The Little Book of Superb ICT

vol.2

to enhance

Teaching & Learning

in the C21 classroom
By Mark Anderson @ICTEvangelist

The Modern Classroom

Preface:
Dont get me wrong as a teacher of the subject for over 15 years I am a firm believer in the subject of ICT; the study of computing, programming, hardware, software, media, communicating, web design, graphics, music technology all of it. It has a worthy place in the curriculum ranking for me as one of the most important subjects in a School. Thats why, I believe, ICT should not only be taught as a discrete subject but also embedded and practiced in every area of the curriculum too alongside literacy and numeracy. Good use of ICT not only enhances experiences for students, but the outcomes they generate too. That said though this Little Book comes with a health warning use these tools wisely. Just because they might look cool technology must be used to enhance learning by being carefully practiced and embedded within sound learning plans. This Little Book, an update on my first version,

contains tried and tested sites1, plus other tools that can enhance the teaching and learning that takes place in your classroom, irrespective of the subject you teach. I hope you get as much use and success from using these examples in your lessons as I do.

Mark Anderson aka @ICTEvangelist www.ictevangelist.com

Some by me, others crowdsourced

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Pixton - http://www.pixton.com/uk/
Quite simply the best online comic maker out there. Free 30 day trial although pricing is competitive for education. Fun, quick and easy to use. Edit the shape & position of each comic panel and character / element. Collaborate with others easily too. Just remember if using within a class project to save the completed comics to PDF for printing/sharing2.

Piktochart

www.piktochart.com

This site, particularly useful EVERYWHERE, enables users to easily create infographics3 on topics of their own choice. This has limitless opportunities in every subject area, and also for management too. Want to create a motivational poster for students? Piktochart can do it. Thanks to Jon Tait @teamtait for this brilliant example alongside. Taking information and putting it in a visual form can be exceedingly powerful and a brilliant learning tool too. If youre looking for a good example, look no further than the Debtris video compiled by informationisbeautiful.net http://youtu.be/qqOJTwI3oVQ
Thanks to @elearninglaura for putting me on to this tool
2 3

Thank you Tait Coles @totallywired77 Recommended blog http://infernaldepart.com/why-infographics-are-a-fad-in-andCompiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

out-of-my-classroom/ by Chris Allan @infernaldepart

Socrative www.socrative.com
Quite literally one of my favourite tools online at the moment. Not only can you utilise ICT within suites, but you can also turn to the devices students have of their own. Working on any web enabled device and in any browser, Socrative enables you to create a number of different online quizzes. As teacher, you create your quiz which can take literally minutes. Questions can be asked in an open ended/short answer, multiple choice or true/false, setting. Students then simply log on your teacher room and you start the quiz. For AfL it is brilliant, it motivates students and the immediate reports on student success via email or on screen, immediately shows areas where students need to focus their learning. Its free and there are lots of pre-made quizzes out there too, e.g. TES Science GCSE http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6193929

SlideRocket
http://www.sliderocket.com/ SlideRocket is a free online presentation tool. Students love it as it is visually appealing and has a number of tools over other presentation tools, such as easy embedding of YouTube videos and live Twitter feed options. As well as being able to view, work and share online SlideRocket presentations are also downloadable and can be viewed on iPads using the SlideRocket viewer app. Also if using Chrome as your browser, SlideRocket is available as an app that will just run within your browser with single sign on using your Google account. Example presentation: http://portal.sliderocket.com/ANQWK/TeachMeet-Example-Presentation
Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

PodOmatic- http://www.podomatic.com
Record, upload and host podcasts with 15GB bandwidth for free. You can upload podcasts of any description. I have seen the site being used as the basis for a school radio station with various podcasts that students subscribe to. Imagine as a teacher, you make your own podcasts to support learning in your lessons and your students just subscribe to them via iTunes, getting their new broadcasts automatically. Superb.

Telescopic Text http://www.telescopictext.org/

Tool to facilitate writing by expanding on words to produce a more descriptive text. A great tool to help build literacy skills and vocabulary. A good example is the one found here: http://www.telescopictext.org/text/KPx0nlXlKTciC

Polldaddy http://polldaddy.com/ & Poll Everywhere

http://www.polleverywhere.com/ These two sites enable you to create online surveys and polls for voting, audience responses which enables instant feedback in the classroom or for example, mass brainstorming.

AnswerGarden http://answergarden.ch
This works by setting a question in an online environment and then students responding to that question in no more than 20 characters. Great for brainstorming and getting feedback from students in a lesson. E.g. http://answergarden.ch/view/29295 by @SheliBB

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Wolfram Alpha
A computational knowledge engine

www.wolframalpha.com that enables you to search for information and get results in a completely different way to how you would normally receive them from a search engine. Taking your search string, Wolfram Alpha will answer questions related to Maths; type in ingredients from a meal and it will give you the nutritional information for that meal. It really is an amazing research resource. Ideas for use: Food technology nutritional values Supporting Maths learning The history and meanings of words in English

For more info on the history behind the project and how it works, view the video on this page: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

Microsoft Mouse Mischief

Mouse Mischief is a free plugin to Microsoft PowerPoint that allows you to create multiple mouse quizzes embedded within a PowerPoint presentation. All you need are lots of mice, plenty of USB ports, a quizzy imagination and you have an amazing plenary opportunity to use in your lesson that incites competition amongst your students and improves learning. Its definitely AfL in a new and interesting way.

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

The Mouse Mischief plugin works in PowerPoint 2007 & 2010. It can be downloaded directly via this page: http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/ You can get some free quiz examples and find out more information on the Plugin direct from this page: http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/engb/lessons.aspx

Lulu, Issuu & Scribd

These three examples all enable a very similar outcome they all enable you to publish your own works. They all give slightly different features and I will summarise below, but using these sites I have experienced the power that giving students a global audience can have on their work. Knowing that they are going to be making something that could potentially be viewed by millions really does make them focus on making their work the best it can be. http://issuu.com/ and http://www.scribd.com/ are both great as separate resources for two main purposes publishing works of your own, electronically, and reading the works of others in areas that are of interest to you. Both Issuu and Scribd allow you to not only view your works via their site, but also using their own embedding options, allow you to embed your works in other locations too, such as within your School blog or on your Schools website. http://www.lulu.com/ differs from the others in
Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

that from here you can actually publish your own physical copy of your work. Want to publish your collection of poems? Thought you would like to publish your own work of fiction? Lulu can do it for you and not just literary works. It is well worth checking. How would your Year 11 English class like to have their short stories collated in to a proper book for them to keep forever? Do you think your students would do their best work then?

Tagxedo -

www.tagxedo.com

Now, I talked about Tagxedo in my previous Little book but it is simply such a brilliant tool, I wanted to revisit it again. If youd like a how to use video on Tagxedo, I urge you to visit the brilliant www.undertenminutes.com site and watch the video found there. Tagxedo is a brilliant Tag Cloud generator, with so many features which make it the superior alternative to Wordle.net such as, automatically generate word clouds based upon: Search terms Twitter IDs URLs RSS feeds

Plus each word cloud can be formatted with different fonts, colours, orientations; with the best formatting feature being that you can make

your Word cloud any shape that you desire. Tagxedo rocks!

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Blockposters

www.blockposters.com

This site is simple and effective. It allows you to create any size wall posters from any image. Simply upload an image from your computer, choose how many sheets wide you would like it to be printed. Once youre happy download the PDF with the images embedded and print each one massively blown up. Nice!

Psykopaint -

www.psykopaint.com

Psykopaint is an online tool that can bring new life to photos and images that you have in your image collection. There are how to demonstrations you can watch to show you how to use the site, but it is really intuitive and youll be enhancing your photos in an interesting and creative way in no time. What particularly caught my eye were the

different brush techniques that you can apply in the style of different famous artists. I thought that using Psykopaint would be a brilliant way to give students a successful first try at creating artwork in the style of a famous artist, without necessarily having to have all of the skills required in order to achieve a meaningful result. Either way, it gets my thumbs up. Well worth checking! Thanks to @timrylands for putting me on to this one

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Glogster www.glogster.com
This site allows you to make an interactive poster quickly and easily, where you can combine images, text, music and video. There are free individual private accounts which can be set up too, although some of the premium features are not available. Definitely worth a look though lots of educational examples on the site to inspire learning and creativity.

Popplet www.popplet.com
A free mind mapping tool, Popplet has lots of relevance in the education space. Enabling mind maps to be made and shared, with the ability to embed videos straight from YouTube, the ability to draw within nodes, download maps in presentation mode which zooms from node to node. There are lots of possibilities. You name a mind mapping activity you can do it here.

Screenr - http://screenr.com/
There are lots of tools out there such as Camtasia (not cheap), Jing (limited features & sharing options, although really good for taking and saving screenshot images) for creating screencasts. Screenr though is my highest recommended free tool for this purpose. Simply click the record button, capture your screen and your voice (microphone needed for this) and then share the link. It is as simple as that. Perfect.

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

GoAnimate - http://goanimate.com/
Create a Video Animation Online. GoAnimate videos are quick and easy to make and professional looking too. They're particularly good for subject areas where students are being asked to present findings. They're also particularly useful in an MFL context.

Timetoast - http://www.timetoast.com/
Create interactive, visual timelines, and then share them on the web. This site is brilliant for keeping research notes or home works and then using them to display to classmates, teachers and more. Fab. A good example is the history of MTV here: http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-history-of-mtv

CheckThis http://checkthis.com
Ever wanted to create or have your students create a website to represent some work or research? Then look no further than CheckThis. I defy you to not be able to create something within 5 minutes. It is super simple to use, has some great features, such as built in polls, import images, fonts, colours, so forth and so on. It is brilliant and again supremely easy to use. Heres one I made earlier: http://checkthis.com/l5g2
Thanks to @andyhutt for putting me on to this one!

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Spicy Nodes http://spicynodes.org

I love mindmapping I think its a brilliant way to ask students to organise their thoughts, their work, their revision, their planning, their everything... It is superb. For colleagues too, Spicy Nodes is a really good and engaging way to share resources with students or even to organise Schemes of work/learning or Lesson Plans. It. Is. Brilliant!! I strongly urge you to try it out. It has considerable extra features when compared to the popular alternatives such as Bubbl.us and Popplet.com and, whilst they are useful, they dont come close to the power of Spicy Nodes. Check here for a great example: http://bit.ly/spicynodesscience Thanks to @timrylands for putting me on to this one too

People often ask me where I find all of these great sites and tools. I have to say that a large number of them come from what I see, read and hear via my networks on Twitter. That said, probably the most significant number of them come from one person Martin Burrett @ICTMagic His Wiki: http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ is simply bursting with brilliant tech ideas linked to all subject areas. If youre hungry for more or want something that I havent covered here, then hes your man. In the meantime you can find me on Twitter @ICTEvangelist or you can visit my blog http://ictevangelist.com for Teaching & Learning ideas, iPad pedagogy and other technology related goodness.

Mark Anderson
Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Compiled by M Anderson all sites tested for usefulness. They are very useful! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.