Sumdog: Games for Math Practice

Sumdog offers a wide range of games to practice math in a fun way. There are rewards, competitions and multi-player games to keep even the most reluctant learners engaged. There are portals for teachers, students and parents so it can be used at home too. Teachers can organise students into classes and set specific activities for them to complete.

Integration:

• The ability to create free logins for all your students, without providing e-mail addresses is a bonus for schools not yet using a school-wide email system
• As teachers can choose which skills learners practise, activities can personalise activities and  complement classroom activities 
• Let's face it - what teen would rather do exercises out of a traditional textbook than play interactive games online? It's a winner for motivation and engagement at all levels.

Illogical Fallacies put to Rest

"A logical fallacy is usually what has happened when someone is wrong about something. It's a flaw in reasoning. They're like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people.

Don't be fooled! This website and poster have been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head." 

- your logical fallacy is

Integration:

• Use the full size infographic to guide learners through the maze of propaganda and bias found in the media around them when looking at various texts in English (Language Arts) or Humanities.
• A useful resource for PSHE or Theory of Knowledge discussions for the IB course.
• Display one of the posters on your wall as a quick reference tool when it's needed.

Dropbox Update: Publish Stored Files to the World

Dropbox has added a new feature to its service now allowing users to publish any file stored in an account, much like Google Docs. And about time too!

Integration:

• Dropbox is already used by many teachers to allow learners to send them files via DropItToMe so this addition will make it much simpler for teachers to share files too, without granting full access to their accounts.
• If your organisation does not use Google Apps, this could be a useful alternative for file sharing.

Go Google Drive - Even More Free Storage!

You could hardly have missed the recent hype surrounding Google Drive being launched last week, but just in case you missed it, here's a very quick introduction to Google's answer to Dropbox.

Creativity Counts!

A creativity gap has been identified and is laid out in the infographic below. Looking for ideas to get creative in the classroom? How about 500 to get you started? Click here.

SearchyPants: Customisable Searches for Kids

I am always keen to find customised search engines for learners and SearchyPants is my latest find.

Searchy Pants allows children, parents & schools to create a custom search home page for their child to use and allows families to easily communicate by leaving custom messages. Schools can also use Searchy pants to showcase pupils work while providing a safe search experience.

-SearchyPants 'About' page 

Since introducing SweetSearch and Instagrok, my learners have been surprisingly vocal about how useful they found them so I will definitely be adding this to their toolbox.

Word Dynamo: Have Fun Improving Vocabulary!

Word Dynamo is the latest offering from Dictionary.com that allows you to test and expand your vocabulary through a range of fun games. Registering allows you to track your progress and it's also possible to create your own word lists for games and submit them to the public library.

Integration:

• Create word lists for your own topics that learners can access in their own time for revision or learning before tackling a new topic.
• Guide learners toward creating their own word lists for topics so they can have fully personalised games to improve their vocabulary.
• Set up word lists and have a chart displayed in your room to track progress; a visual check may encourage learners to keep up with those ahead.

Free Hangman with Customisable Lists from Teachit

Teachit has just added this handy tool to their Whizzy collection. It's free to use although you have to sign up for a (free or paid) membership. You can enter your own list of words and then use it as a whole class or individual activity. The replacement of the gallows with a balloon-holding stickman takes away the gruesome element, and you can set the number of balloons he's holding to differentiate the level.

Integration:

• Use as a whole class activity by putting learners in teams. They then take turns to give a letter with a time limit (e.g. 5 seconds) to keep it well-paced. If they are correct, they get another turn. If incorrect, play moves to the next team. If teams know the word, they must spell it; they are not allowed to shout it out or play moves to the next team.
• Embed on a website or wiki as a starting or revision activity for individuals.
• As you can save word lists to your account, use these again and again for timesaving fun with a sound pedagogical aim behind them.

Instagrok: A 'Wow!' Search Engine for Education

There are a lot of organisations releasing ways to interrogate the web, but Instagrok is an immediate game-changer in the educational search-engine world. Not only does it generate multimedia results on one page - including the usual videos and images, but also the less usual key facts, quizzes and related concepts - but you can also use the on-screen slider to adjust the difficulty level of the results displayed. This means you can access the basic to the erudite without having to do anything more than dragging your mouse.

Among the other useful features is the ability to register and add findings to your Instagrok journal which you can supplement with other information. Teachers can create accounts for their classes to track what is being researched and pinned: great for monitoring to determine where support is needed.

For a full overview of features, take a look at Instagrok's PDF brochure or watch the video below:

Integration:

This, along with Sweetsearch and Kidrex, offers a guided route through the web to school learners making research a whole lot simpler and more likely to yield useful results.

10% off Everything at Book Depository (Free Worldwide Delivery)

*WARNING: DISCOUNT NOT FREEBIE*

Not my usual type of post, but as I use the Book Depository a lot, I thought I'd share. They are very reliable and have a great customer service program, so if you're looking for a bargain (particularly in an area Amazon doesn't deliver to, like mine), this is worth checking out.
(In case you're wondering, I gain nothing from your interest, just as I lose nothing from your disinterest - just carin' and sharin'!)