Really enjoyed my presentation yesterdaymorning to the Edinburgh PGDE (Secondary) group – such an enthusiastic group of new teachers. Then I had to jump on a plane to London and then on to Vienna for the Microsoft European Innovative Teachers Network meeting – we will be showcasing our Guitar Hero project.
Anyway, I’ve just finished the virtual handout from this morning’s presentation. Feel free to leave feedback below and thank you to the very positive comments that have come via twitter. The slides that I used during the presentation this morning are embedded below: I also referred to the following links: Generators Use generators to liven up your lessons and to set learning / homework objectives in a more creative way. Foley – Includes the famous wizard text and the newspaper generator Lingo to Word – Translate English into ‘text’ speak Wordle – Turn paragraphs of text into beautiful work clouds (try it with your exam syllabus departmental development plan or anything else you can think of!) Search Use the Advanced Google Search – remember you can use this to get specific file type returns such as just PowerPoint or shockwave flash (animation) files. Quintura provides a really good visual search – excellent to use with children on project work. Google News – searches the most up-to-date news web sites Google Scholar – searches just academic papers (might be useful for your professional project?) Finding Images Remember there is also an Advanced Google Image Search Flickr can often provide really good and powerful images that can be used in education without breach of copyright. Flickr Vision – a great Flickr / Yahoo Maps Mashup that gives s sense of place to images around the world. You can also use flickr to create quick slideshows BigHugeLabs lets you do all sorts of things with images such as make motivational posters. Microsoft DeepZoom allows you to layer photographs. Below is the fair-trade example that I used during the talk. PowerPoint or PowerPointless Seek advice from the children on the design of your slides. Use lots of images and be sparing with the text Highlight key words. Think about hyper linking keywords to on-line dictionaries (often on-line dictionaries also allow children the opportunity to ‘play’ the word to them) Put in catch up slides Consider using PowerPoint as a simple form of differentiation. Use of Web 2.0 Tools Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, podcasts and wikis allow you to quickly publish information to the Internet. Most importantly they can be used as an alternative to traditional assessment and give the children a real sense of audience. Use these tools to make your own World Wide Wall Display. Some Good Blogging Tools include wordpress, blogger and typepad. Audacity is a free audio editing piece of software that will also w you to edit voice and audio recordings. It is also available as a Portable App – which means you can run it off a memory stick. Think about getting your students to write Wikipedia articles. Other great sources of Information to help you network, share and stay up-to-date Learning and Teaching Scotland Website – The online service has lots of great content specifically for Scottish teachers GLOW Scotland – Scotland’s National Intranet Teachers TV – good classroom and professional development resources Slideshare – A place to up-load and view PowerPoint and other presentations Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network – join and collaborate with teachers globally Twitter – A micro blogging service. You can follow me here. Internet Safety Digital literacy is the responsibility of all teachers. Be very careful what you put on-line
Ollie, I love Wordle!! What an excellent way to "re-present" text.
Posted by: Jim McDougall | March 24, 2009 at 06:13 PM
I used wordle to start my kids off BEFORE we read the poem I was going to do. They thought it was about kids shopping and were intrigued when they discovered it was in fact Brown Paper Carrier Bag about a bomb attack. It made them WANT to carry on and I got some of the best essays yet from them. I really liked the presentation - wish we'd has similar when I was at uni three years back. I knew more than the guy presenting! Could I possibly have a copy to show a few kindred souls as we prepare similar things for whole school staff meetings prior to getting them to realise what GLOW can do for them? We asked the kids for comments last week and got a beauty - 'If teachers with Smartboards don't use them then they should give them to teachers who will!" Hear hear kids!
Cheers from Elgin!
Posted by: dave t | March 26, 2009 at 09:49 PM