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Explosive fun for students with THE POWDER TOY a great science game

2010-09-03T00:27:39Z

My kids have been playing this game for months at school and I really only sat down to have a good look at it this week and found to my surprise that THE POWDER TOY was both a fun game and great educational opportunity for students to learn about chemical reactions.

Kids love to blow things up which is essentially what Powder is all about but i goes a great deal deeper than that allowing students the opportunity to play around with many "powdery" pixels of diverse natures, each having different simulated physical and chemical properties. Some fall faster than others, a few are "solid" and hang in mid-air, etc. A good number of them are flammable, so all you high-school chemistry students who just want to see things blow up should get hooked on this game pretty easily. = ) Almost every substance has a special quality when thrown together with another: for example, water solidifies magma; thunder electrifies metal; torch burns what hits it but is dissolved by water; and the infamous virus eats through and overruns all others, eventually turning back into the first material it came in contact with. Searching for all the unique reactions is part of the entertainment.

As you can see there is plent here for your casual gamer to hardcore science geek to get something from POWDER. I would recommend it to boys especially looking for something a little different. Get THE POWDER TOY HERE as a ZIP File. Just download it and extract it.

A Great Art & Craft site for Kids

2010-09-01T03:23:16Z

I probably don't get as artistic as I should with my kids from time to time but the fact is that they love getting their hands dirty and actually creating something from scratch. Kidopo is full of great craft ideas for teachers and parents with colouring pages, printable paper templates of and games for kids to get creative. Check out Kidopo here. it might be just the solution for an afternoon of fun for you and your kids

Digital Literacies Lesson - Cause & Effect

2010-08-31T01:34:34Z

Here is my digital literacies lesson for the week. It is based around Greek Mythology and explores the relationship between Cause and Effect. Students need to watch the short animated Greek Mythology stories, read about Greek gods, Mortals and Monsters and then identify the cause and effect sequences that are occurring within each story to further identify a message. View the slideshare below or just download it here.

Digital literacies cause and effect

View more presentations from Kevin Cummins.

Learn it in 5 - Teaching ideas simplified

2010-08-30T03:31:33Z

Learn it in 5 is a must see resource for every teacher. It contains lesson ideas, video tutorials, visionary apps and loads of tools and content you can access quickly and easily. I don't regularly promote other peoples blogs but this one has some real worthwhile content that you cant go past and it is always great to find something new and innovative to try with your students. Check it out here.

Some great Audacity Tutorials for Teachers and Students

2010-08-27T04:09:34Z

Audacity has been around for a long time and has for right or wrong been considered a very poor cousin to Garageband. Regardless of how it compares to other products Audacity is still a great tool for teachers and students and it is completely free. I came across these great tutorials that are primarily focused at creating podcasts but can be applied to any aspect of Audacity. Your students would be more than capable of following them with ease and they are a great starting point for staff who have little experience with Podcasting or Audacity. Check them out here.

Interactive Periodic Table of the Elements Websites

2010-08-24T22:43:46Z

Learning the periodic table of Elements has always been a bit of a bore for many but I have put together a few websites that might make this a little more enticing to your students. there is an excellent iPad app that sparked my memory for this post but here are a few web based alternatives to try.

Touchspin Periodic Table - Very Easy to navigate with all the key components.

The Visual Periodic table - Flash based Table

The Dynamic Table - Nice and large great for Inteacitve Whiteboards

Web Elements - Not so Kid friendly but rich in content for older students.

I am sure there are plenty of others out there and I would love to hear about them.

Is your face symmetrical? Great Maths Lesson

2010-08-24T00:14:29Z

This week we have been looking at Geometry, Symmetry and tessellation and as a part of this we got our kids to use their school photograph and see if their face actually was symmetrical. Surprisingly to nearly all of them realised that their face was far from symmetrical but had great fun doing this activity and learnt a great deal from it.

In doing this our student learnt about lines of symmetry and mirror imaging We just used Microsoft Paint but any number of free programs such as Paint.net will achieve the same results. Follow these simple steps to complete the task.

1: Load a photo of yourself in Paint ( we just used our school photos because they were a great portrait picture. If you have none of these you may have to take some pics of your kids first.

2: Click the select tool and select half the face the nose as this will be your line of symmetry. You need to make a copy of your selection.

3: Paste the copied selection back on top of the original photo.

4: Click on the rotate button and select flip horizontal.

5: Move the selected flip so that it aligns as best with the rest of the photo. then ask yourself is your face really symmetrical.

As an extension task you might like to get you kids to use google images and find the lines of symmerty in objects such as flowers, fruit and shapes. Discuss the lines of human symmetry and it would also be worth looking at the famous Da Vinci Picture - the art of man

The Ultimate Application Search Engine

2010-08-23T02:56:34Z

Ever wanted to find an application to solve a problem for you and could not be bothered trawling through the ver confusing iTunes or Android Marketplace. MimVi is a purpose built application search engine designed to help you find the right tool for the Job. It has Apple, Android, Blackberry and Web Apps and is a great little tool to remember. See it here.

Show your students how old Spice won the Internet

2010-08-23T01:15:51Z

About six month's ago the reputation of 'Old Spice' literally stunk with today's kids as they associated grandpa's, woolen cardigans and old wooden ships with the age old aftershave. The company realised they were in desperate need of a make over to compete with the David Beckham, Roger Federer and shameless sex appeal of their competitors.

What they came up with was one of the most successful viral video campaigns of all time that has now grown a life of it's own with thousands of DIY 'Old Spice' popping up daily.

This great article explains how Procter & Gamble 'Old Spice's' Parent company used the web to create the world's biggest video phenomenon of 2010 and is a great discussion piece to have with teenage students as it discusses issues of social media and community lead promotion. Much of which is being done by teenagers. Check it out here.

Create an animal conservation Mashup video online - Great Student task

2010-08-19T00:36:38Z

The Conservation Mashups project is targeted at students from years 5 to 10. This tool offers students the opportunity to explore the complex issue of palm oil and its threat to wildlife and to take creative action to help save animals from extinction.

Students access a collection of video clips and images and use an online edit tool to 'mash up' their own video to support the 'Don't Palm Us Off' campaign. They can then share their video through a range of social media platforms and on our own gallery. To find out more about the 'Don't Palm Us Off' campaign visit www.zoo.org.au/palmoil.