Thunder

Steph was working in a school today where they were looking at using ICT to support addition. Among a variety of other resources, she was planning to use Excel to produce addition questions similar to this:

I thought I would try and be smart and use the ‘=randbetween()’ function to generate the numbers and use the ‘=if()’ function to check the number entered by the student is correct. Unfortunately when you press enter to get the ‘=if()’ function to check the number is correct it randomises the original numbers again. I was wondering if anyone (Tim?) knew of a way to keep both bits of functionality i.e. random numbers and checking of answers. My working progress can be downloaded from here.

Andrew Brown who is an educational support officer for Argyll & Bute is in the process of putting together a series of tutorials for Captivate, details can be viewed here.

After reading this post I have now found some more icons to press to change the look and feel of my post, the new functions are:

• Text styles
• Underline
• Full paragraph alignment
• Text colouring
• Two varieties of paste (text and Word)
• Formatting removal
• Code cleanup
• Custom character insertion
• Undo/redo

To be able to access these new icons, navigate to the new post/page screen and press:

• Windows Firefox: Alt+Shift+V
• Windows Internet Explorer: Alt+V
• Mac OS X Firefox: Ctrl+V

Do you like playing computer games? Do you like playing/composing music?  If the answer to these two questions is ‘yes’ then xbox have got a competition that is just right for you, check out their website:

Forget music for movies – that’s so last-century. Music for games is the next creative frontier. Lead the revolution by creating the ultimate Xbox game trailer soundtrack.

Our judges will pick their favourites, then the public will get to vote for the best of the best right here on Xbox.com. If you win, you’ll make gaming history with the chance to lay down your track with one of the Universal Music team. (Worldwide fame and adoring fans are sure to follow – but don’t hold us to that.)

Don’t miss this exclusive chance to share your soundtrack with the world. You have until 31 May 2007.

This is a nice move by Google to allow people who are browsing the internet on their Wii to be able to read their blog subscriptions via Google Reader.  As I am at work now and my Wii is at home I haven’t tested it but will do later today.  Details from the googlereader.blogspot:

Earlier this year, I acquired a Nintendo Wii. As I was recovering from Wii elbow, I began to explore the capabilities of the Opera-based Internet Channel. It occurred that Reader may be a lot of fun on the Wii, especially with many photo and video feeds.

Some weekend hacking confirmed my suspicions, and the rest of the team also seemed to think it’d be a neat side project. As some have discovered, we recently flipped the switch on this feature. If you’d like to try it out, simply visit reader.google.com on your Wii (you may find it even easier to just do a Google search for “reader”). Keep in mind that this is something very experimental, the labs of Google Labs if you will.

You’ll also notice that Reader on the Wii takes advantage of the famous Wiimote:

• up/down: scroll up/down
• right/left: next/previous item
• 1 button: show subscriptions
• 2 button: show links

When showing subscriptions:

• up/down: previous/next subscription
• right: select current subscription
• left: close
• -/+: collapse/expand folder

If you’d like to try the Reader interface in a regular browser, visit www.google.com/reader/wii to go into Wii mode. The Wiimote buttons all have keyboard equivalents (e.g. the “1″ key for the 1 button).

Over the weekend I stumbled across MindMeister, this website brings online collaboration to mindmapping/ brainstorming.  More details can be found here.  The free version only allows you to store 6 maps, contains some advertising, and there is the ability to export the map as an image or rtf file (for use in Word etc).  If you are feeling flush you can go for the premium edition (€3.10 per month) this removes the limit on maps and allows more export functions including the ability to include the mind map on your blog or website.

iQuiz is a new ‘game’ available to download for your video ipod, it costs 79p in the UK. It allows the user to play multiple choice tests and records their statistics. If you download iQuiz Maker from Aspyr, currently only available for the Mac but Windows version is due out this month, you can also create your own tests that can be uploaded to the ipod. This would be another way of utilising the technologies have students have in their pockets in or beyond our classrooms.

I found several multiple choice ICT tests on Teach ICT and even though their resources are free to use they will not allow me to turn them into iQuiz files:

Hello
Thanks for getting in touch. We have also been considering other channels to pursue, such as ipods (video and audio), so in light of this, we must decline your request of using our content to do this.

If you develop something along those lines using your own material, then please drop us a line as we are always willing to host other contributors work on the teach-ict site.See http://www.teach-ict.com/contributors/index.htm

Regards
www.teach-ict.com

So if anyone knows of any ICT multiple choice questions that I could use, drop me a line and I will share all the iQuiz files I produce.

Does anyone know if this kind of software, both the quiz and quizmaker, is available for the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP or PDAs?