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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

 

What do they know?

09 Feb

The Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2000 but didn’t come into full effect until 2005.  It is an important Act that has enabled us as individuals to access official information from over 100,000 public bodies and organisations.  This information can include things such as e-mails, minutes of meetings, research, reports or bids for contracts.

Most A level syllabuses require that students learn about this Act but trying to excite and interest students in any of the essential Acts can at times be an uphill struggle. 

However, there is a website called whatdotheyknow.com which allows people to explore the FoI requests made to UK government departments and public authorities. 

How about setting your students the task of trying to find the most bizarre FoI requests?  Here are a couple of suggestions you can use to demonstrate this idea:

- How much the BBC spends each year on chocolate digestives Click Here

- How many soft tissue toilet rolls the BBC uses each year  Click Here

One of the problems with the FoI Act is the cost to the organisation of having to deal with so many requests and in particular obvious time wasting requests. 

You could set a second task asking your students to find the most bizarre time wasting requests.  Here are a couple of examples you can use to demonstrate this to students:

- How many employees at the BBC have stated their religion as Jedi?   Click Here

- What percentage of the BBC license fee is spent by BBC employees on illegal drugs?  Click Here

Whatdotheyknow.com

 
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Posted in Freedom of Information Act

 

Could the Internet be shut down in the West?

07 Feb

Unless you have been on holday on a desert island (I wish), you cannot have missed the 24 hours media coverage of the developments in Egypt.

Notwithstanding the political developments, what has become apparent is that the Internet in Egypt was shut down for some days.

But could a government, say the USA, shut down the Internet? The answer seems to be yes. And plans are afoot to make it law that it is able to do so.

In Egypt, there are only a handful of ISPs and it seems they were told to effectively re-program their main routers so no IP traffic could find its way into the country. Traffic is directed through a router by a protocol called ‘Border Gateway Protocol’ or BGP. A quick change to the routers and the country became an Internet black hole.

Senators in the States are now pushing for legislation to have their own  ‘Internet off switch’, one that may give their government authority over privately owned computer systems.  Is this a good thing?

There has been such a furore over civil liberties that a statement has been issued to refute the implication.

It seems the Internet is now right at the centre of our democratic process in the West.

This could be a topic of discussion when discussing Society and ICT.

 
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Posted in Ethical issues, Government, Impact of ICT, Internet, Social effects of ICT

 

UK – Film and Game leaders (if we only knew)

04 Feb

Have you  seen the latest billion-dollar action film lately?

Of course you have.

But are they all the creation of Hollywood, Japanese? – answer No!

They are very much British,  in the sense of their special effects. The UK is a world leader in visual effects.

Problem: UK school children have no idea that there is an UK industry out there wanting their special skills,  needed for film / video computer effects.

Recent survey asking about some famous films:

Film: Harry Potter, Inception: less than 1 in 10 knew the effects were made in the UK

Video Game: Grand Theft Auto, Singstar and Lego War. Less than 1 in 30 interviewed were aware that they were made  in the UK

The money made with those films and games dwarfs the money made from the entire music industry. It is as serious as the traditional mega industry of car making.

So there is an effort in place to try and highlight the opportunities that this affords.

NESTA is trying its best to have an effect on the UK curriculum as this is the seed corn of any new industry.

I recommend looking at their entire video clip to explain the opportunity

Last voice clip, child: “I’d like to be a game creator.” She has a point

 
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Posted in Computer games, Social effects of ICT

 

Creative Commons audio files for projects

03 Feb

Students often need some background music or sound effects to use in their animation projects or podcasts. 

Whilst many of them are perfectly happy to rip music from any source they can find regardless of copyright restrictions, we as teachers, should be guiding them to look for  copyright free or creative commons sound tracks.

Here is a handy list of websites that publish Creative Commons audio (not in any particular order):

Music and backing tracks

  1. Free Music Archive
  2. Audio Farm
  3. ccMixter
  4. Jamendo
  5. Audio Archive
  6. Danosongs
  7. Acoustica

Sound Effects

  1. The Freesound Project
  2. Soungle
  3. Sound Bible
  4. Free SFX
 
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Posted in Copyright, Music and ICT

 

Caught in the Web

02 Feb

‘Caught in the Web’ is a programme that has been put together by Newsround as a resource to inform children about staying safe on the internet.

The video lasts just over 14 minutes and tells the story of a girl who gets into trouble after her virtual life in an online chatroom spills into the real world.

As well as the main story there are also real-life case studies showing a girl who has suffered from cyber bullying and a boy who became addicted to playing games.

The programme seems to be aimed towards upper KS2 or lower KS3 students and it would be a good resource to show for Safer Internet Day or as part of a scheme of work about online safety. 

The video can be viewed online here

 
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Posted in E-safety

 

The state of the internet

31 Jan

Infographics are visual representations of information, data or knowledge.  These graphics are used where complex information needs to be eplained quickly and clearly*

Here is a link to a fascinating infographic full of facts and figures about the internet in 2010.  For example did you know:

- There were 21.4 million new websites published in 2010

- An estimated 89% of all emails in 2010 were spam

- That Internet Explorer now only has 47% of the market share for browsers

- That 20 million Facebook apps are installed every day

- That 2 billion videos were watched on YouTube every day

- That every minute 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube

As it stands it could be printed out to make a great poster for display in the classroom.  Alternatively you could take just a few of the facts from it and make a set of individual posters.

*source

 
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Posted in Classroom displays

 

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

 

Cut My Pic

28 Jan

Many teachers run graphics units as part of KS3 and KS4 to teach students the skills required to use different graphics applications.  However, no matter how confident my students were with using said package, whenever they wanted to resize a picture for a piece of work either they seemed to have forgotten that the application existed or they just couldn’t be bothered to use it (their words, not mine). 

I came across an excellent web tool today that I think students would ‘be bothered’ to use.  In literally a few seconds they can upload an image, resize it, change the outline and even add drop shadows.  They then save the edited image and insert it into their work – it really couldn’t be any more simple. 

Find the website here

 
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Posted in Graphics, Web 2.0 tools

 
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