Create a 6 screened video cube with YouCube

YouCube is one of these extremely useless tools you come across on the web until of course you find a use for it. And today I did.  We were looking at music videos over time and how they have changed from the 60's through to 2010 and YouCube was the perfect tool for kids to see how video clips have changed with a 6 faced comparison.  I am sure you can find a use for it too but it is just a bit of fun nonetheless.  Check it out here.

How to get your students programming their own games in an hour with SCRATCH

Scratch is a brilliant visual programming tools specifically targeted at getting students and novices involved in programming and makes it dead simple for them to create a game or multimedia presentation in next to no time.

I personally have introduced a lot of classes to SCRATCH and have found the best way to do this is is introduce show them some videos explaining what it is and what it does.  Then have about 3 copies of the instruction cards printed and laminated to give to your students.

Once you have laminated cards they will show the kids how to do a specific task such as make an object follow the mouse, add music to a game or animate a sprite.

Each task takes bout 5 minutes and there is about 12 in all.  I guarantee this will sow a seed in your students head and they will be making their own scratch apps and games in a jiffy.

Teach your students how not to kill their audience with bad PowerPoints

I have discussed this in the past in my article "Death by PowerPoint" as Microsoft's Presentation tool would have to be one of the most used and abused applications both in the classroom and the staff room for meetings and speaking and listening tasks.

I cant stand dodgy PowerPoints in which the presenter simply reads the same boring drivel that we can already see on the screen behind them.  So I jumped at this lesson plan outlining how to get the most and avoid the worst from PowerPoint from the New York Times Learning Network.

In this lesson, students examine perspectives on effective and ineffective uses of PowerPoint, then develop a set of rules for effective use of this tool for their class projects and presentations. They then create PowerPoint slides and a prose narrative on the same subject and compare the impact of each on the intended audience.

There is something here for both teachers and students and I would recommend this for year 5 students upwards through high school.  Check it outhere.