Quiz Buzzer is a new interactive whiteboard resource from TeacherLED. It’s perfect for running class quiz activities where you have two individuals / teams answering questions quickly. Children have to press their button as quickly as possible and answer before the coloured lights disappear. There are also alternative suggestions for using the resource on the TeacherLED site.

There are lots of other resources available at TeacherLED. Teachers can download an index for the resources to explore what is available and identify what might be useful for their lessons.

Many Year Six classes put on a performance at the end of the year to mark the end of their time at their primary school. Although the end of the academic year is still a few months away,  here are details of a new musical for those teachers who want to plan ahead!

‘Fame Idle is the story of three kids who are confused why everyone around them seem obsessed by celebrity culture and they are not. It’s a musical comedy with a moral message… “Fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.” It has a modern score and a witty script that follows Bobby, P.J. and Smudge as they discover what friendship means when faced with a chance of fame – but at what cost?’

Here is a video which highlights some photos and audio from the production:

Many schools have already put on their own performances of the musical and received extremely positive feedback. To find out more for yourself, visit www.fame-idle.co.uk.

ICT Games is a wonderful site with lots of interactive games and activities for primary children. The site is always growing and James Barrett, the creator, has produced some great resources that children can use at home or at school. Here are some links to a selection of them:

• Saucer Sorter – A counting stick for your interactive whiteboard… using the numbers to practise counting forward and backwards in steps… rearrange numbers and ask pupils to put them in the correct order… hide numbers with the star bar and get the children to say what is missing…

• Mummy Numberline – An interactive numberline for simple addition and subtraction.
• Counting Caterpillar – A wonderful game for KS1/2 pupils which requires them to order numbers.
• Count On Catapult – An exciting game which lets children practise counting on to the next 10.

• Change Exchanger – With three levels of difficulty, this game asks children to scan items on the checkout and calculate the amount of change that is needed.
• Editable Interactive Whiteboard Dictionary – An impressive dictionary which you can show on your interactive whiteboard, to support children with their writing.
• Day and Night – Learn how we get day and night by using this interactive guide.

James has also produced lots of ‘Bingo’ style activities covering a range of topics:

• Sound Bingo
• Letters and Sounds Blending
• High Frequency Word Bingo
• Science Bingo

This is just a small selection of the resources available at ICT Games. Teachers can use the planning guide which links the activities to the Primary Framework.

All of the games are fantastic quality, so schools are very lucky that they are available online for free. You can follow James on Twitter to see when he adds new resources to the site.

I’ve been a user of Memiary for a long time now. I use the site to record five things that I’ve done / achieved / want to remember each day. I also use the tool in my classroom… as a class, we spend a few minutes at the end of each day recording five things that we have learned or discovered during that day. It’s a great way of reflecting on the children’s achievements and helping them to remember each day’s events. Every now and again, we look back through the things that we have recorded and discuss what we wrote. I also use the service to make a display which shows our ‘memiaries’.

edu.memiary.com

I am now pleased to announce that there is a new version of Memiary, especially for education, which is supported by Teaching Ideas. The site has a number of additional features:

• Teachers can set up an account for themselves, as well as having individual accounts for pupils, allowing students to record their own list of five memories / achievements. Teachers can then see what their children have recorded.
• Teachers can change the question… so you could ask your pupils “What did you learn today?”, “What did you achieve today?”, “What were you proud of today?” or another question of your choice.
• You can jump back to previous ‘memiaries’ using a date picker or the random date tool. This is great for browsing around what you have achieved in the past.
• You can embed a widget on your school website / VLE which shows the ‘memiaries’ that you have recorded. Obviously, this makes your the content of your memiaries public, so ensure that pupils are aware of the e-safety issues.

Existing users of Memiary can import their memories into the new educational version. If you haven’t tried out the site before, now is the perfect time to explore. It’s quick, easy and free to register.

What did you learn today?

The Jewel of Muscat is a reconstruction of a 9th century trading ship that sailed the Maritime Silk Road from Arabia to China. The Jewel is currently recreating the spirit of naval adventure by sailing from Oman to Singapore. You can follow the journey of the ship and find out all about it’s creation on their website which has lots of videos, daily logs and photos from the ship, a real-time route map, and interactive games for children.

www.jewelofmuscat.tv

The site also features free lesson plans and fun class activities covering geography, history and technology for students aged 6-16 (appropriate for KS1, KS2 and KS3).

Practical Action are a development charity who are offering lots of free resources for schools, linked to their work in helping some of the world’s poorest people to transform their lives for the better.

www.practicalaction.org.uk/education

The Education area of their site has a wide range of content for teachers and pupils, including:

• Videos showing how designers make their sustainable products (useful for DT).
• A sustainability handbook for teachers of Design and Technology.
• Free posters, homework activities, wordsearches, classroom activities, videos and songs linked to renewable energy.
• A selection of experiments, demonstrations and activities which can be used to support work linked to climate change.
• Cross-curricular videos and lesson activities.

TES Connect currently hosts one of the world’s largest banks of teaching resources and lesson plans. At present, there are over 44,000 resources which can be downloaded for free.

The site is planning to expand further by adding significant amounts of content and launching dedicated resources destinations for teachers in their specialist areas: TES Primary, TES Special Needs and TES Secondary subjects.

www.tes.co.uk

TSL have also acquired i-board (www.i-board.co.uk) and made over 500 interactive whiteboard activities for KS1, Foundation, Primary and Special Needs available to schools and teachers for free.

The site is also planning to:

• Improve the search experience for teachers, organising over 18,000 existing primary resources and creating a further 1,000 Key Stage 2 digital whiteboard resources.
• Procure and host over 2,000 resources aimed at Special Needs.
• Add over 3,000 secondary teaching resources from englishteaching.co.uk to the existing resources on TES Connect.
• Add new Key Stages 3, 4 and A level, podcasts and videos from MrBartonMaths.com to the site and develop new mathematics resources.
• Collaborate with David Smith, creator of Brain Cells (brain-cells.co.uk) and The Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching (CIMT) to share content on TES Connect.

Following the creation of the Teaching UK iPhone application, I decided to investigate other apps that might be useful for teachers and schools. As well as finding some wonderful new applications, I also found lots of really useful iPhone+education related sites:

• Educate 2.0 is an application for teachers, giving them access to timetables, student data, teaching strategies and elearning tools. Find out more in this Youtube video:

• World Maths Day 2010 has a dedicated application which you can use to practise your Maths skills.

• iPhone for Kids is a wonderful blog which shares ideas and advice for ‘iParents’… those parents who want to give children opportunities to use their iPhones. It shares useful applications and offers advice, much of which will also be helpful for teachers.
• The Random Activity Generator generates thousands of learning challenges for students to try. There are over 50,000 combinations of activities.

• There are lots of language applications which would be useful for MFL classes. Free French Tutor is the most popular free education app at the time of writing this, but lots of other language apps are available.
• Don’t forget that podcasts are also a wonderful teaching tool for pupils, whether you are making your own or downloading / listening to those made by others.
• I also use these applications in my own classroom occasionally:
  • Ambiance – An ‘environment enhancer’ which lets you find / download / play a wide range of audio which can be played whilst children are working, or to set the scene as part of role play / drama activities.
  • Announcer – A fun app which lets you play announcements by the voiceover man from lots of popular TV shows. Some of them are not appropriate for use in the classroom, but imagine your pupil’s surprise when they hear ‘Ladies and Gentlemen… please welcome… that’s right… fabulous’ (etc) played out occasionally through your classroom speakers when connected to an iPhone.
  
  • Memiary – We use the online version of Memiary to record five achievements every day. This app lets you record this information using your iPhone / iPod (I’m also helping to set up a version of Memiary especially for use in the classroom so look out for information about this soon!).
  • eduTecher – A wonderful tool which lets teachers find (and share) useful resources and web tools that can be used in the classroom.
• BullyingUK have an iPhone app which shares the latest advice from the site for teachers, parents and pupils.
• Many schools are now developing their own applications for teachers, parents and pupils to use. Take a look at this example from Porchester Junior school.
• EducationApps produce a selection of mobile applications for teachers and students. At present, these cover GCSE Geography and AS Level Economics.

• In the iTunes App store, remember that there is a section for Education applications. There is also a special ‘Apps for Kids’ area at the moment which is worth exploring.
• Don’t forget the ‘Interesting Ways to use an iPod Touch‘ presentation on Ideas to Inspire.
• Here’s a useful presentation which gives advice for managing the iPod Touch in the classroom. Thanks to Ian Williams for sharing this on Twitter.

• Macworld have a HUGE list of Education apps, which have all been rated and reviewed.
• John Johnston is involved in a project to use iPod Touches in the classroom. Find out more on his blog.
• Adrian Bruce has shared 16 applications that can be used to support Problem Solving. Brighthub also have a list of the Top 10 apps to use in Maths classes.
• Eric Sailers has also produced a fantastic list of apps that could be used in education:

• Claire Barnes has suggested Labyrinth and Labyrinth2 which allow you to develop levels on the website and then download them to the device. She also recommends mathemagics, brain exercise games, word games (e.g. Textropolis and Boggle) and MP3 stories which can be played using the iPod.
• Finally, here’s a wonderful concept called ‘Phone Book‘. I’m not sure when or even if it’s available to buy, but it made me smile:

UPDATE – An ‘iPod Touch Conference‘ took place recently, allowing educators to discuss the use of these devices in education. The accompanying web site has lots of useful information, videos, links and discussions which are worth exploring. One of these includes a link to Apple’s own PDF guide to using iPods and iTunes for teaching and learning. Thanks to Julian Coultas for bringing this to my attention.

UPDATE 2 – I’ve also discovered an amazing Google spreadsheet which lists useful apps for different curriculum areas.

UPDATE 3 – Since writing this post, our school has received six iPod Touches which I’m planning to use in my own classroom. I’ve posted some initial thoughts about this project in a mindmap and PrimaryPad. I would love to hear your thoughts about these.

Do you know any useful iPhone applications that can be used in the classroom? Please let us know in the comments…

QuadKids is a new athletics concept designed to give more children the opportunity to participate in and enjoy the benefits of track & field athletics and also to identify the stars of tomorrow. The scheme aims to be inclusive, competitive, quick, fun and simple to run. It is a team based quadrathlon competition where each athlete does a sprint, a middle distance run, a long jump and a throw, and it is primarily targeted at pupils aged between 7 and 13.

www.quadkids.org

Find out more about the scheme in the ‘About‘ section of their site, or register to download information about running a Quadkids event at your school.

Plan is one of the largest child-centred community development organisations in the world, helping children and their families in 48 of the poorest countries to break the cycle of poverty. In the countries where they work, one out of five children die before the age of five, and the ones who survive often go hungry and have no chance of learning to read and write.

www.plan-ed.org

Plan also offer a comprehensive site for teachers which offers free teaching resources, video clips, photos, fact sheets and more, all linked to the countries where they work. You can also find out about the projects that Plan are supporting, as well as find out how your school can support the work that they are doing.