Improvised interactive white board

Learnt this from Marc today - that there is an inexpensive and innovative way of creating an interactive whiteboard using a wiimote.

Exporting powerpointslides into window moviemaker

An easy way to convert powerpoints into video - just open up the powerpoint slides and then save the file as Windows metafile. A folder with all the slide images will be created. You can then open up window movie maker and then import the images. You can also add the pictures and music etc by dragging them to the timeline.

Google Doc translator

Another feature on Google doc which Mr Wong shared with us today - translating a page from one language to another. Click on create new document. Type or paste the article which you would like to translate and then click on "tools" followed by "translate document" and choose the language you want to translate it into. This is the translated document of an article from the news- not 100% grammatically correct but the meaning is there.

ICT tools

Mr Wong shared with us the following ICT tools today: http://voicethread.com/Post a picture and then invite people to comment and you can actually hear them.

Record video of onscreen action with the following software free from http://jingproject.com/

Ready made thinking guides - mind map templates etc http://www.exploratree.org.uk/

http://www.glogster.com/ - heard about blogging but glogging?

Create your own random text graphic - http://www.wordle.net/create One example which I had created for 4N2 2010 is as shown below - we can actually use it for the t-shirt design?

Make your own animated movie - just type in the script and see your character animated!

http://www.xtranormal.com/ - text to movie

Photo story 3 - free software which can create amazing slideshows http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

http://animoto.com/ - another free software for making videos

Heard of Youtube but teacher tube? http://teachertube.com/

Window movie maker

A very good video clip on how to use window movie maker from Youtube. Pay attention to how you can insert the pictures, music and the titles. You can enhance your video clip with transition effect. Just remember to publish your video by saving it as a movie file as shown in the last part of the video.
A Geography Project Task was given out to the students this year - to submit a 5 min video clip based on the river journey from the source to the mouth. The students also need to submit a short writeup with the synopsis (the content of your video) as well as credits given to your group members and the list of reference for the video. One example of a video clip can be found @ this link -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjZLAw_lgZ4 which is a similar project done by a group of students. For sounds of river or waterfall - you might want to download from http://www.jetcityorange.com/SoundFiles/nature-sounds.html Just right click on the icon next to the track and select 'save target as'. Some of you might want to mix the sound with another piece of music which you have - the trick is after you have publish and save the video clip, import it and then add in the new audio track - you can right click on the audio timeline to adjust the volume. As the file size is big - students were advised to make use of http://www.sendspace.com/ - just browse and upload the file and enter the email address of the recipient e.g. lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg. I can then retrieve the file from sendspace with the link sent. A reminder - DO NOT sent the project file (mmv) send only the movie file (wmv). The project file should be kept by you in case you need to make amendments. If you send us the project file we would not be able to see the video as the pictures and music are actually stored in your computer. We will only be assessing the end product which is movie file (wmv) which you have created.

gadgets for blog and webpage

You can refer to http://abowman.com/google-modules/ for more of these gadgets.

Freemind - mind mapping software

I downloaded freemind which is a free software and used it to create the mind maps for Geography - http://olevelgeog.blogspot.com/search/label/Mind%20map The software can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/freemind/ and I must say it is very user friendly.

Google Documents

I generated a survey form for 3n2 using google document- http://sss3n2.blogspot.com/2009/11/class-gathering.html I could view the responses on a spreadsheet and the data is also processed into a summary chart for me. The spreadsheet is definitely useful in helping me to collate the information which I need.

Compressing pictures in Microsoft Words and Powerpoints

Many of us are using a lot of pictures in our report or for our powerpoint presentations. This make our file size very big and poses a problem for us in storage and sendig them through the email.

One of the solutions which I will be showing here is to compress the pictures in the file. Open your document and click on one of the pictures. A picture toolbar will appear. If there is no picture toolbar, click on the top menu -' view' -'Toolbars' -'Picture', as shown on the image below. Then click on the icon to compress the pictures. After you had click on the icon to compress the picture, a pop-up box like the one below will appear: Select 'all pictures in document' and 'web/screen' then click on OK. A pop-up box will appear again - just click 'Apply".

Save your file again, maybe under another name and you will be able to see the difference in the size of the files before and after the pictures are compressed.

Useful links

3D text maker Gif image editor
javascript

Free animation and template for Powerpoint: http://www.animationfactory.com/ http://www.vtaide.com/voxproxy.htm http://www.soniacoleman.com/templates.htm

Games: 
http://www.shockwave.com/
http://www.english-online.org.uk/games/gamezone2.htm

Monja – create your virtual island http://www.monjakids.com/

Blog http://www.expedition360.com/

Blog template http://btemplates.com/blogger-templates/2-columns/

Craftwork 3D paper Craft

Informative
Fact Monster
School Discovery
Enchanted Learning
School Beans

Geography:
3D simulations on creating topographical maps - must see!
Geography of the world game Google Earth Check out the weather O level past year Geography papers
O level Geography Elective by Kheng
Geog Quiz continents and oceans
S-cool
Map resource from Dr Hobart King
BBC bitesize Geography

English English Grammar Roulette Game

converting files into pdf

Convert your documents e.g Words, Excel, Powerpoints into pdf format free online: http://www.zamzar.com/ https://www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp Just upload your file and the converted pdf will be sent to your email. By converting it to pdf format the file will be compressed (small in size and easy to be sent over email or uploaded to the web) and it is not so easy for someone to edit the file (e.g. the booklists which I had uploaded). This is very useful as for some competitions, the organiser actually request the files to be in pdf format.

Content Generator

I would like to recommend this free software which you can download to generate quiz. The quiz will be generated in the html and swf(flash) format. You can then easily upload it to your website.  The graphic is good and the 'Fling the teacher' Quiz is quite humorous.

http://www.contentgenerator.net/fling/default.asp
 

You can download the app from the website http://www.contentgenerator.net/fling/default.shtml
or here https://drive.google.com/file/d/17CC9IlGG6W7uszyYowhLTOlMK0Y9ojKh/view?usp=sharing

An example from a history teacher on WWII - http://markcallagher.com/fling-the-teacher/
I generated a quiz on river studies for the sec 1 using the 'fling the teacher' software here - http://lily_lee68.webs.com/River.swf

There are other free software such as a simple multiple choice generator, half-a-minute, space invader, match-up etc. Some more examples which I had created below:

Half-a-min quiz generator

You can download the app from the website
or here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ra2rJ3a0wT-T8Rq2MDYZ3gTWlW0eHGJa/view?usp=sharing
An example on global warming: http://www.sharegeography.co.uk/globalwarming.html

http://lily_lee68.webs.com/basicHalfamin.swf - the students have to guess the economic terms based on clues given.

Match it quiz generator

You can download the app from the website -http://www.contentgenerator.net/matchup/default.shtml
or here  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WQ29bA4WGYZrFNbIaMaEguQmy6Jl4jf3/view?usp=sharing

http://lily_lee68.webs.com/economicindicators.swf - a match-up game on economic indicators