Visuwords

Try the visual dictionary visuwords. Limited use but looks pretty. Probably most useful as a thesaurus.

Youthjet Talk

This morning I had the delight to share my thoughts on Web 2.0 and the new SACE to around 20 people at a Youthjet breakfast seminar.
Amazing to see so many teachers dressed and alert at 7.30am! For those present my powerpoint is on slideshare.

To see an example of what a plp blog may look like click here and steps to try and create your own (or instructions for your students) go here.

Graphs Alive!

Lies, damn lies and statistics. Gapminder.org gives you some amazing statistics presented in a brilliant manner. Watch Hans Rosling show you his baby on Ted.

A great starting point is the gapminder tutorial.

Picnik add-on for Firefox

I have blogged before about Picnik..a web 2.0 photoshop style app. Stumbled upon this post about an add on for Firefox... read about it here. Actually this whole blog is excellent, definitely worth a read.

CEGSA Conference

This annual conference is a great opportunity for educators to get together and get new ideas and learn how others are implementing ICT across the curriculum. My first workshop focussed on web 2.0 tools... tag galaxy, bubbl.us, slideshare, glogster, dipity and dvolver. If you want to check out some more, try picnik (a web 2.0 photoshop) and animoto, and of course blogspot, wikispaces etc etc.

If you want the handout for the first workshop click here

The second workshop was very full and very enjoyable. A quick tour of some resources... images, powerpoints and videos, then we got down to the point end - Stellarium. We covered all the basics then finished with watching a lunar and solar eclipse. Find the handout here.

Afterwards I was kicking myself I should have shown everyone that you can go to other planets etc. Select the object (those red cross hairs) and then ctrl "G". You can then look at the Earth. If you go to the Sun (not as hot as you would expect) watch Australia come into view (sun rise) and spin out of view (sun set). Then advance a week at a time "]" to watch the tilt of the Earth change with the seasons.

For all those people in my workshops thank you for your participation... just make sure you take the word back to your schools and share your knowledge with your colleagues. Perhaps run your own session and a staff or faculty meeting. Feel free to use my worksheets, powerpoints etc and modify them how ever you want.

Glogster Tutorial

Fast easy tutorial demonstrates how to use Glogster.




Get GLOGGING!

A teacher's adventures into cosmology

You may have noticed that my astronomy posts have disappeared from my blog... I have migrated all those blog posts to a new blog "A teacher's adventures into cosmology".




It's main aim is to trace my journey finding web pages, web tools and software to help teachers teach astronomy.

Google Earth in Action

Here is a great site with some ready to use activities in the classroom.

My fossils Bubbl.us

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Debate Web

http://debategraph.org - This concept map allows people (or your class) to participate in a public debate. Very appealing interface, loads of issues to put your point of view forward.