The event is a fantastic opportunity for creative teachers to have hands-on time with Apple technology with dedicated support from an expert team of Apple Distinguished Educators.

ATI 2010 is being held from 12th - 15th April at Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire; this falls in the second week of the school Easter holidays.

Are you or a colleague interested in attending ATI 2010? The City Learning Centre has funding for up to 6 Wolverhampton staff to attend. Accommodation and all meals during the four-day event are included.

If you are interested, please contact the CLC as soon as possible on 01902 55 (1509). Applications will be limited initially to one per school.

A flyer for the event is available to download below; if you wish to book via the CLC, please contact us rather than using the details on the flyer

• ATI 2010 (Adobe PDF document)

The King’s CE School

Students from Year 10 at the King’s School participated in a digital photography and film-making project. They learned about the principles of composition and using aperture and shutter priority modes to create images with shallow depth of field (blurred backgrounds) or intentional motion blur.

Students worked extensively in Photoshop, learning basic skills - cropping, editing brightness, contrast or curves - and more sophisticated techniques, including the use of adjustment layers, masks and feathered selections to target edits at specific regions of images.

Finally, the students combined their photos with Creative Commons images to create short films showcasing their imaging work.

What the teacher said:

Excellent, as always. Thank you.

Colton Hills Community School

Year 7 students from Colton Hills visited the CLC to create theme-based podcasts (radio programmes) based around either The Black Death or the life of Rosa Parks.

Students used online video, simulations, mindmapping and blogging tools to collect together their ideas, then scripted and recorded their podcasts using GarageBand on the iMacs in the Learning Studio. Finished podcasts were published to bespoke websites created for the projects.

What the teachers said:

Interesting, pacy and with full student involvement.

The pupils were completely engaged and enjoyed the experience. They all demonstrated excellent teamwork skills and use of vocabulary.

A unique insight into creative media.

Wednesfield High Specialist Engineering College

Groups of Year 10 and Year 12 students from Wednesfield High visited the CLC to participate in a series or workshops focussed around the use of the iLife Suite on the Apple iMacs (iMovie, GarageBand and iPhoto) and Adobe Photoshop. Through a series of short, focussed activities, enhanced with the use of online planning and collaboration tools, students learned skills they could take back to school for usage in the school’s new media suite.

What the teachers said:

Clear structure. Excellent mix of activities. Good feedback and advice to all students. All students go away with essential skills.

Smestow Specialist Sports College and The Northicote School

Year 7 students from both Smestow and Northicote visited the CLC to participate in one-day eSafety workshops. Based around films from CEOP and other agencies, the day challenged students to think about their behaviour and privacy when utilising the latest web tools - social networking, online gaming and internet chat.

What the teachers said:

Very insightful, with a wide range of different activities

Excellent use of time, well planned activities. Ade of student think about their internet activity.

South Wolverhampton and Bilston Academy

As part of their OCR Level 2 / 3 courses, groups of Year 10 students from South Wolverhampton and Bilston Academy learned how to use Windows Movie Maker and Audacity to combine together video footage and audio to create short adverts for gadgets.

What the teacher said:

Enjoyed by all pupils and excellent progress made in use of software. Excellent tuition and facilities

1. Junior Apprentice Day

Schools who have taken part: Hill Avenue Primary, Bantock Primary, Loxdale Primary, Spring Vale Primary, St. Paul’s CE Primary, St. Martin’s Juniors.

Created in collaboration with Wolverhampton Educational Business Partnership, the Junior Apprentice Day challenged Year 6 pupils to work in teams to research, create, and market a new product.

Pupils worked in teams to develop a product (balancing price, quality and ethical considerations) then created a brandname, slogan, and radio advert for their product. They then “pitched” their product to the rest of the class and to a real local business person.

Photos and discussions from the project were inserted into a school’s learning platform using our specially-created Junior Apprentice minisite.

Teacher quotes:

“Action-packed and fun. All
children were on task all day and engaged in all activities”

“Children were very focussed and impressed”

“The important of teamwork was put across really
effectively”

“Our Year 6 children and staff came back buzzing after their day at the CLC. They all had a fantastic day and the Year 6 teacher couldn’t believe the difference in them by the end of the day, as they can be quite timid.”

2. Junior Rangers Day

Schools who have taken part: Edward The Elder, D’Eyncourt, The Giffard, Field View, Perry Hall, Eastfield Primary

This exciting day gave pupils the chance to experience life as a Park Ranger in one of Wolverhampton’s premiere parks. The day mixed practical learning and challenges with technology-based tasks. Students created their own bird boxes and learned about the creation and protection of habitats for animals living within the park.

They also explored the park, armed with handheld computers, searching for “tags”, which, when scanned, directed them to information and questions on the internet.

Teams of students competed to see who could answer the most questions correctly in a “Mischief Makers” vs. “Conservationists” challenge.

Finally, students used netbooks set up in West Park’s classroom facilities to design fantastic fireworks displays in a piece of free software called Scratch MIT:

For more information about Scratch MIT and a tutorial screencast showing some of the basics of using it, see this other post on the CLC website.

Teacher quotes:

“Really enjoyable varied program. A great mix of ICT and environmental work”

“First class throughout. Children engaged and interested all day. Great mix of activities”

“Fantastic day - both children and adults loved it!”

3. Environmental Awareness Day

Schools who have taken part: Woodend Primary, Warstones, Parkfield Primary, Grove Primary, Perry Hall, Holy Rosary

This day focused on conveying key, simple messages around litter and pollution in our locality, in a fun and interactive way. and was deilivered in collaboration with representatives from the Local Authority Environmental Awareness Team.

During the morning, pupils followed the sad tale of the crisp packet who doesn’t get put in the bin, but instead faces a lonely life on the streets.

Pupils worked on a poem entitled ‘A World Without Litter’. This was published onto an online blog and printed to take away:

In the afternoon, pupils took part in a film-making project where they produced and edited a short advert re-enforcing one of the issues they have learned about during the day.

Teacher quotes:

“Fantastic day combining lots of curriculum areas. Engaging and age appropriate.”

“Raised awareness of the issues. Children loved making their own movie”

“Children were on task throughout the day. They found the day to be a very positive experience.”

4. Internet Safety Day

This day, aimed at Year 5 and 6 pupils, showed pupils how to have fun online while staying both safe and in control. Based around age-appropriate video materials from CEOP and other agencies, animations, and interactive activities, the day considered key questions such as “Do you really know who you’re chatting to online?”.

By the end of the day, pupils had more knowledge in operating safely in an online world of exciting possibilities.

Teacher quotes:

“Informative and energetic. Kept
students really interested”

“Children and staff really enjoyed the day. Thank you!”

“Vital information delivered in an
engaging way”

To see the screencast at higher resolution go here.

Scratch MIT Introduction from Richard Anderson on Vimeo.

The staff at The City Learning Centre would like to wish all of the students, teachers and Local Authority team in Wolverhampton a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We look forward to working with you again in 2010.

The website, which can be found at www.specialneedsinclusion.org.uk will become a hub for all communications on the work of the Authority in supporting children and young people in the city with special educational needs.

The site is built upon Wolverhampton’s Engage (Microsoft Sharepoint) portal (www.wolverhampton-engage.net)

The sections of the site aimed at parents and at schools are nearing completion in preparation for the Autumn Term. Other sections will be developed over the coming months.

Here are the projects that we’ve been involved in:

Secondary Schools

Each of the five secondary schools participated in a two-day Internet Safety project. During the first day, students learned about how to enjoy and utilise the Internet safely, and about the risks of having conversations with strangers online. We looked at the latest internet tools, from instant messaging to social networking, virtual worlds to online gaming and at simple rules to protect our safety when using these. During the second day, they created their own educational Internet safety film. Here is a sample film from The Northicote School (personal details included in the film are fictional!)

Each Secondary also participated in a bespoke 3 day project:

Aldersley - Digital Art Meets Evolution.

To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth (and 150th anniversary of the publication of On The Origin Of Species), students learned about Darwin’s astounding insight into the the evolution of life, using Web 2.0 tools (e.g. blogging, Etherpad) to discuss their ideas. They then created and animated the evolution of a creature in response to a given environmental change. They documented their work in the form of short film. Here is an example.

Wolverhampton Girl’s High

Groups of Graphic Design and Product Design students learned how to model 3D objects in Google SketchUp. Here is a sample model, created by one of the students after a single day of learning to use the software.

Highfields Science Specialist School

Students created eportfolios to create their coursework, and learned how to embed video and audio into their websites using Adobe Flash and online video hosting service Vimeo.

Coppice Performing Arts College

As an induction to their KS4 Media course, Year 9 students participated in a three day Apprentice Project. Students were given a product to market, and created a logo, TV and radio ads for the product before pitching their ideas to Rob Smith, director of local community radio station kicfm (http://www.kicfm.com). Rob selected the winning group on the basis of the quality of their media work and ability to successfully pitch their ideas.

Here is a sample TV ad, created to advertise a new robotic vacuum cleaner:

Our Lady and St. Chad’s

Students worked in groups in MissionMaker to create demo games for a forthcoming Hollywood movie entitled “Time Agents: Battle For Survival”. They then had to create a TV advert for their games, and pitch their game ideas to Brian Cattell, who delivers games design courses at Wolverhampton University. Brian selected the winning group.

Here is a sample advert, created for one of their pitches:

Primary Schools

Schools have participated in three different projects during the term:

Environmental Awareness Day

Working with the Local Authority Environmental Awareness team, students learned about the problem of litter, created and blogged litter poems entitled “A World Without Litter”, then created short films to explain what they had learned. The films were delivered back into school in a special assembly where students explained what they had learned, and played back their films for the rest of the school to see.

Trentham Gardens and Monkey Forest

Students participated in an exciting set of activites, answering challenges posed by their Recorder Pens, following the barefoot walk, and listening to audio from their StoryPhones. Students completed the day with time in The Monkey Forest, experiencing the magic of having Barbary Macaques moving around them.

Journey into Space Day

Students worked together to save the world from catastrophe. They participated in a set of cross-curricular activities, including creative writing, problem-solving, rocket-building and programming robots to destroy a large meteorite on a collision course with Earth.

Infants Schools - ICT Yearbook

Year 2 students from 5 Infants schools participated in our Yearbook day. The children used ComicLife to collect and print their memories of Infants School and recorded a class song. Every child left with their own unique Yearbook of photos and memories, and a CD of the song recording.

Special Schools

Special school students participated in a one day Internet Education day. They learned how to use some of the latest web tools, including social networking and instant messaging, and about how to stay safe when using these.

Last week, the CLC worked with Year 8 students from Deansfield High School on a project exploring Dramatic Monologue in poetry. As part of the project, students prepared filmic background sequences to play behind poetry readings from “Porphyria’s Sister” by Robert Browning and “The Sisters” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Here are the students performing their readings, with their film sequences playing behind them:

The students also wrote and recorded their own Dramatic Monologues based on the experiences of characters in a cyberbullying scenario. Their poetry readings became part of podcasts:

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

You can listen to the podcasts using the “Play” links above or download them to your computer by right-clicking on the Download link and selecting “Save Target As” (or your browser equivalent).

During the sessions, attendees will learn about the potential risks of internet chat, social networking and online gaming, how to reduce those risks, and how learners can report issues. You will also be introduced to educational materials from CEOP, ChildNet and other organisations for use in your lessons back in school.

You can download a flyer for the sessions - please distribute this within school. To download the flyer to your computer, right-click and “Save Target As” (or the equivalent in your browser)

• eSafety awareness sessions flyer (PDF document)

In a short series of blog posts, I’m going to try to pull together a set of ideas, resources and links under the following headings:

• Creating a context for writing
• Planning and story-boarding
• Creation, sharing and reflecting

Creating a context for writing

Any piece of creative writing - a poem, a piece of descriptive writing, or a story - needs a context, a reason for its existence. How can the web and software help?

Using digital photographs and panoramas

One very simple idea to provide a context for creative writing is to use a single image or sequence of images. You might visit Flickr.com, find an image, and present it to students as a starting point for their writing. Where might this picture lead them?

Picture shared under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user “Lyza Danger”

This idea can be extended by instead asking students explore 360 degree virtual panoramas from Panoramas.dk. Look around, look up, look down - there are a large number of panoramas to explore … including the surface of the Moon.

• An example - Bristol Balloon Festival - 360 degree virtual panorama

Using video games

Games can provide a compelling stimulus for creative writing. As part of our CLC Doctor Who cross-curricular day, students are asked to create a piece of creative writing based on a scene from a self-penned MissionMaker game in which aliens invade the Earth. The results have frequently been impressive:

¨I approached the steel gates. What were those odd-looking figures? I heard weird thunder sounds as they appeared. Why were they circling the square? I struggled to reach for my small camera. Two turned to three, three turned to four. How many were there? Their eyes were like goggles on top of slimy, bony, bodies. The shadows sheltered me from their vision¨.

Commercial games can provide immersive contexts for creative writing. Tim Rylands (www.timrylands.com), pioneered the use of the computer game Myst to stimulate his primary school students.

Mr. Warner, a UK Primary teacher, has written recently on his fantastic blog about his own experience of using Myst. His articles reporting and reflecting on his lessons with Myst are essential reading:

• Using Myst within Literacy - Week 1
• Using Myst within Literacy - Week 2
• Using Myst within Literacy - Final Reflections

Using Google Earth

Google Earth, Google’s 3D Earth “simulator” (for want of a better word) is usually seen as an amazing tool for Geography and Science teachers and students. What about using it for creative writing?

On his inspiring ICT in my Classroom blog, Tom Barrett. a primary teacher in Nottingham, has been describing his use of Google Earth as a resource for both stimulating and recording students’ creative writing. In a series of 5 articles, Tom details the process he followed with his Year 5 students; how his creative writing lessons worked, the challenges he faced, and how he and his class overcame them:

• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 1
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 2
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 3
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 4
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 5

Tom’s class integrated Google Earth with voice-recording (using Vocaroo), to create a story based on the escape of James from his Aunt’s house in James and the Giant Peach. They used the “Add Placemark” feature in Google Earth to locate both their creative writing and recorded narration along their chosen route.

Google StreetView

Some locations in Google Earth now also include Google StreetView, Google’s “on the ground” panoramic record of a city. For example. fly to Rome in Google Earth, and you may see this:

The wealth of information that Google Earth can now overlay over a location is extraordinary: from Wikipedia articles to YouTube videos and 3D buildings modelled in Google SketchUp. (Information about Ancient Rome has also recently been overlayed over the modern city .. amazing). Click onto one of the small camera icons on a street, and Google Earth flies you into a Street View of the Colliseum:

What an inspiration for creative writing! Create a route, explore the route, imagine the events that could happen, describe the buildings, the sky, the old man taking a photo of the Coliseum (Is he a friend? A spy?). Imagine travelling back in time to Ancient Rome. What has changed?

Street View only currently covers cities in the US, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain. Street View in UK cities is expected soon.

Other ideas

How else might we inspire creative writing? Here are some other ideas:

• Use a sound effect, a brief narrated snippet, or a piece of dramatic music as a starting point.
• Generate a random title for your writing using WordWhizz
• Create the start of the story one sentence at a time from a small group of students … Once upon a time … point to a student … and he became lost in the … point to another student
• Create a movie poster first using Glogster.com, or from an digital image at Big Huge Labs. Now imagine the film, visualise it (music helps), and go from there!
• Use Kar2ouche to place a photo of group of students at the doorway to a fantasy world, accompanied by a character as a guide. Where will the door lead? How will you get home?

In the next part of the series - planning and story-boarding

Have you got other ideas for creating a context for creative writing? Please share them using the comment form.

The King’s School - Digital Imaging / Film-making

Year 10 students from The King’s School combined digital imagery and stop-frame animation to create short films based around the theme of “Self Portrait”

What the teacher said:

Excellent resources and activities organised. All students have completed a film that will help with coursework requirements. The films look brilliant. Thank you for all of the work you have done with the students.

The Northicote School - Science and Maths

Year 9 students from The Northicote School worked within the context of Formula One to engage in Maths and Science activities

• Day 1 - Using web, media and simulation technologies to explore forces and energy. (See full details)
• Day 2 - Maths in Motion - using maths to design and race F1 cars
• Day 3 - Creating Science podcasts (Listen: Groups 1 to 5 and Groups 6 to 10)

What the teacher said:

Excellent activities that kept pupils engaged and interested in a difficult subject. Pupils were able to explain difficult situations and apply them to different situations. Many of the resources used will be taken back and used in school.

Colton Hills Community College - Maths in Motion

Year 8 students from three streamed groups attended the CLC to participate in Maths in Motion days, using applied mathematics to design and race Formula One Racing Cars.

What the teacher said:

The task was well differentiated for the types of students we brought each day. There was a good relationship with the pupils, clear instructions when explaining things, and the day was presented really well. The pupils practiced, learned and developed a range of maths skills throughout the day. The tasks were accessible and enabled pupils to understand how they can apply skills they already had.

Parkfield High - Web Design

Year 10 students from both the Wolverhampton Rd. and Bilston sites at Parkfield High attended the CLC to participate in a web design programme. Students were led through the process of creating a simple, yet professional website based upon HTML tables, and Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

What the teacher said:

Excellent facilities and staff. Pupils were actively engaged and on task. All pupils produced relevant and usable coursework. Should improve GCSE results for ICT.

ComedySportz specialize in improvisation workshops designed to improve students’ social and team-working skills. Over the course of a day, students participate in a series of drama and trust-building activities before planning and performing their own improvised show. The results are often hilarious! The show is filmed and shared back to school as a DVD.

Feedback on the sessions from attending teachers has been universally positive:

Children have been engaged and motivated throughout the day. Even our most socially reserved / ill at ease / autistic were contributing and obviously enjoying themselves.

Pupils were fully engaged, enthusiastic and cooperative. They interacted well with each other and gained in confidence.

A very enjoyable day - thoroughly recommend it for both students and staff. Students attended with various learning difficulties which were catered for extremely well. They interacted positively with each other and with the staff.

Wonderful presenters. Extremely funny. Pace of activities kept students on-task and engaged. Students worked together and understood the importance of their role within a team.

We used a variety of technologies to explore two of the key principles of the Key Stage 3 Science curriculum; energy and forces.

• The use of voting systems
• Film-making
• The use of simulation software to explore scientific concepts and to test hypotheses
• Live blogging/chat
• Video games

Here is an outline of the day, with some examples of student work. I believe that the day was successful, and hope that the mix of different activities may encourage others to explore similar ideas.

Use of the Senteo voting system

I began the day by using Senteo voting systems to assess students’ current understanding of some key principles in energy and forces. Students voted anonymously on each of 10 multi-choice questions. This established a picture of gaps and misconceptions in the students’ understanding. At this stage we did not go through the questions and correct answers.

Film-making as an explanatory tool

The students were divided into groups of 3, and each group was given one of the questions to consider more closely. The students used Smart Notebook to create an annotated explanation of their reasoning. Slides were exported as images, then dropped into a simple iMovie project. The students then narrated explanations to form short films. (This task could, of course, have been carried out in Windows Movie Maker too).

Here is a sample film:

We watched back the student explanations, and peers voted on the quality of the answers in the films (”Good” / “Dodgy” / “Incorrrect”). By looking at the films, and at the previous responses of the class as a whole (as recorded by the voting system), we explored and analysed the questions, trying to correct misconceptions and add more precision to the use of scientific language.

Use of computer simulations

To explore and reinfoce the relationship between forces and energy we used one of the Sunflower Learning simulations:

Students were asked to formulate and present their ideas on the relationship between forces, energy, velocity and acceleration in the simulation.

In preparation for Day 2 of the project, in which students were to use Maths in Motion to design and race virtual Formula one cars, we now looked in more detail at some of the design considerations of an F1 Car:

• Shape / aerodynamics
• Front and rear wings

The students were challenged to use Phun (a “2D Physics Sandbox”) to create a test to demonstrate the effect of shape on air resistance. They had to consider how to make the test fair - i.e. how do I change the shape moving through the air without altering the mass of the object? The simplest solution was something like this:

Two equal-sized, equal mass objects dropped at different angles. The object on the left reaches the ground first …

Use of live blog/ chat to explore the role of wings

Using the free website CoveritLive.com, students now participated in a structured online live blog / chat. The topic for the conversation was “wings” - how do aeroplanes fly, and why do Formula One cars use inverted wings on their front / rear?

What is CoverItLive?

CoverItLive is a service designed to “live blog” an event; a conference keynote speech or sporting event, perhaps. One individual, the blogger, records the event. Other people can comment on the event, but the lead blogger can choose whether to accept their comments, and when to insert comments into the record of the event.

Why use CoverItLive?

Well, partly because I was intrigued to see how students reacted to it! My feeling was that the service provided some of the immediacy of using a chat service while allowing the teacher to direct the discussion towards specific learning purposes. When commenters (the students) submitted comments on the discussion, I could choose when to slot their contributions into the “script”. Thus, I could wait for contributions from different groups before “revealing” the contributions to the rest of the class.

At the end of the exercise, the class had a script to take away and analyse. Here is a link to the finished script:

• Northicote Day 1 - Live Blog

In practice, I felt that using the service worked well. If I were to repeat the exercise, I would probably give the students clearer guidelines on when and how to comment - there was little too much of “This is really cool, sir!”, which made it tough to track the comments in real time … which lead to “why haven’t you published our comment, sir?”.

Using MissionMaker to access student understanding

To finish the day, we revised key concepts of energy and forces using a CLC-designed MissionMaker game:

The end of a successful day!

What the teacher said:

Excellent resources, some of which can be taken back into school. Excellent activities that kept pupils engaged and interested in a difficult subject. Pupils were able to explain difficult scientific concepts and apply them to different situations.

Working in Wordle is very easy; simply paste a piece of text into the website, or give it the address of a website or RSS newsfeed, and your word cloud will be quickly generated. You then have the chance to choose the style, orientation and colour of the text. Wordle will automatically ignore common words (”the”, “a”, “to” and so on).

One annoyance is that there is no easy way to just save the word cloud image that Wordle generates - you will have to use the Print Screen key and paste into a document, or use screen grab software to pull out the finished image.

• How to Print Screen into Microsoft Word

How might Wordle be used in lessons? Here are a few ideas:

• Create a picture of the language used by children in a piece of creative writing. (This would be particularly easy if student work is published onto a blog, as the RSS feed from the blog would generate the word map).
• Save Wordle word maps for different pieces of student work over the year. Compare the maps - how has their use of language changed (and hopefully improved)?. Are they using more descriptive language?
• Give students an open-ended question to answer (maybe in science or history, for example). Use the Wordle Map to highlight the kinds of language they use in response. Are some words used inappropriately? Are there synonyms or more precise words that would work better?
• Compare two pieces of text - maybe different styles of poetry, or political propaganda from different viepoints

Many thanks to Simon Mills at http://twowhizzy.blogspot.com for highlighting Wordle to me.

Update - I’ve just come across this article on Rodd Lucier’s Clever Sheep Blog - “Top 20 uses for Wordle“. Some really ingenious ideas!

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Here are the topics for each podcast:

• Group 1 - Renewable Energy Resources
• Group 2 - The Solar System, Earth and Beyond
• Group 3 - Smoking and Health
• Group 4 - The Digestive System
• Group 5 - Balanced and Unbalanced Forces

You can listen to the podcasts using the “Play” links above or download them to your computer by right-clicking on the Download link and selecting “Save Target As” (or your browser equivalent).

What do you think of the podcasts? Are there errors, or explanations that could be improved in some of them? We hope that these podcasts provide a useful teaching resource for revision, discussion and analysis in science lessons.

Group 6

Group 7

Group 8

Group 9

Group 10

Here are the topics for each podcast:

• Group 6 - Particle Model of Solids, Liquids and Gases
• Group 7 - The Periodic Table
• Group 8 - Plant and Animal Cells
• Group 9 - Chemical Reactions and Physical Changes
• Group 10 - Elements, Compounds and Mixtures

You can listen to the podcasts using the “Play” links above or download them to your computer by right-clicking on the Download link and selecting “Save Target As” (or your browser equivalent).

What do you think of the podcasts? Are there errors, or explanations that could be improved in some of them? We hope that these podcasts provide a useful teaching resource for revision, discussion and analysis in science lessons.

While searching for some resources to support a forthcoming session at the CLC, I came across Phun (http://www.phunland.com/wiki/Home). Phun is a fascinating tool for playing with the physics of objects. You can draw simple shapes, alter their physical principles (density, friction etc.) and manipulate them - throw or push them around, or collide them with one another.

Within a few minutes of using it, I had used it to set up a simple scenario that demonstrated some of the basic principles of air resistance acting on falling objects.

You can also add chains, motors and hinges to create complex machines. There are a large number of simulations created by users of Phun at http://www.phunbox.net, including cars, rollercoasters and rockets.

Phun is free and available to download for both Windows and Mac OS X.

Here’s a great YouTube video of Phun in use on an Interactive Whiteboard, shared by Rich White (http://roots.greenbush.us)

Here are the schools and the topics / themes they are going to be looking at:

• The King’s School - digital photography / film-making / animation
• The Northicote School - Science and Maths project based around Formula One.
• Colton Hills Community College - Maths in Motion - real-world applied Mathematics
• Smestow School - eSafety sessions for Year 7
• Parkfield/Bilston High School - web design in Dreamweaver
• Wednesfield High School - Maths in Motion

• 40 Beautiful Free icon sets

Note: it is important that you carefully read the fine print of some of the icon sets; they may have limitations for commercial use, or require that you credit the icon designer in any document you create with them.

For most, the reason these computers have managed to break the long-standing dominance of Windows is .. iLife. The iLife suite, Apple’s integrated collection of media tools - iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, iDVD, iTunes - is a fantastic collection of tools for all forms of media manipulation. The intuitive ease-of-use of these tools, and the way they link together so seamlessly, makes them an easy sell for Apple. For many schools, educators, or departments, iLife is THE reason to buy a Mac. (Oh, that and the fact they look quite cool too).

However, the Mac OS X operating system is a fully mature and compelling alternative to Windows. What about other software, beyond iLife? Well, the biggest software applications are available for Mac OS X too, of course. Microsoft Office and Adobe products (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and so on) are available. Add in Apple products such as Aperture (photo editing and management) or Final Cut Express / Pro (video editing), and most bases are covered. Lower cost applications include:

• Pixelmator - image editing (http://www.pixelmator.com)
• I Can Animate - stop-frame animation (http://www.kudlian.net/products/icananimate)
• Call Recorder - record Skype conversations (http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder)

What about free applications? Well, there are some wonderful freeware tools out there for Mac OS X. What I want to do here is highlight a few of these. If you have more applications you’d like to add, please submit a comment and let me know.

Neo Office (http://www.neooffice.org)

Neo Office is a Mac OS X version of the hugely popular OpenOffice suite, the free, full featured alternative to Microsoft Office. (The latest version of OpenOffice itself (version 3) is now fully Mac native, but doesn’t yet have an authentic Mac OS X feel to the interface. For the moment, therefore, I prefer NeoOffice)

Fluid (http://fluidapp.com)

Fluid is a really clever idea. It allows you to create a standalone application from your favourite Web 2.0 site, complete with its own icon in the Dock or on the desktop. For example, you might create a standalone Google Docs application, or an application for your VLE or webmail. Once the application is open, the usual trimmings of a browser window have disappeared: there is no address bar or bookmarks list. Instead you’re left with the website behaving as if it were an application. In Windows, this idea is now part of Google’s new Chrome browser too.

A Flickr application, created using Fluid

Skitch (http://skitch.com)

Skitch is a tool for capturing screenshots. Add simple annotations and drop-shadows, resize the results (by simply dragging the corner of the document window) and quickly drag-and-drop to re-export the image ready for inserting into a document or uploading into a website or blog post. It’s wonderfully simple and intuitive to use. All of the screenshots in this post were captured using Skitch.

(At the time of writing, Skitch is beta software - at some point in the future, plasq may decide to charge for it).

RapidoWrite (www.app4mac.com/rapidowrite.html)

RapidoWrite is a tool for quickly “expanding” designated codewords/text snippets into a block of text. For example, with RapidoWrite enabled, I can designate that typing “loremipsum” generates five paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum filler text. (As someone who regularly demonstrates ideas for laying out webpages, the ability to “call up” realistic holding text so easily is invaluable). One other idea is to designate a term - say “creativecommons” - to add a standard credit message to an iMovie text box. Of maybe your students have a common structure for report-writing; simply assign a code snippet that rapidly adds this into a word processed document.

Marco Polo (http://www.symonds.id.au/marcopolo)

One for portable Macs, Marco Polo allows you to change a variety of system settings based on your physical location:

• Change the desktop background based on the wireless network (I use this to switch from a family photo at home to a corporate background at the CLC).
• Change the default printer for different locations
• Change network settings. I regularly move between several different wireless networks. Marco Polo switches the proxy server settings automatically as I move between them
• Automatically mount network drives at a given location

SoundSource (http://rogueamoeba.com/freebies)

A really simple little application that runs in your menu bar, Sound Source provides easy access to the Sound Preference settings. This is particularly useful in podcasting / film-editing work; you can quickly change the input/output device and the volume levels for each.

FlipSide (http://projectappletree.org/applications/Flipside/Flipside.html)

If you have BootCamp installed on a Mac (so that it can run Windows too) you know that to move from one operating system to another requires a reboot with the alt key held down on the keyboard. FlipSide removes the need for this. Click on it, select the Windows drive, and FlipSide will automatically reboot you to Windows.

DockSpaces (http://web.mac.com/patrickjamelo/dock.html)

The Mac OS X Dock holds all of you major applications in a single location for easy access. However, students may be drawn to click on software other than that intended … “ooh, I wonder what that program is” .. (I Can Animate’s gnome icon seems to be particularly effective at drawing distracted clicks)

DockSpaces allows you to have multiple, labelled docks. So, for example you might have a “Podcasting” Dock full of audio apps (GarageBand, iTunes, Audacity), or a “Stop-frame animation” Dock - iCan Animate, iStopMotion, iMovie HD.

For teachers with laptop Macs, DockSpaces is useful for labelling different Docks for different circumstances; I have three Docks - “Home”, “Office” and “Teaching”

ffmpegX (http://www.ffmpegX.com)

FfmpegX is a video conversion tool. It is very useful for converting Windows-based file-types (e.g. WMV files) into a format that iMovie will accept. (Ffmpegx is actually shareware - if you use it lots, you should donate. However, it is fully functional without donation).

JumpCut (http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net)

JumpCut is a multiple clipboard manager. When you copy an item into the clipboard, Jumpcut intercepts it and stores it. Thus you can copy multiple items without each overwriting the last. This is very useful for collecting information from the web, or for copying and pasting multiple bits of code.

Software with Windows versions

Lots of other popular pieces of Windows freeware have Mac versions too:

• Google SketchUp - 3D modelling (http://sketchup.google.com)
• Google Earth (http://earth.google.com)
• The Jing Project - record screen activity (http://www.jingproject.com)
• Firefox - the popular browser (http://www.getfirefox.com)
• VLC Media player - an absolutely essential tool on both Mac and Windows. Plays pretty much any video file format (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
• Smart Board Notebook software, for your interactive whiteboard (http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Support/SBS/NBSv10Mac.htm)
• Updated: Phun - a “2D Physics sandbox” - see blog article here