Primary Nuggets is keen to promote free software and resources and it was good to be reminded of the versatility of the free download Photo Story 3.
The reminder came from our colleague in Bristol, and Keith explains how he used it on his Blog ICT Teacher.
Why spend valuable preparation time reinventing the wheel when there are sites offering ready made resources for the interactive whiteboard? The files may not be exactly what you were looking for, but the downloaded resource can be used as a starting point and adapted to the needs of the lesson. The National Whiteboard Network from the primary strategy is probably the best starting point. It contains Smart board, Promethean board and PowerPoint files on Literacy, Numeracy and foundation subject units of work.
There are more resources for Smart boards at the Smart Education site.
Promethean have recently launched a new site called Promethean Planet to enable user to share resources. The Lighthouse for Education (North East Linconshire) also contains Promethean Flipcharts.
The Birmingham Grid for Learning have interactive resources that can be used on all types of boards.
National Whiteboard Network
Did you know that you can use Google searches as a conversion calculator? Just type in the amount and what you want it converted into e.g. ‘4 yards to metres’ and hit search! It will do it for a whole range of units such as pounds to dollars, inches to centimetres or even Gallons to teaspoons! click here
It will also calculate the time in different parts of the world by typing ‘time’ and the name of the city into search. e.g. time New York and hit search. click here
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra website contains a range of activities and information for children (and teachers) about composers and instruments.
The Music Room contains an Instrument Encyclopedia (on the piano) where you can hear individual instruments each play the same piece of music. Whereas in the teacher’s lounge there are fact sheets and information about composers.
Don’t be misled by the name of this website as there are lots of great resources for all primary school teachers at www.senteacher.org/
Especially useful is the Printables section which enables you to create a range of resources for literacy and numeracy lessons including number fans and wordcards. All the resources can be adapted before printing, so a certificate can be personalised very quickly and easily.
If children are searching for images, Google Images can come up with some inappropriate thumbnails even when quite innocent search terms are used and even with strict search on (to activate strict search click on ‘Advanced Image Search’ and next to ’safe search’ select ‘Use Strict Filtering’).
Instead try using freefoto which has a range of high quality photographs of places and objects. As there are no people in any of the photographs none of the images are inappropriate.
Supplied by FreeFoto.com
It used to be possible to drag and drop Freefoto images straight into software applications such as Textease or Smart Notebook. It appears that this feature is now disabled. Does anybody know why or how to enable it again?
For details on how to ensure that safe search is set on all computers in school please see the entry on ICT Nuggets.
Primary Nuggets 