Welcome to the first of many video tutorials.  I have deliberately kept this weeks very simple as I am trying to learn some new technology myself.  Pictographs are a great maths lesson for junior students to explore graphing and data in the early years of schooling.  This video tutorial below explains all the steps to get you and your students to produce a pictograph in no time. The aim of these video tutorials is that you can sit back and learn alongside your students.  Enjoy and feedback is always appreciated.

Here is the example I produced if you want my template, and here is an old school link to a written lesson plan if you need further assistance.

I'll start straight off by saying that Zoodles is aimed at parents more so than schools however I will definitely be installing this on all of our school computers due to it's depth of features and content:  Essentially Zoodles is an Age appropriate web browser that is linked to a massive database of educational games and web sites. You can either let children surf Zoodles in the freedom of knowledge that they are both safe and gaining a learning experience or you can tailor zoodles as a parent or teacher to have a specific focus on say mathematics or reading.

Kids will find this pretty one cool as they now have their own browser, which they also have an element of control over and parents will love it will keep all the nasty content on the web out of site and feel confident that their kids are not aimlessly wasting their time on the web. 

Zoodles offers both a free and subscription based package.  But definitely take 2 minutes to check out the video below of what Zoodles could offer you in the classroom.  Check it out here.

What is it:  Bookr Is a tool to create picture story books using images from Flickr.  Simply find images from Flickr through their search engine located on the same screen as the book editor.  It is extremely simple to use and would be a better option for junior school students as you can not add large amounts of text to each page.  No sign up required.  Very Simple to use.

The finished books are presented as animated flash Files that look gret on an interactive whiteboard.

How can I use this in the classroom?   Show your your students the layout of bookr and how to search for images.  read them a picture story book and explain to them that the pictures tell a large amount of the actual story and emphasise that words should be used with a minimalist approach.

Also talk to your students about the best placement of text.

find a theme or topic that your students will have a large range of photos of and are comfortable in writing about.   A perfect example would be "A day at the Zoo." 

I would love hear from anyone else eho has tried Bookr.  Check it out here.

Create a Graph is very simple to use web based Graph Generator that I can highly recommend for younger students who may find a spreadsheet such as Excel a little daunting.  A very simple interface lets you select from Bar, Line, X&Y, Area and Pie graphs and takes you through each stage of the graph making process in simple to understand language.

There are examples and tutorials, not that you will need them and you can output graphs as either a traditional paper based printout or get a hyperlink to view your graph online.

Be sure to take a look at Create a Graph next time you are doing a statistics and data lesson with your kids and want to generate a graph simply whilst teaching your kids the steps required along the way.It's free of course with no sign up required and there are a few other useful tools to be found on this site also.

By the way if you are looking for a great lesson plan on Creating Pictographs on Computer with younger students.  Here is one from my lesson plan section.

What is it?  Little Bird tales allows you take photos, scanned images or to draw straight into a picture book and add text to support your images.  It's biggest feature however is that it allows you to then narrate your story and pop it up online for others to see.  It is incredibly simple to use and operates all from within the browser but the biggest downfall I see is that it does not allow you to embed your story into webspace.

How can I use this in the Classroom?  I would really recommend this for your junior students due to its simplicity and limited options.  Grade preps to around grade 4 will find this a pretty useful tool to create a narrated picture-book or story but older students may tire of it's simplicity a little too fast.

Check out the video below for a full demo of what it can do and click here to access little bird tales.