Flickr August 28, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Various Subjects , add a commenthttp://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/
Talking of photographs, Flikr has got to be the best place to check out some amazing pictures. Creating an account and uploading your own is free but one of the best things I like about it is being able to look at what everyone else has put online. Flikr have a great feature where they pick out the most interesting photographs each day and some of these make great discussion subjects or creative writing stimulus.
Great British Design Quest August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Design & Technology , add a commenthttp://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/cultureshow/designquest/vote/
The BBC’s Culture Show and the Design Museum have been organising a vote to discover the public’s favourite British design icon. It’s about to reach the final stage with voting opening on the top 3 tonight. The Top 10 & Top 25 design icons are listed on the site above and they make interesting viewing. Many of the icons (and the information on the site about them) would provide an interesting starting point for discussions about design in D&T lessons in a similar way to the Icons website that I’ve mentioned in a previous Blog entry.
Education Media August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Assessment , add a commenthttp://www.educationmedia.org.uk/
If you’re involved (or interested) in assessment at any level then it’s worth checking out the new website set up by Chris McDonald in Liverpool. You need to register to use the site but once you do you can access the ‘courses’ which consist of useful resources, weblinks and forums where you can discuss all aspects of assessment.
Gorman and Wallace August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Fun (Teacher) , add a commenthttp://www.davegorman.com & http://www.dannywallace.com
Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace are two very funny guys whose books you should check out if you haven’t already. They mix humour, world travel and the strangest situations you could ever imagine to produce witty, informative and brilliant reads.
They first collaborated on the excellent Are You Dave Gorman? in which a drunken bet resulted in Dave and Danny scouring the world for other people called Dave Gorman. Dave’s second adventure saw him travelling the globe to attempt to meet a chain of googlewhacks in Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure (also now on DVD). What is a googlewhack? … click here.
Danny’s solo projects have included started his own cult (sorry, collective) in Join Me, creating and running his own country (as seen on BBC TV) and saying yes to everything in Yes Man.
Do yourself a favour and buy, borrow or steal (ahem… sorry, loan from the library) a copy of these books.
This is the last ‘half-term’ link before we get back to normal (which will undoubtably be a relief to those of you whose half term was last week anyway!)
Picasa August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Software , add a commenthttp://picasa.google.co.uk/
Picasa is one of my favourite free software downloads on the Net. It’s an image organisation program that keeps track of all your photos and makes it superbly easy to browse, print and share them. Download and install the program and it will get to work searching through your hard drive and rooting out all your photographs. You can organise them into folders, add captions and keywords and even send them off to be printed at online photo processing stores. It’s definitely worth checking out for home use and it can really help organise things at school as well.
Gadget Blogs August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Fun (Teacher) , add a commentUK Gizmodo: http://uk.gizmodo.com/
Shiny Shiny: http://www.shinyshiny.tv/
If you like your gadgets then there’s lots of great websites online that can keep you up-to-date with all the latest news and gadget releases. Two blogs that I keep an eye on regularly are Gizmodo and ShinyShiny.
Gizmodo is a huge site by the vnunet.com group and ShinyShiny has gadget news from a female point of view. Some of the gadgets and postings aren’t suitable for children so teacher’s only, please. 
NewsNow August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Fun (Teacher) , add a commenthttp://www.newsnow.co.uk/
NewsNow describes itself as the UK’s number one news portal and I’m not going to argue with that description. It automatically searches over 20,000 news sources for articles. You can view a newsfeed for hundreds of topics and it not only displays articles from national newspapers but also from local newspapers and carefully selected blogs/websites. Check out the education newsfeed by clicking here.
The Internet Movie Database August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Fun (Teacher) , add a commenthttp://www.imdb.com/
As it’s the half-term break for many schools in the UK I thought I’d do something different this week and feature links to some of the non-educational sites that I use on a regular basis. The first is the brilliant Internet Movie Database.
Ever wondered who was in a particular film? Want to know where you’ve seen a particular actor or actress before? This site has all the answers. The heart of the site is a huge database of what must be nearly every film ever produced commercially. You can search for film titles, actors, directors etc. Click on an actor/actress and all the films they’ve ever been in will appear.
Advanced searches allow you to do useful things like find which films two particular people have starred together in. It’s great to answer those niggling questions you get on occasions and even covers TV programmes as well. I use it all the time!
Primary Teacher UK August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : Blogs & Communities , add a commenthttp://www.primary-teacher-uk.co.uk/
Andrew Ross’ teaching blog is one of the sites that I check every day and if you haven’t paid it a visit yet then now is a very good time. Andrew has put together a copy of all the spellings in the KS2 SATs test which will be very useful for Year 6 teachers. His Simpsons target cards have been going down well with visitors to his site and he’s also done a review of our ‘Labours of Heracles’ teaching pack.
Webquests August 27, 2007
Posted by Gareth in : ICT , add a commenthttp://www.webquests.org.uk/
Bob Leake’s produced this site that allows you to easily create your own webquests (where students visit sites you’ve chosen to find out particular pieces of information). It’s free to use and there’s lots of activities already online that have been produced by other teachers. As with any activity of this kind always check out the sites before your students use them.
