Tech Tips Tuesday

What does 1000 look like?

In Maths over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to build a better picture for students about what 1000 looks like. My pre-service teacher worked with them to create a poster containing 1000 grains of rice, and that got me thinking about other ways we could see 1000. I went to Google images and Flickr, but for many of the results, I didn't feel I could be sure there were 1000. We discussed this as a class and tried counting items in the images and then estimating from our counts. We discussed how great it would be if there were pictures we could rely on to give us an image of 1000.

So, we split into small groups and students created a plan for how they could represent a collection of 1000 items. We wanted to think of easy and cheap ideas that would be achievable within a few lessons. Some suggestions included:

• dots
• sheets of paper
• paper clips
• pencils
• Pokemon cards
• rocks
• paper-chain links
• pieces of Lego

Students worked on the plan and then used the support of other class members to pull it all together. These Flickr images are the result of our work:

I've created a Flickr group so that other people can add their own collections of 1000 items. Why not try this with your class?

Tech Tips Tuesday

I thought that today I would mention the tech tools and resources that I called on in my first week back at work. One of my challenges has been remembering what some of the online tools and resources are called, and after that finding that they have changed since I last used them! Some of the resources below were already being used by the teachers in the classrooms I share.

Information sources:
Talking Textiles - This contribution from "The Children's University of Manchester" provides interactive activities and quizzes that help students to develop an understanding of textiles including how they are made and decorated.

How the Body Works - This Kids Health site has movies, quizzes, articles, word finds and activities to teach students about the body systems. I used this with the Year 5/6 students who will be writing explanations of the respiratory system later this week.

Behind the News - This ABC program was used in both Year 3 and Year 5/6 to expose students to recent news and to create opportunities for discussion around current affairs.

Study Ladder - (previously Smart Kiddies - and wow, what an upgrade!!) I used this resource for interactive whiteboard activities for Maths lessons, but there are now activities in a great range of learning areas. Study ladder is free for all my purposes, but for more information on costs see the pricing chart.

Worksheets:

Math Drills - I used the free black line masters for fractions to use with my Maths class.

Classroom Organisation:

Super Teacher Tools - I used the Group Maker tool to create random pairings of students in my Spelling and Maths groups.

Lesson Design:

When creating interactive whiteboard pages for my lessons I returned to the Flickr Creative Commons for images to bring the pages to life.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This week's tip: Embedding your Photos with Ease

I've been using Blogger for a few years now (including my first blog New York, New York) and while I love it most of the time, I find it very frustrating when I want to add more than one picture. All the formatting gets messed up and I spend a good half-hour just trying to get the pictures to work for me.

On the weekend I wanted to upload photos taken at the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Australia, and rather than go through the struggle again, I decided to give Flickr the chance to solve all my problems! I uploaded my photos to my Flickr account and stored them all in the same set.

To embed the photos as a slideshow:

1. Click on the set.
2. View photos as slideshow by clicking the little slideshow image
3. After viewing the show, click the share option that comes up when you move your mouse over the picture OR While viewing, click the share option that comes up in the top right-hand corner when you move your mouse there.
4. Copy the embed code and insert it into the html for your blog or website.

I was really happy with how easily this could be done and with how nicely it presents on the page. (I also like what I did with Jing today - check out those cool red arrows!)

Thanks for popping by today!

Tech Tips Tuesday

I've been struggling over the last couple of days, trying to work out what to give you as a tip today. There's the USB TV tuner I bought the other day, which has been providing me with television - but that's not much use unless you need TV, and I'm not satisfied enough with one of the connector pieces to recommend the particular brand I bought. In fact, I'm tossing up whether to take it back to the shop - and fight the last-minute Christmas shopping crowds.

Then there's a cool painting program that was recommended to me by @teachernz on Twitter. It's called ArtRage 2.5 (the free version) and makes for a fun play with paint without all the usual mess associated with painting. This picture is my attempt at playing with paint this morning. See how paint like it is? It 'runs out' when you haven't 're-dipped' the brush and mixes with colours you paint over.

But what I really want to give you this close to Christmas, is something you don't have to install, or spend money on, or give a lot of thought to. Something simple and useful that you can come back to once the Christmas dust has settled.

This week's tip: Flickr in the Art Lesson

Often when teaching an art lesson, I want to provide my students with visual inspiration while they work. I've done this in the past with posters, photo books, or objects. Earlier this year I started accessing Google Images for relevant pictures to help students get ideas. The problem I found with this was that I had to click through the pages, or pull photos onto a slideshow prior to the lesson.

Later in the year, I discovered how Flickr could work for me. Simply type in the search item eg. 'geckos' and up comes all the relevant photos and videos. Click on the slideshow icon on the top right, and it will play through all the images. I can now set the slideshow going on the interactive whiteboard while students work at their desks, and if it comes to the end, one of the kids jumps up and sets it going again. You can set the slideshow to go at a pace you want, and if you want to pause it at any time you can. There are also descriptions written by the photographer that may add more information to the topic you are covering. A couple of my students found these photographs really engaging and created quite detailed artwork as a result.