World cup 2010 Textease CT resources

Textease have created a variety of freely downloadable resources and activities using Textease Studio CT tools based on the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

• Find out key facts about a country participating in FIFA world cup 2010 (this can be input into the associated multi user database (below)
• A blank multi-user database ready to have key facts inputted about each competing country
• Locate the countries and identify their flags.
• Spreadsheets to facilitate recording the results of group matches (with or without formulae)
• Locate all countries competing in FIFA world Cup 2010 in South Africa and answer related questions
• Move the name of each country to the correct continent to show its location

Tux Paint - much improved free software download.

Katie Betteridge from Moons Moat First School has e-mailed me to remind me of a free downloadable paint program, TuxPaint.  She says it has "so many tools and magic effects, its far better than anything I've used before!".


Having revisited it for the first time for a couple of years, I can fully endorse what she says!  It has moved on incredibly and is worthy of consideration for primary school use.  You can set it to limit the tools for younger children and the stamps are a seperate download (for those who love to hate such things and might not want to bother with them!).

If you have a problem downloading it in school, just give the Broadband team a ring and they will stop it being blocked when you need it to be available.

Of course, the children can have it on their computers at home as well, so extending it's use beyond the school.

2Simple goes PURPLE!

Have you noticed that 2Simple’s online tools have become Purplemash?

Purplemash contains all the tools as before plus 2Type, Simple City, Maths Games and 2Investigate online as well as a whole load of new apptivity templates which are currently being added to daily and are free to non subscribers. Non subscribers can save the children's work locally or print rather than save to a child's own area to edit if they did subscribe.


The free apptivities are for KS1 and 2 and can be found at http://www.purplemash.com/ put in ‘all’ into the search to see all the free activities.

Harnessing a Primary learning Platform

Ian Walford, a Year 6 teacher at Sandford Hill Primary School in Stoke-on-Trent, describes how he uses a learning platform to support learning and engage parents.

The safe use of new technologies

This report, published on February 10th, is based on evidence from a small-scale survey carried out between April and July 2009 in 35 maintained schools in England. It evaluates the extent to which the schools taught pupils to adopt safe and responsible practices in using new technologies, and how they achieved this. It also assesses the extent and quality of the training the schools provided for their staff. It responds to the report of the Byron Review, Safer children in a digital world.

Click here to access the report.

BBC Learning Zone - Class Clips

Brilliant, short video clips for teaching key concepts and ideas. Search by Level (Primary or Secondary), Subject and Topic.
Some are also signed for the deaf or hard-of-hearing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/

Animate to the Beat

Do you have any budding animators and/or composers in your school or are you yet to find out?

Kudlian Software are launching an exciting competition supporting the DCFS’s Tune In – Year of Music that challenges pupils to become animators and composers! There are great prizes to be won.
'Animate to the Beat' invites young animators aged 5 to 14 years from schools across the UK to create a character and introduce them through a short animation and a piece of theme music.

Don't be put off if you have no animation software as Kudlian are providing you with a free 5 day trial of their award winning animation software 'I Can Animate' to create your entries.
Follow this link to find out more: http://www.kudlian.net/competition/animateit/beat2010/index.html