ICT Toolbox

Why we use Twitter – Alignment with Blooms Taxonomy

Anita Garnsworthy — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 21:11:16 +0000

Quandry – A Problem Solving Game

Anita Garnsworthy — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:15:17 +0000

Winner of the Game of the Year for the 2013 Games for Change Awards, Quandry is…

Quandary is a free, online game that engages your students in ethical decision-making and develops skills that will help them recognize ethical issues and deal with challenging situations in their own lives.

What is Quandary about?

Quandary, a free game for players aged 8-14, presents engaging situations about how to build a new colony on the planet Braxos.

In Quandary, players must make difficult decisions in which there are no clear right or wrong answers but important consequences – to themselves, to others in the colony and to the planet Braxos. In their interactions with other settlers in the colony, players must consider facts, opinions and solutions, just like in real life.

Though the game’s setting is a futuristic colony, the genuinely tough situations that players encounter are translatable to the ones they are likely to face day-to-day. The skills players develop while playing Quandary – such as critical thinking, perspective-taking and decision-making – will help them recognize ethical issues and deal with ethical situations in their own lives.

Quandary provides a framework for how to approach ethical decision-making without telling players what to think.

Find out more at the Quandry website...

Create a Podcast and share it with a QR Code

Anita Garnsworthy — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 21:01:00 +0000

Our Year 8 students are doing art evaluations and creating a gallery of paintings with QR codes that link to their podcasts of their evaluations. This is all being done on an iPad.

The basic work flow is:

Create the podcast in Garage Band
Send the sound file to iMovie and add the artwork
Upload the finished movie to Google Drive
Get the URL from Google Drive (make sure you have updated to the new version)
Use QRstuff.com to create a QR code for the podcast
Create the gallery poster (Pages, Postr or whatever App they like)
Share the podcast with the school community in their Google Drive

Vyew – Free Continuous meeting rooms for real-time & anytime visual collaboration

Anita Garnsworthy — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 08:13:28 +0000

Vyew allows you to meet and share content in real-time or anytime. Upload images, files, documents and videos into a room. Users can access and contribute at anytime.

Why use Vyew?

It’s easy – no installations.
It’s compatible – PC, Mac, Linux, powerpoints, documents, images, videos, mp3’s, flash files.
It’s FREE! – Our free version is free forever. Unlimited use with up to 10 people. What’s the catch? It’s ad supported.
Conferencing features – whiteboarding, video conferencing, screen sharing, Voice-over-IP.
Collaboration features – continuous rooms are always saved and always-on. Contextual discussion forums, voice-notes, track and log activity.

Find out more at vyew.com

STEM Resources

Anita Garnsworthy — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 06:16:02 +0000

CK-12 is a free portal with resources to support STEM subjects, particularly Maths and Science.

Click here to find out more.

TES Australia – free portal of resources

Anita Garnsworthy — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 10:23:11 +0000

Welcome to TES Australia. Share and download maths worksheets, primary lesson plans and kids’ activities to help teach general capabilities and the cross-curriculum priorities of the Australian curriculum, including literacy learning and Aboriginal studies.
Whatever stage or subject you teach, we have all the tools you need to be the best teacher you can be.

Click here to visit the TES Website

Pics 4 Learning

Anita Garnsworthy — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 19:58:20 +0000

Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos & images for classrooms, multimedia projects, websites, videos, portfolios, or any projects in an educational setting. – See more at: http://www.pics4learning.com

Emailing to Evernote More Effectively

Anita Garnsworthy — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 21:28:48 +0000

I really like it when a software vendor emails me something useful, it happens too infrequently – but these tips were great. If you’re a user of Evernote you probably know how to email directly into an Evernote Note. Did you know that you could state which notebook and even include tags as well? If not, this post is for you…

How to find your Evernote email address on a browser

Once you are logged in to go the top right hand corner and click your name and Account Settings

Then half way down the page you will see Email Notes to with an email address – you want to add this address to your contacts (I call mine Evernote Upload).

Sending a Note via Email

Now if I want to forward an email to my evernote account for later use or save document or even a website (better ways are available for websites) then I just email it to this address and it becomes a new note.

Specifying a Notebook

Just add @Notebook Name to the end of the subject line (replace Notebook Name with the actual title of your Notebook eg @eLearning would put it in my eLearning Notebook in Evernote)

Adding a Tag to the Note

After the @Notebook Name put a #tag eg #maths would put a “maths” tag on the note for searching later.

Setting a Notification

Add a ! to the subject line to add a notification eg if I want to receive a notification tomorrow I would include !tomorrow or !YYYY/MM/DD so !2013/09/03

Khan Academy Crash Course

Anita Garnsworthy — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 21:11:57 +0000

If you still think Khan Academy is just a bunch of Maths tutorial videos, it’s time for you to look again! I spent a great day last Thursday with our Maths department looking at the many features of Khan Academy and how it can be used to improve student learning.

These include:

exactly which questions a student is getting right and wrong
how long students spend doing a particular problem
their attempts at answering the problem
the problem solving strategies they used
whether or not they sought help via a video or just a hint to get them started
how to identify students who are struggling and
much, much more

If you are interested in learning more look at the Khan Academy website (there are teacher instructions under Coach > Coach Resources)

Or look at our blog post of instructions for the day.

There are also a wide variety of videos for subject areas other than Maths.

National Digital Learning Resources Network

Anita Garnsworthy — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 01:23:19 +0000

Portal of digital resources to aid in implementing the national curriculum

Here is a selection of digital curriculum resources from the thousands of items available through the National Digital Learning Resources Network (NDLRN). The sample demonstrates how NDLRN resources for Foundation to year 10 are aligned to the Australian Curriculum. It includes interactive learning resources and tools, film clips, sound files, photographs, maps and teacher support materials.

For teachers at my school you will need to access via Scootle.