ideas for IT in teaching

Apologies for being so slow to post recently… exams and OFSTED make things run a little slow around here!

One thing I have been meaning to talk about is studeous. An amazing pupil communication site that I have been playing around with quite a lot and I will soon be inflicting on a few of my groups.  I have been really impressed with its ease of use and with its potential for being genuinely useful for my pupils in terms of them being able to get in contact with me, remember homeworks, join forums and post/download work. It is what our moodle site is definitely missing in my opinion – my moodle just ain’t as good.

So, check it out. you will need to request a beta login, but I think it is going to be great. I will keep you posted.

Fancy posting a quick quiz on your blog for your students?

Check out mystudiyo for free, amazing looking quizzes.

Have a look at this one to see what I mean.

An awesome ‘baby’ French news site for all us French teachers out there. Just a brilliant site which I can’t wait to get on as a starter.

Have a look for yourself : http://www.monjtquotidien.com/

An interesting animation by Tim Cowie about social collaboration on the web.

Thanks to Tim for the animation and Joe dale for posting on his blog.

Definitely gets you thinking…

Penguin have recently launched an amazing project – to have 6 modern authors rewrite 6 classic novels, using web 2.0 technologies to bring them alive for an entirely different audience.

Just an amazing use of technologies.

Thanks to ewan macintosh for this.

http://wetellstories.co.uk

One for the scientists!

Visible body is a site with fully searchable, 3D images of the human body, featuring:

• Complete, fully interactive, 3D human anatomy model
• Detailed models of all body systems
• Dynamic search capability
• Easy-to-use, 3D controls
• Seamless compatibility with Internet Explorer

Quizlet is my new favourite app for making vocab flashcards that my students can access online to help them with their learning.  It is free to get an account and dead easy to input the terms and definitions. Sure, at the end of the day they are only flashcards, but you know what they say – sometimes the old ones are the best!

Some games to get kids thinking about alloys, or different types of plastics? What about the working of the ear?

Check them out at nobelprize.org

Rainlender is a free calendar and organiser tool that can sit on your desktop and includes to do lists and upcoming events as set by what you input into your calendar. You can also set it so that it loads up automatically on startup, so if you put in all your tasks and appointments you should never miss another one again.

Damn, there goes my excuse.