Category Archives: Teaching resources

History of soccer in South Africa and free game

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For anyone studying or interested in the World Cup, the BBC has produced a five minute video of the history of soccer in South Africa. The video is available to viewers in Australia (not always the case with BBC videos).

Kim Baker, the Programme Executive: Document Supply and Information Services at the National Library of South Africa says “Some nice publicity showing the worth of libraries and how they can add value to sport!”

Thanks to Helen Boelens for this link.

Free Soccer Game

For soccer fans comes the free game Can I play this at home? Ideal for schools, this site uses geography, maths and language tasks to help players progress through the soccer game. Select your team and you’re away. It is actually a lot of fun.

Thanks to Greg Pallis for submitting this resource.

More maths screencasts

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Further to the post about Mathtrain.TV a few weeks ago, another school site sharing maths screencasts has come to my attention.

maths screencasts

Craig Mantin and Willowgrove Middle School students have created over thirty screencasts embedded in this wiki to share with audiences around the globe.

This site is useful in two ways. The first to provide a resource for students studying maths who may need further explanations on the topic. The second is to provide an exemplar of how students can demonstrate their learning of maths concepts (and media creation skills) by teaching others.

Museum Box

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This is a nifty site that is available to teachers and schools worldwide. The site explains how Museum Box

provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others.

Museum box

The site also explains how

You can add text, images, video and sound to the side of the cubes. To save your box you will need to register. For teachers there is lesson guidance and instructions for use are available in the Teachers Area and you can Register your school.

Anyone can view the Museum Boxes, but if you wish to make and save your own box, it does require registration, which is approved (in my case) in about five days.

What an engaging way of putting together resources on a historical (or any) topic.

Thanks to Richard Byrne from Free Technology for Teachers for alerting Bright Ideas to Museum Box!

New and improved site from State Library of Victoria

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The State Library of Victoria has just relaunched its website. With an amazing wealth of information, activities and events, checking out the new SLV website is a must.
Homepage

Homepage

Hamish Curry, Education & Onsite Learning Manager in the Learning Services area of the State Library of Victoria explains:
This revamped site opens up a great deal of new opportunities to bring our collections and services to the surface; be sure to check out the ‘Learn’, ‘Explore’ and ‘What’s On’ sections.
Professional learning
Online learning resources
Online learning resources such as:
are included.
Professional learning
Professional learning
The professional learning page (above) caters for:
slv 4

Student and teacher resources

The Student and teacher resources page (above) provides resources related to:

  • Specific websites for schools (such as ergo, Insideadog)
  • SLV blogs
  • Audio and video resources
  • Education kits

So many fantastic resources available in the one place, the newly revamped SLV website is an absolute treasure.

CSI: The Experience Web Adventures

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Any school studying forensic science will probably be interested in this site.

CSI web adventures

Funded by the US National Science Foundation in conjunction with other organisations, CSI: The Experience Web Adventures provides three adventures, one each for beginner, intermediate and advanced. Registration is free and players can either sign up or play as a guest with no login (this means you won’t be able to save your game to resume playing at a later date). CSI characters help guide you through the adventure and offer help when needed.

This could be a good site for language learners as adventures are available in German and Spanish as well as English.

There are a number of resources for educators for students at different levels, a family guide, as well as links and other activities. Please check the site out before using with students as the nature of crimes involved may not be appropriate for everyone.

Thanks to Richard Byrne from Free Technology for Teachers for supplying the evidence!

Doing Social Good

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Some further resources for students who want to be more connected with their learning by helping real people and learning multiple skills.

  1. Free rice – cost $0, time 5 mins.
  2. Samasource – cost $25, time 0 mins.
  3. CauseWorld – cost $0, time 5 mins.
  4. Vittana – cost $25, time 5 mins.
  5. The Extraordinaires – cost $0, time 5 mins.
  6. Kiva – cost $25, time 5 mins.
  7. Deki – cost $15, time 5 mins.
  8. Give Work – cost $0, time 5 mins.
  9. SocialVibe – cost $0, time 5 mins.

Please access the Mashable website for more details and to see if any or all of these projects are suitable for your school.

TakingITGlobal

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As we know, students who can make a connection with their learning, are more likely to learn more. Things we are passionate about make the world of difference to the way we feel about learning. TakingITGlobal is a site that will help students really engage with learning.

TakingITGlobal

TakingITGlobal explains its aims:

TakingITGlobal.org is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities.

Looking at issues such as

  • culture
  • education
  • environment
  • globalisation
  • health
  • human rights
  • media
  • peace and
  • technology

there is a lot for students to discover. TakingITGlobal also provides resources such as

  • events
  • e-courses
  • opportunities
  • organisations
  • toolkits and publications

for regions such as

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Central America and Caribbean
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • North America
  • Oceania and
  • South America

Anyone interested in joining can conveniently use their Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo (etc.) account to sign in. A special section, TakingITGlobal for Educators allows teachers to take their classroom global by:

  • participating in a global community of educators
  • access online resources and learning activities
  • create a safe, virtual interactive classroom.

However there is a cost for TakingITGlobal for Educators.

Steve Hargadon described TakingITGlobal founder Michael Furdyk as

the Co-founder and Director of Technology for TakingITGlobal.org, a global online community for young people, providing a platform for millions of youth across more than 200 countries to engage with social issues. Along with managing the technology team at TakingITGlobal, Michael was involved in developing the TIGed education program, and has spoken to over 50,000 educators about the importance of engaging students and integrating technology and global perspectives into the classroom. In 2008, he was named by Contribute Magazine as one of 10 Tech Revolutionaries Redefining the Power and Face of Philanthropy.

A LearnCentral session with Steve Hargadon and Michael Furdyk will be held at 10am on Friday 21st May (AEST)/Thursday 20th May 5pm (US/Pacific). An excellent site and a session well worth attending if at all possible.

ClassChats

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If you think your class would like to connect with other classes around the world, then ClassChats may be for you.

ClassChats

The website explains more:

There are plenty of reasons to join ClassChats.com – chief among them is that you will become a member of a world wide community of educators. ClassChats.com is a great way to teach your students about social networking in a safe educational environment, meet educators from around the world, share ideas and collaborate on lessons. Site membership is FREE, now and forever!

The about page elaborates even further:

ClassChats.com is striving to become an online social network of educators. After seeing how a third grade teacher was able to engage her students through the use of video chat we decided to create a site which would help other educators connect in a similar fashion. Out site contains audio\video chat functionality, shared resources, an interactive whiteboard, blogs, forums and more.

We know that students learn best through being connected, so ClassChats could be an excellent way to foster such connections.

Vicki Davis – @coolcatteacher passed on this link to ClassChats. Thanks Vicki!

Environmental sites

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There are several websites that focus on the environment that are useful for learning and teaching. The Victorian EPA (Environment Protection Authority) has an ecological footprint calculator and a greenhouse calculator, which students would find both interesting and shocking to use.

Greenhouse calc

Vic EPA Footprint

Meanwhile the US EPA Teaching Center has a collection of resources on:

  • Air – acid rain, indoor air pollution, ozone, radon
  • Climate Change
  • Conservation – energy, environmental stewardship, natural resources, pollution prevention
  • Ecosystems – ecology, endangered species, global warming, habitats, watersheds
  • Human Health – drinking water, fish advisories, indoor air, lead, ozone depletion, pesticides, radon, smog
  • Stewardship
  • Waste & Recycling – garbage, household, hazardous & solid waste, landfills, superfund cleanups, trash
  • Water– drinking water, ecosystems, lakes, oceans, rivers, water pollution, watersheds

And although obviously US orientated, there is plenty of material that is useful for Australian and other schools.