The view from the space station (artist's impression)
I featured these in the last issue of Digital Education. There are 20 websites for creating free cartoons and comics, plus 5 on other stuff: Scratch, educational blogging, creating games, old sounds, and the international space station. Hope you find some of these useful.
Tim Peake
I never fail to be amazed at the fact that astronauts can communicate with people here on earth in real time, and via the internet! If you'd like to follow the adventures/thoughts/experiments of British astronaut Tim Peake on the International Space Station, then here's his Twitter address: @astro_timpeake. Here's the International Space Station website.
Museum of Endangered Sounds
Remember the ZX Spectrum? No? Well at least you can find out what it sounded like, at the Museum of Endangered Sounds. Listen to this, the sound of "snow" on the TV, and the time lady. (Remember her? As a child I used to wonder if she got bored sitting there all day reading out the time every few seconds.) Plus several other sounds as well. Thrill your students with the sound of a CD skipping, or space invaders. There aren't many sounds there, but it's a great idea. I have always found that students are fascinated by old technology, like the photographs of Colossus and one like it. I bet they'll think these interesting too.
Creative Computing with Scratch
At 154 pages long, this guide may be said to be comprehensive. As well as teaching you Scratch through interesting projects, it is very much teacher-focused, with its "Reflection prompts", suggestions for reviewing students' work, and classroom activities. Oh, and it's free! http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/guide/.
20 free tools for making comics and cartoons for teaching and learning
This article contains several resources I hadn't heard of. Well worth exploring. I used one of the websites to create a cartoon for a scenario featured in this newsletter!http://www.emergingedtech.com/2014/12/free-tools-for-making-comics-cartoons/.
A guide to blogging and examples of classroom blogs
Some very sensible advice here from Richard Byrne, founder of Free Technology for Teachers, plus many examples of how teachers are using blogging in their classrooms – plus a downloadable glossary. www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/11/a-guide-to-blogging-and-examples-of.html.
Create your own games
Digital Education
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