Thunder

I have just spent the last 30mins playing on some maths games produced by 2Simple software.

A suite of six fast paced games designed to make learning mathematics fun, effective and meaningful. In traditional arcade style, these games are set to engage children from their first click whilst the high pace of learning will keep them striving to improve.

• Factoroids - break down the factors into equal parts.
• Dividers - target each number with the correct divider.
• FracWall - arrange the fractions to create a whole.
• BondBubbles - join the bubbles to recall number facts.
• SeqSnake - work out the sequence to grow the snake.
• FunkyPlatform - use the calculation platforms to reach the target number.

The software is aimed at Key Stage 2, but I could have used it with KS3 classes. The software tracks your progress so you don’t have to start from scratch each time.  I found the games enjoyable, so why not give it a go yourselves, you can download a 30 day trial from their website.

Would you like to work for Google?….. when you can now, unfortunately they won’t pay you much, well actually the wont pay you at all.

Google are after your help to try and improve the quality of Google Image Search results.

How does it work?

You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner’s label, you’ll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.For example, this image can be described by the labels: bird, sky, soaring, or frigate bird.

Why not give it a go, I have tried about 4 times now and have been unable to match any labels

These two posts on Mike’s blog caught my eye:

1. Jelly Sensor for earthquakes - a fun application but requires Yahoo Widgets.
2. Subtangent numeracy maths resources - Countdown - after visiting the link contained in the post what I really liked was the educational version with additional controls.  You can also download the program as a flash file for use offline.  While at the subtangent website I found stack loads of useful maths resources and programs, I think it will take some time to go through them all.

Last year I was working in a school where pace in the lesson was an issue, so we thoughty getting a timer that could be projected onto the whiteboad and then play an alarm when the time was up. We both hunted around and couldnt find anything free, there was a nice flash timer within SMART notebook but that was no good as they school didn’t have any SMARTboards.

At last months subject leader update in Shropshire John Holmes from Rhyn Park school mentioned ‘Cool Timer‘ which was a free countdown timer that he had used to keep the pace in his lessons.

It has taken me to this morning to download it and try it myself, having done so I would recommend it to everyone who would like to keep track on the various actvities that are going on in their lessons.

Where I live we regularly use electricity during storms so we clamber for the candles, having a young son this isn’t the safest thing to be doing.  Tonight I was interested to find a free download for my ibook to convert the screen into a reading lamp…

Lamp Light is a very simple app based on a simple idea - utilizing the power of your laptop (powerbook, ibook) display to emit bright reading light. Created during an electrical storm and blackout, the app was used to shed some light on a book that could hardly be read in the dim light of a normal laptop display. It’s simple - a screen displays pure white light, and you can choose your settings from battery saving low, medium to high. It’s also useful when traveling on long plane flights - use Lamp Light instead of the overhead light so as not to disturb all the passengers around you trying to sleep - and other low light conditions.

I am about to download it and give it a try, I will let you know how effective it is the next time I have a power cut.

Today I took my podcasting roadshow to Sir John Talbot’s school in Whitchurch Shropshire, this is my local secondary school.

It was the year 6 induction day and the headteacher had asked me to get a group of 20 mixed year group students to record the events of the day. Prior to the day, just like at OWS, I emailed the students with a link to their blog and asked them to comment on the first six posts. Unfortunately not many of the students participated in this activity, this lead to me having to spend time going through the questions with them to assess what they knew already. The applications I had asked them to look at where all new to them - so today was going to be a big, but enjoyable, learning curve for them.

So after getting their brief and planning the questions they wanted to ask the year 6 students off they went with ibooks, mobile phones, mp3 recorders and digital cameras in hand to record their discussions.

The students were given a brief introduction to Garageband, iPhoto and iTunes to enable them to produce their enhanced podcasts. All photos taken throughout the day were uploaded to the schools Flickr account, they even caught me doing some work - I think I should frame it!

The students were really motivated and engaged with using the ibooks and ICT being more than spreadsheets and databases. All the teachers that popped their head in during the day were impressed with the work ethic and the buzz that was going around the room. It was amazing to see how much they produced. You can read their evaluations of the day here, at present there is only a couple but they have all agreed to add theirs comments tomorrow.
Please check out their blog and leave them some comments.

It was great to see the students so engaged in their work, there really is great potential in developing this kind of experience for our students. I will have to put some time aside during this Summer break to produce a unit of work for KS3 ICT lessons based around these collaborative and social technologies.

Via Lifehacker I came across the ‘See how fast you can type!‘ webpage. I gave it a go and this was my result:

I think there is room for improvement so I think it is time to revisit the BBC Dance Mat Typing website which is an introduction to touch typing for children.

20 September 2006, 4-6pm, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Glasgow

What is TeachMeet06?

Learn something new, be amazed, amused and enthused. This is an informal gathering of those curious about technologies.
Anyone can share cool ideas they have or great ideas they’ve triallled in their classrooms. Join us in person or via Skype.
We want things that have succeeded and which have failed. Whatever it takes to further the knowledge of the education community.

Click on the logo on the top right hand corner of the homepage for further details.

I can’t remember how I found this website last week, but I am glad I did - it has managed to keep me away from doing any proper work for several hours. It suggests 55 different ways of using Google..

You probably use Google everyday, but do you know… the Google Snake Game? Googledromes? Memecodes? Googlesport? The Google Calculator? Googlepark and Google Weddings? Google hacking, fighting and rhyming? In this book, you’ll find Google-related games, cartoons, oddities, tips, stories and everything else that’s fun. Reading it, you won’t be the same searcher as before!

From reading I have found out that … “Steve is” a DJ in Boston. He is interested in new music, both local and world wide.

Have a read and a play, feel free to leave a comment about what you think of them, I could see some education value to using the ‘site:‘ command in Google images to find all the images on a particular site.