Want to do a group project with some other people, or make a form/group space where people can work on things together?
Some time ago Google acquired the wiki site, JotSpot, and has been developing it ever since. Now it has been re-born within Google’s new application, Google Sites, which makes “creating a team site as easy as editing a document”. “People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer.” Google Sites is available from within Google apps Each Google Apps account receives at least 10GB of storage in Google Sites.
The City of Vice TV series has just finished on channel 4, and last night, as the last in the series was broadcast, they launched the Bow Street Runner, an interactive computer game murder mystery for young people to learn about Georgian history in the most exciting, gory and ghoulish ways that 18th Century Covent Garden has to offer.
This is the first in a number of interactive games that channel 4 are working on to give us different, relevant and exciting ways to help people learn. Can’t wait to see what else there is coming up.
There is a load of great stuff on youtube for us to use, but unfortunately we can’t access it through the Wigan network, so here are some ways to get around it.
The videos on youtube are in a ‘Flash’ format. The normal software on your computer won’t play this, so you need to either convert it to AVI format so it can be played, or download an FLV player.
Here is a good video showing what you need to do to either convert or download the videos.
Unfortunately this download service is no longer running but the principle is the same for vixy.net – just paste in the web address of the video you want into the box and then convert it to AVI/MP3. This format can be embedded in powerpoint if you want.
youtubecatcher is another free site, but it won’t convert it to a windows-friendly video format for you, so you will need to download an flv player to your computer to play them.
The only problem with the free sites is that they can become so clogged up with users that it is impossible to use them, so if you feel you can afford £9 or so and you will use it quite a lot I would recommend naevius’ youtube converter software which is pretty neat and far quicker than a free web-based one.
lingro is a new language learning site with a difference
lingro’s mission is “to create an on-line environment that allows anyone learning a language to quickly look up and learn the vocabulary most important to them”.
There are a number of things available at this site:
The web viewer lets you enter the URL of a website, it then makes all the words clickable for definition and translation
The free instant search dictionary also gives you a definition
You can add words to your word list and play a flashcard game to learn them
To become a user you need to go to www.edublogs.org and sign up for a username. When you have done that, post a message with your details and I will make you a user, and set up a link for you to be able to get into the blog area from.
Once that is done, you will be set to post away and let others know what you are up to.
The idea of this blog is to help us pass around anything exciting we are doing in terms of IT in teaching, so that others can see what we are doing and maybe use it in their own teaching.
If you are a user, post up anything interesting you come across, and feel free to add comments on any of the posts that go up.
It is collaborative INSET, so I hope you enjoy it.
Standish is an 11-16 specialist language college with a second specialism in Maths and IT in the north-west of England.
This site is a way of helping us to share new and exciting IT ideas with other staff at the school and other teachers around the world.
Please feel free to comment on any posts.
but the principle is the same for 
