Thunder

HAGames was created by the same crew who dreamt up the Hidden Agenda Contest back in 2003.  We’re Liemandts and Reimanns, which sounds like two different tribes of a new medieval quest game but is actually two families that want to make a difference in this world by furthering education through technology. Our family nonprofit organization, the Liemandt Foundation, funds the Hidden Agenda program and the HAGames site with the help of a fabulous cast of advisors and partners. The Liemandt Foundation is dedicated to facilitating, testing, and promoting “stealth education” video games so that they can make learning fun for kids who might enjoy playing games more than listening to teachers.

Don’t get us wrong – we love teachers! And parents! In fact, we hope they’ll check out these HAGames and show them to all of their favorite kids!  We have a feeling everyone will appreciate this new way to help middle schoolers learn tough subjects that may not “stick” as well through memorization or by reading a textbook.  Especially since we are committed to offering these games to kids for free, forever.

I often wonder what would be the best tool for a job, should I use a blog or a wiki, an email or an SMS.  Earlier this week I came across this blog that contains a nice decision tree to help me make the choice in the future.

Tim Curtis from Shrewsbury High School has just created a wiki over at wetpaint where he would like teachers to upload any alternative versions to the SNS KS3 ICT STU’s (too many acronyms). Taken from the site:

Why this site?

To share the knowledge, expertise and creativity of ICT teachers.

Who can contribute?

Anyone. You don’t have to sign up to wetpaint to contribute but it would be great if you did (it will be easier to see who deserves the credit for great ideas).

How does it work?

At KS3, the units are based on the DfES STUs.

If you tweak a lesson, add a comment to that page
If you have rewritten a lesson, add it as an alternative lesson sub-page
If you have rewritten a unit, add it as an alternative unit sub-page
(I’ve tried to set up a typical structure for unit 8.2 - please feel free to add others!)

Get the credit

Add your alternatives with your school in the title of the page. E.g.
Alternative Unit 7.5 from Shrewsbury High School

Other Key Stages and General Stuff

Feel free to develop the structure as necessary. KS4 and KS5 will be set up by qualification and then board.

If you would like to contribute then visit the site (http://teachict.wetpaint.com/)

Search the Earth for giant toys.

Hello boys and girls. Ready to find some toys? Santa has hidden a treasure trove of presents somewhere in Google Earth (actually, it was a few of his elves, but you get the idea) . Every day from December 12th until Christmas Eve, a clue will appear outside Santa’s North Pole workshop which, if you can solve it, will lead you to a toy hidden in a Google Earth satellite image. And every day, the location of the previous day’s toy will be revealed.

Visit http://earth.google.com/santa/ to start your hunt.

Open2.net is the online learning portal from the Open University and the BBC. Within the portal you can get hold of free interactive learning resources.

I have been a user a Flickr for just under a year now, I mainly just use it as a place to share my photos with friends and family.  more recently I have started to use it as the first place I search for copyright free images.  How many times to teachers and students go to Google Image search, find the image they like and download it to use in their work without even considering the copyright implications - ‘nobody will ever know’ attitude.
Today I was looking for an image of Ironbridge and using the advanced search feature of Flickr I found 160 images, and I don’t have to worry about copyright.  What is better I can even leave a comment to the photographer to let them know I liked the picture and I will be using it for some work….

Just to let you all know that Jessica Ffion was born on Sunday at 1:37pm, she weighs 7lb 7oz.

Steph and Jessica are now at home and are both doing well, Jack is really happy to have a sister and has reacted well to her.  Photos of Jessica can be viewed on my Flickr account.

About a month ago I was chatting to Tim in the bar at the Welti - the gym I am a member of, and we will leave it at that.

We were chatting about blogging in Shropshire and he showed me a couple of blogs from pupils at Shrewsbury High School, I was really impressed by the content and comments made.  Knowing that I was going to be talking about the use of blogs in education at the Derbyshire ICT conference I asked Tim if he could interview a couple of his students to discuss their blogging.

Unfortunately Tim didn’t manage to interview the girls prior to the conference, but he has done now, you can read his post that contains the interview here.  The blogs referred to are: http://archl1.wordpress.com & http://scuth1.wordpress.com