I recently found this really useful website that turns “any RSS enabled” website into a version that can be easily read on a mobile phone. Mofuse is a free service that would suffice fine for school use (consider making simple sites that pupils can access on the move). For those wishing for more features there is a subscription service available through the Mofuse website.
In a matter of seconds I created a mobile phone version of this blog – it was so easy!!
Came across this great Youtube video on Joe Dale’s MFL blog. This would be a great starting point for lots of different muti-media activities around the Normans. You could broaden things and use it as an example of digital storey telling for your work on visual literacy.
If you have not already seen this it is worth thinking about downloading the software and having a go!
Manchester University have designed some 3D animation software for use by pupils. There are 2 programs available for download, one for primary and one for secondary pupils (probably worth looking at both because some primary pupils will be able to use the secondary software). The University is also running a competition but this is not a requirement of downloading the software.
You can download the software and 3D object here;
http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/Digital60/Digital60-AliceCompetition/about-competition/faq.php
text below taken from the website.
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.Alice 2.0 is designed for high school and college students.Storytelling Alice is designed for younger students. Storytelling Alice was created by Caitlin Kelleher as part of her doctoral work in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Generally speaking, the characters have a wider range of behaviours/emotions than those in Alice 2.0, that might be useful as part of a story. Although the developers state that Alice 2.0 and Storytelling Alice are designed for particular age groups, it does not really matter which version is used by which age group. It would probably be wise to try both to see which one would be most useful for a particular animation.
Caspian Learning are now giving away their Thinking Worlds software to schools. This software is designed to allow pupils to make their own 3D games. Games are made by utilizing a set of given tools and pre-sets designed to develop pupils thinking skills and problem solving skills. Caspian are also giving away all of the games ( asset packs) that they have developed over the past couple of years. These games support the primary curriculum, eg Tudors, Greeks and the Rainforest. You can also download a guide to help you get going. You can read about a pilot program where several primary schools used the software to create games by going to; http://www.ict-register.net and searching for Caspian or Thinking Worlds.
The software can be accessed here; http://www.thinkingworlds.com/
More and more schools are looking at using Ipods to support their work. At present educational “software” for the Ipod is rare (they tend to be used for playing audio and video files). However I came across this tutorial on YouTube, for converting PowerPoint presentations into a format that can be played on an Ipod. Follow the link below to YouTube and watch the video clip. This has the potential for pupils to be able to access presentations wherever and whenever.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=q8SeiHHh36A
