Logic Puzzles Galore

If you like doing puzzles then you will love Conceptis Puzzles where both picture logic puzzles and number logic puzzles are included.

Conceptis Puzzles contains hundreds of permanent free puzzles.

Each puzzle family (e.g. Pic-a-Pix) has its own homepage containing one or more puzzle types which can be played online or printed out to solve with pencil and paper.

The puzzles can also be saved to your computer.

All these puzzles would be great for the Maths class!

Conceptis Puzzles also have an active and informative forum area with over 100,000 registered users.

Interestingly, Conceptis is the "leading supplier of Sudoku and many more logic puzzle families to printed, electronic and other gaming media all over the world".

---

Technorati Tags: conceptis, logic, puzzles

---

Share

Downloading .SWF Files

Real Player 11 allows you to download videos from the Internet quite easily but for some reason the download manager kept 'hanging' when I, recently, tried to download a .swf file.

Turns out there is another easy way to download files from the Internet using Firefox. Have a look at the video below if you have not used this method before. Worked perfectly first time!!!

I guess this is yet another reason to make the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.


How To Download Swf Files Using Firefox - More amazing videos are a click away

---

Technorati Tags: firefox, internet explorer, real player

---

Share

K12 Online Conference Teaser

K12 Online Conference Teaser from Sharon Betts. Trying to get the [embed scale =] tag to work but it is not co-operating. Anyone know how to get it working on a blog platform?

---

Technorati Tags: k12online

---

Share

Do You Think this is a Mosaic?

Well it certainly is! This image is a "photomosaic of the famous painting 'Starry Night'. The image is made with over 210.000 tiny photographs and a total size of over 1.500.000.000 points in other words it is a 1.5 Gigapixel Image".

Created with AndreaMosaic, a "project to create digital art using images and a computer software". You can easily create any mosaic using your own photographs!

Thanks to IC Jones for finding this one.

---

Technorati Tags: andreamosaic, mosaic

---

Share

K12 Online Conference Coming Soon

The K12 Online Conference is just around the corner!!

Add these dates to your calendar now :-)
October 20th -24th and October 27th -31st
_________________________________________

---

Technorati Tags: k12online

---

Share

Create your own Music with JamStudio

JamStudio is a great flash based website that allows you to easily create music.

With JamStudio you can script and construct your own song using chords and then mix in different instruments (guitars, drums, bass, etc.) - all done with simple clicks. There are several versions and styles to choose from for each instrument depending on the mood that you want to set.

JamStudio is a nice tool to use for creating your own backing tracks for slideshows etc.

I've added a little sample snippet below which includes a mellow guitar, sit back drums and bubba base!

Sample mp3

Thanks to CMIS where I first came across JamStudio.

---

Technorati Tags: jamstudio, music,

---

Share

Impressive Collection of How-To Videos

WonderHowTo "hand-selects and curates the best instructional videos from over 1,700 websites" currently providing over 150,000 free how-to videos.

The videos are grouped into 35 different categories with the Education section containing over 1000 videos, the Computers & Programming providing over 3000, the Software section listing over 6000 and the Language section containing over 5000.

You can search WonderHowTo either by browsing the categories & subcategories or by entering a keyword. You can also sort the results provided by latest & greatest, grade, length, view count, submitter or date.

There doesn't seem to be any obviously inappropriate content, although I'm not sure about the Alcohol, Gambling and Weapons categories. As with any of these sharing sites you need to be on the lookout!

---

Technorati Tags: how to videos, wonderhowto

---

Share

Student Accounts for the Year

This year's first TWO classes with all new students will be dedicated to:

First Class
* introducing the websites to be used
* creating and logging onto the college VLE account
* changing the default user name to student's own name
* taking the technology usage survey (embedded in VLE)
* viewing results of survey (at KwikSurveys)
* filling out the registration form for Google Apps account (embedded in VLE)

Second Class
* signing into Google Apps and sending me an email
* adding bookmarks - Practical ICT website, Class wiki Site, Quiz Site and Google Docs page
* adding RSS feed for Notices Blog

And if there is still time:
* setting up Delicious account
* creating 'college' OpenId

Students will use the account form to record details of all their accounts.

Phew!!!! ;-)

---

Technorati Tags: delicious, google apps, kwiksurveys, openid, vle

---

Share

Designing e-learning?

Designing e-learning is another great video that is well worth watching - all 46 minutes of it!

Dr Itiel Dror gives a very humorous and stimulating presentation demonstrating how the brain's cognitive architecture underpins learning. The lesson is to optimise your learning by fitting it to the brain.

Dr Dror argues that an understanding of how the brain works is essential in learning design. "New learning technologies make it possible to deliver a great deal, but they also make it possible to fail spectacularly, especially if we focus on the technology rather than on the learner".

I really liked these two examples which show how the human brain is a "limited machine". To get the most out of the video make sure you participate in the 'audience' activities by following Dr Dror's instructions.

Enjoy :-)

---

Technorati Tags: brain, elearning, new technologies

---

Share

Designing e-learning? Don't leave your brain at home!

Designing e-learning is another great video that is well worth watching - all 46 minutes of it!

Dr Itiel Dror gives a very humorous and stimulating presentation demonstrating how the brain's cognitive architecture underpins learning. The lesson is to optimise your learning by fitting it to the brain.

Dr Dror argues that an understanding of how the brain works is essential in learning design. "New learning technologies make it possible to deliver a great deal, but they also make it possible to fail spectacularly, especially if we focus on the technology rather than on the learner".

I really liked these two examples which show how the human brain is a "limited machine". To get the most out of the video make sure you participate in the 'audience' activities by following Dr Dror's instructions.

Enjoy :-)

This text will be replaced

---

Technorati Tags: brain, elearning, new technologies

---

Share

Creating Blogs with Email!

Posterous is a super fast way to create and maintain a blog using email.  Came across this thanks to Horst Sievert.

The subject line of your email becomes the blog post title with the message text becoming the post text. But, it doesn't stop there as Posterous lets your attach files (photos, MP3's, documents, video), which are also placed in the body of your post.

If you attach more than one photo in the same message, Posterous automatically creates a very nice looking image gallery.

You can also insert URLs into your email message and these are added to your post as links, with a video link being converted to an embedded player. An RSS feed is included as standard. The only down side is that there doesn't seem to be any way to tag posts.

It really couldn't be easier. As I use email quite a bit I decided to set up a college blog with Posterous to use for posting notices for my classes during the year. The idea being that the students will add the RSS feed to their college personalised start page and can keep track of notices whenever they sign in.

Being a blog, it will also allow students to post comments about a notice if they have any queries or questions!

Be warned, it will probably be BLOCKED on your network - it is on ours!!! Apparently, Posterus is a no go area :-(

But, all is not lost because Posterus also lets you autopost, via email, to some of your other services - blogs, twitter and flickr. So, you could set up a new edublogs blog, not blocked, which will receive all the 'email' posts.

While this will work for text, urls and some 'non blocked' video links it is not the complete solution as the other content hosted on Posterus (images, audio) is still blocked and will not show up on the student network!

A much better solution is to see if your 'education network manager' will unblock your individual posterous blog. I recently asked for three of my blocked blogs to be unblocked and they all were :-)

Thanks NCTE.

Previously, I would have sent notices directly to the students' email addresses but I am interested in seeing if the whole RSS setup and commenting feature will work better.

---

Technorati Tags: edublog, posterous, rss

---

Share