Tools, Sites, Apps and Stuff you have to read w/c 17th March 2012

Each week my Flipboard app, Twitter responses and Google reader deliver a collection of new web tools, apps, books and must read articles.

Here is this weeks Stuff I have seen:

Bible Buddies App

I love Puppet Pals and have enjoyed using it to bring play scripts alive this year. By chance the boys and I discovered Bible Buddies, which is made by the same people who brought us Puppet Pals. Bible Buddies is basically Puppet Pals but with Biblical Characters, though it should be said most of these are in-app purchases. Here is Leo and Charlie’s versions of Jonah and the Whale made with the app.

Jam with Chrome

If you have seen digital music in action on Garageband on iPad but you don’t have iPads, then Jam with Chrome maybe a viable alternative. You have a broad range of instruments, collaboration with others, autoplay and funky effects all via Chrome. Another reason to ensure your school machines has Chrome installed as well as Internet Explorer.

Whitecap – Visuals for your Disco

Last Saturday, I helped a friend out by resurrecting my old DJ skills and DJ equipment. Though things have moved on since my hey day behind the decks. You can see in the picture what my set up used to look like, last week the CD players were replaced by 2 iPads, Spotify playlists and a laptop running Youtube. I had a projector to show video clips, but when these were not running we used Whitecap. I had not seen this Windows download before and I was really pleased with how well it worked. Essentially Whitecap produces visuals in response to music it detects via your computer microphone. Think the fractals you get from Windows Media Player visualizations, but with more control by you.

Hackasaurus Video from Ian Addison

I love Hackasaurus and the more I use it with classes the more risks they and I take with it. If you have not seen it before then take a look at Ian’s video which gives you an idea of how to use it. Hackasaurus works as both an insight into html and an uber writing frame, which is how I have been using it, presenting children with a BBC News web page and asking them to change the news to fit in with a local or topic based story.

Anyway here is one of Ian’s under ten minutes videos which make tools like this more accessible.

Raspberry Pi and other unofficial Manuals

Makeuseof.com have created another one of their fantastic free help guide/manual thingys. This time they have created a guide about the Raspberry Pi. Aside from this guide you can find a range of other helpful guide on their site including Google Analytics, Gmail and Evernote.

Related articles

• Tools, Sites, Apps and Stuff you have to read w/c 11th March 2012 (antsict.wordpress.com)
• IPad supporters tout student engagement, but effect on achievement unclear (islandpacket.com)
• Puppet pals 2 (ipadschurchdown.wordpress.com)
• Puppet Pals 2 (engagetheirminds.wordpress.com)

More iPad Helpsheets

 

As I am doing some training for Teaching Assistants, I needed to make some help sheets PDFS.

I used a mixture of Skitch and Pages for iPad to create these and I do hope they are of use to you.

Do keep in mind that they are created for basic users and they are version 1- feedback and amendments are always welcome

I am adding these to a growing collection on the downloads section of the site.

Creating Trailers with iMovie for iPad

iPad Guided Access

Using safari to Search

App of the Day: Name Dice

I had been looking for a random name generator in order to help with my questioning and pupil section  Though I did find a reasonably good app to do the job I found something else along the way. Name Dice is a handy utility for composition in Literacy. Basically it generates names, which your pupils could use in their story writing. As the app generates so many possibilities it will go some way to helping with original and unique writing in my class, as at least all of the characters will be different.

 

Try it – it is free and I think a handy utility for either full on story writing or as a starter activity.

Related articles

• Story Dice: app for storytelling fun (boingboing.net)

22 Hours to Go – time for a quick App of the Day

My Blog clock/ countdown thingy tells me there is just 22 hours to go until Teachmeet iPad. I am thrilled that this event is almost with us. I look forward to posting links, videos and a range of stuff from the evening here on the blog over the next few days.

Thank you to everyone who is involved in whatever capacity.

Time for a very quick App of the Day – it has to be Video Star.

This is a free app which give you the power to create music videos. Or to put it another way it allows you to film some footage to accompany songs in your iTunes library. Except while you film you have the ability to add some free and in app purchased effects.

This is the downside of the app in that you can not do anything until you have added some music from iTunes, though there may well be a workaround I am missing.

I think this app would come into play during school talent shows or end of year performances. Here the talent being judged could move beyond just the singers or dancers and give due respect to the geeks carrying the iPads.

Leo and I had a brief play with this app earlier this week and we almost made an MTV blockbuster using his favourite choon!!

Clearly  we have a way to go yet and  next time we film I need to ensure Dylan doesn’t wander into shot and ensure Leo knows all the words!!

My apologies to Flo Ryder

Related articles

• Teachmeet Ipad Update (antsict.wordpress.com)

We are Games Makers

 Today I have been planning my year 6 ICT, basing our work on the Switched On ICT “We are    Games Makers” unit. The plans in Switched On are throughly written and contain all you need  to plan and teach a rigorous set of lessons and assess the pupil within each block of work. However, things are flexible enough for you to build on the original documents and use different software to that which they suggest. What’s more they actively encourage you to build in extensions and  take alternative routes through the units.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

To download a pdf of all of these cards click here

With this in mind I have extended the printed unit to include 2D platform game design using 2DIY. If you have not seen 2DIY, then you have missed out on an accessible and yet wide-ranging game creation tool. 2DIY was created by Max Wainewright , who  was keen that children had the opportunity to begin to experiment with scripts and variables. And so, with 2DIY children can easily create games in a short period of time. (During one lesson I taught,a group of Year 6 girls had a pretty impressive maze game built-in a bout 15 minutes.) Following this the children could move on to a more challenging plain, by exposing and altering some of the variables in the action script of their game. As shown in this rather quiet video put together during my time at 2Simple.

You can see lots of examples of these scripts and how to change them on the 2DIY archive run by Simon Widdowson. Alongside Simon’s examples, I worked with Nicholas Hughes of the  Redbridge Games Network and the art team at 2Simple to draw out these handy reference cards (see slideshow above) ,as a reminder of how to use script to create a “power up” for example. These would look great enlarged and blue tacked up in an ICT room.

To download a pdf of all of these cards click here

If you are in need of inspiration, then I urge you to watch Nicholas show off what some of his younger learners did with Action Script at Bett this year.

Related articles

• My little game (littlemarichris.wordpress.com)

AppShed – Get your class making their own Apps

By far the highlight for many of us at the NAACE Hot House event earlier this week was the presentation by Torsten Stauch from Appshed.com. Torsten put a good deal of effort into his presentation  and made every attempt to show linkage between his online tool for making free web apps and the new NAACE Framework.

Though his talk was interesting and a good attempt at linking curricula with product, it was the tool itself that excited us. It slowly dawned that this was a powerful and easy to use application that allowed users to drag and drop elements to form a usable and very credible web app. 

While Torsten spoke I tried this out and within ten minutes had made a daft but credible app that displayed a Youtube video in one tab, some news in another and a flickr photo set in another. All done by dragging and amending existing modules/ extensions from Appshed’s growing library of web building blocks.

Let’s be clear Appshed lets you and your pupils create a web app – that is a mini/mobile website in essence.  You can create an icon which you can choose to pin to the front screen of your phone or Ipad and essentially run this as a website or webapp on your Android, Iphone, Ipad or Blackberry Device. This amazingly is free! However, if you want to publish your app and package itdo that ready for an app store or market place, then you will be charged.