Archive for the 'Best of the Web' Category

Enhancing creative writing (Part 1) - Creating a context

Over the last couple of months, there have been a number of articles popping up in my RSS newsfeeds in Google Reader, or shared via Twitter, that share a common theme: how can software and web tools support creative writing and story-telling?

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: Read the rest of this entry »

filed under Best of the Web and Software and Views 2 comments December 16th, 2008 Richard Anderson


Exploring science with Web, Media and Simulation technologies

On Monday, I worked with Year 9 students from The Northicote School in the first day of a three day project focussing on Science and Maths.

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

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filed under Best of the Web and Software Add comment November 21st, 2008 Richard Anderson


Wordle.net - Create Word Clouds online

Wordle.net is an online tool for creating “word clouds”. A word cloud is a visual representation of words in a piece of text, in which words are sized according to the frequency in which they appear. Here is an example, based upon the current content of the RSS newsfeed from the CLC website. (What is RSS? - BBC Website)

wordle_words.jpg

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filed under Best of the Web Add comment November 20th, 2008 Richard Anderson


Fun with Phun - 2D Physics Sandbox

phun.jpg

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.

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filed under Best of the Web and Software Add comment November 10th, 2008 Richard Anderson


40 Beautiful Free icon sets

icons.jpgIf you’re ever in need of some beautiful icons / graphics for a web design project, desktop publishing, or to smarten up a Powerpoint or Smart Notebook presentation, then check out this collection of beautiful free icon sets:

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filed under Best of the Web Add comment November 4th, 2008 Richard Anderson


Secondary School eSafety videos

During the year 2008-2009, the CLC is working with every Secondary School in the city to deliver sessions to students and staff focussed around eSafety (Read more here). The sessions are based around the CEOP ThinkUKnow training, a structured programme of resources and video materials aimed at students aged 11-16. The key messages of the ThinkUKnow training are:

  • How to have fun
  • How to stay in control
  • How to report a problem

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filed under Best of the Web and Session Resources Add comment October 20th, 2008 Richard Anderson


Key Stage 3 Transformation Session Resources

On Monday afternoon, I participated in a session at the CLC on the ongoing transformation of the Key Stage 3 curriculum. I led a session on using technology to enhance learning and teaching. Lindsay Coleman, Secondary Headteacher Consultant, delivered a session on current eLearning initiatives in Wolverhampton. Finally, Rebecca Orszulan from Trinity Primary School shared some of the exciting work going in the school, work which has just seen the school being awarded the Runners-Up prize in the prestigious BECTA ICT Excellence Awards in the Best Whole School category.

After my session, a number of people asked if I could email details of the websites and software I had mentioned. In the best tradition of Web 2.0, I decided to publish them here instead! Where I’ve given an external web link (i.e. other than on the CLC website) I’ve written out the url in full, so that a printed version of this post will be a usable resource.

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filed under Best of the Web and Session Resources Add comment November 23rd, 2007 Richard Anderson


Wikipedia for schools

Wikipedia is a great (OK, unbelievably incredible) resource, but as anyone who uses it regularly knows, not all of the content is entirely suitable for educational use, either because it is more adult in nature, or too complex or expansive to unpick for school use.

Now we have the 2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection, a collection of Wikipedia articles that would amount to a 15-volume encyclopedia, handpicked for their relevance to the UK National Curriculum.

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filed under Best of the Web Add comment November 4th, 2007 Richard Anderson


The web, your way - Yahoo Pipes

I’ve written before on the blog about the power of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) in allowing us to automatically receive new content from our favourite websites:

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filed under Best of the Web Add comment October 6th, 2007 Richard Anderson


Great Links - October 2007 - Picnik, Zamzar and VoiceThread

Some great links I’ve collected over the last couple of months:

Picnik - online image editing

Picnik is a fantastic online image-editing application. You can upload images from your computer, or pull images into Picnik from Flickr, Facebook or Picasa. It even allows you to search Flickr for photos from inside the web application, narrowing your search down to Creative Commons images if you wish (so that you can legally modify and redistribute derivative works). Once you’ve opened up an image, you can perform basic image manipulation on it from inside your browser - crop, rotate, resize, brightness, contrast - and more sophisticated changes like removing red-eye, or sharpening the image. There are even some nice effects - black and white, sepia, vignette, frames and so on - that you can apply to your image, and text and diagram tools to annotate your pictures. Once you’re done you can reexport back up to Flickr or download to your computer.

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filed under Best of the Web Add comment October 2nd, 2007 Richard Anderson


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