Saturday, April 30, 2011

Solar System Explorer


I've written before about two of my favourite IWB programs - Celestia and Stellarium - both for astronomy. But these are downloaded programs and you may not have permission to install them onto school computers (it depends on where you work).

I've just stumbled across a fantastic interactive website called SolarSystemScope - not only does it show the solar system in 3D like Celestia, but also from a panoramic from the Earth surface.

Lots of controls to manipulate and view. so you can represent the system as either real size and distances or an easy to understand schematic.

My jaw dropped when I saw this and it is definitely one of my new demonstration sites for when I demonstrate how to use technology in the classroom.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Free Virtual Pop Up Book Maker

I just came across ZooBurst. A free and paid for service that lets you make virtual pop up storybooks and they even have an augmented reality browser for it as well.

There are teacher and student sign ons so you can set up your whole class to make their own pop up book.

This is a great language activity as well as for languages other than English.

The free version lets you put together 10 pages on unlimited books and will let you upload your own art work or you can use the open clip art they have linked to.

Check out my book below - took about 3 mins

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Google Sketchup Teacher Resources.


I'm always amazed at how many teachers don't know about Google Sketchup. when I go to schools it is one of the first programs I show that work brilliantly on an interactive whiteboard.

In case you don't know - google sketchup is a free 3D drawing program from google that makes 3D drawing simple and easy. Great for Maths, Design and technology and even S+E.

Well it seems I'm not the only one - I just stumbled across this website.
3Dvinci

This is a teacher guide to using sketch up in the classroom with PDF lessons, Tutorials and sample files.