editing videos.   Traditionally I used to do this in the likes of Windows MovieMaker and Photostory or in some of the more developed video editing suites however I wanted to find something easy but web based so as to be independent of the device being used.

@diemerpatrick on twitter suggested the use of WeVideo as a solution.   Now have only had a brief play with it however it looks quite good as a suite for editing and putting together short videos.   This can either be done by the teacher in order to produce a resource for use in lessons, or for flipping the class, or by the students in terms of evidencing their learning.

 

PowToon

I recently located an excellent piece of animation software which allows you or your students to create simple yet professional looking animations.    The software in question is called PowToons.

Find an example here of a simple  demonstration video I produced.

With a little time and effort it should be possible to create simple animations which could be used as part of a flipped classroom or just as either starter activities or plenaries.

My thanks go to Francis Higgins (@fjhig) for bringing this software to my attention.

 

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a very useful method for showing students how different subjects, topics or learning outcomes link together.   This helps in developing students “deeper” learning.

Now a number of Mind Mapping sites and applications exist however are often costly or require a subscription.

Given below are three free (or nearly free) sites:

• Coggle
• Mindmup
• Bubbl.Us (Note: Free creation of up to 3 mind maps only)

In addition to the above if you are using a Windows PC or Laptop you should also consider Freemind, which is an open source Mind Mapping software solution.