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Archive for the ‘Useful websites’ Category

Wonderwheel and teachmeet

13 Feb

This is something we picked up from one of the teachmeet events (TES Article).

(here is a recorded teachmeet video).

It is a Google feature that has been around since 2009 and yet we did not know about.

You know the situation – you ask a student to do some homework on a fairly generic subject  such as ‘computing’. So they go into Google and type in the search term ‘computing’.

Result: 149 million hits.

Now one option is to use the ‘Advanced’ feature to refine the result. But did you know about the ‘wonder wheel’?

Open Google with Firefox and enter the search term ‘computing’.  As well as the usual list of hits, notice the items on the left hand side that include the clip below

Click on the ‘Wonder Wheel’ option and a mind map type of graphic appears that shows related search results. The student can then click on the branches to find more specialised results. It certainly seems a more user-friendly way of searching than the l boolean and other filtering methods of Advanced search.

Here is a Wonder Wheel of computing

 
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Posted in Internet, Useful websites

 

YouTube and ViewPure

30 Jan

If you have access to YouTube in school then it can be an invaluable source during lessons for demonstrating skills or providing further information about a particular topic.

Whilst many of the videos are excellent what has often put me of using them in the classroom is the large number of inappropriate comments left by other users.  No matter how careful you are when projecting the video clip onto your whiteboard the comments often get seen by other students before you can put the video to full screen mode.

ViewPure is a site that will help overcome such problems.  You can either paste in the YouTube url that you wish to view and view the videos without any comments, suggestions or advertisments.  If you find it to be a useful tool you can add the ViewPure button onto your bookmarks toolbar and when you see a video you want to play all you need to do is click the button whilst on the YouTube page.

 
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Posted in Useful websites, Video editing, Web 2.0 tools

 

Open Clip Art Library

12 Jan

Trying to find copyright free images can often pose a problem both for teachers and students. 

Today I came across the Open Clip Art Library website which is definitely one that you should think about bookmarking. 

There are currently over 37,000 royalty free (copyright free) clip art images available on the site.  The images are stored in clearly labelled categories and there is also a search facility if you can’t quite find what you are looking for.

If you happen to be a bit nifty with designing clipart images then you can support the website and upload your own creations which will then be available for others to use.

You can find the site here

 
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Posted in Graphics, Useful websites