Stop Disasters

This game is highly engaging, rich and informative. Stop Disasters is a game that allows the child to be the hero as they use strategies to save the planet. This website would be invaluable for upper primary humanities as it combines global awareness with geography. 

Sumdog

For somebody who needs to work on their maths like myself, this program was really great. Who would think that combining maths and sport would produce such an engaging learning tool? The guys at Sumdog, that's who. I could see this game being great to use as a reward for those who finished their work early, or as a tool to engage children with learning difficulties. Excellent stuff. 

Sketch Swap

This site was a great example of sites NOT to use with primary school children. The issue of personal security when using the internet is a very important issue and one that we have spent much time discussing. This website looks completely innocent and in my case above, was harmless. It works by you first drawing a picture and then you hit submit drawing. Somebody else's picture will then appear on your screen. These are unmonitored and could be of any content, hence the potential danger of this site. This serves as another reminder of the importance of carefully choosing which websites are used during lessons.  

Reasonably Clever

As the title suggests, this program is just that - reasonably clever. I did not find this site to be of overwhelming use. It was however a bit of fun and it's great to see know that things like this exist. 

Zimmer Twins!!!

Wow! I had so much fun with this program. This is similar to the Dvolver concept except it is completely child friendly. Zimmer Twins would be an incredible tool to use for grades 5 and 6 where they could turn a creative story into their own movie. This program greatly boosts self-esteem because it is so easy to create a movie of exceptional animated quality. I could play on this for hours! 

Build Your Wild Self

This program was a lot of fun! This program would be great to use as a get to know you activity at the start of the year. Each child could make a silly version of themselves then they could be printed out to brighten up the classroom. Another use could be in creative writing. The children could create their own crazy character then use that as the protagonist in a story. Whether used lightly or for in-depth learning, this activity will surely be a hit either way. 

Dvolver Movie Maker

If only free programs like this existed when I was in primary school! Before today, I had no idea that programs of this quality and level of engagement even existed. I found Dvolver fantastic because it only had a limited amount of choice for characters and set design. Often too much choice can create problems because children (and big kids like us) take too much time fiddling over meaningless detail instead of getting down to the meaty business of creating a story. This particular program would not be suitable for children as it contains inappropriate themes. Using it today has made me even more aware of the importance of triple checking content before using it in a lesson. 

Mermaid Story

Today we went onto the Dust Echoes website which holds a collection of very cool aboriginal animated stories. Presented with beautifully animated artwork accompanied by incredible music, this activity was one of the most memorable ones for me. As pictured above, we print screened vital stills in the animation to create a story board. This activity would be fantastic for grades 5 and 6 and the principles could be used with youtube clips or any digital video. Creating story boards from stills could be used for English, Art, Humanities, Science or any other possibility. This was a fantastic activity. 

Maths Fun With M&Ms

For today's activity we used excel. Like Publisher, excel is another example of how a basic and standard program can be used really cleverly in the class room. Today we counted how many m&ms were in a packet, created a table then turned that table into a graph. We were encouraged to present our spreadsheet well by using colour and pictures from the m&m website. Teaching children the basic skill of how to cut and paste is very important as it opens up a wide range of possibilities to make assignments look fantastic. I surprising had fun today with excel... or maybe it's just the chocolate talking!

Animal Sizes Activity

http://www.quia.com/pp/218156.html?AP_rand=1997432537

Here is another activity made on Quia. This activity could be fantastic to use for a variety of subjects for example: studying mass, weight and height in maths, looking at the animal kingdom in science or humanities or learning new vocabulary in English. This program is an example of how ICT can be applied through the whole curriculum.

Quia Quiz... Check it out!

Quia is an online educational resource for creating games, quizzes and more. It is simple enough for young children to be able to create their own quizzes. In class, we all made our own quiz then went around to other people's computers attempting quizzes on a wide range of topics. I found that actually writing my own questions was the more valuable and I learned more than doing other people's quizzes. This activity would be great to do with children as you could either relate it to a current topic, or use it as an individual development tool where students can share their own special interests with the class.

http://www.quia.com/quiz/2538646.html

Thailand Travel Brocher

This brochure was made in publisher. I had not used publisher for a long time and had forgotten how easy and valuable it is. As teachers we are always looking for the next new and flashy program to use, that sometimes we can forget how useful the simple and standard programs are. We also had a go with using the webpage design in Publisher which could be very handy for creating ePortfolios.  

Places I love in Australia!

This was my first attempt at using the program Inspiration. It was very handy! I love how versatile and easy to use it is. The uses for Inspiration would vary greatly. It would make an excellent student activity as well as being a valuable program for teachers to create all kinds of resources for lessons.