Using ICT in Further Education

Using Google Spreadsheet , you can easily import any RSS feed into your blog or website.

Using the attached spreadsheet example, the steps are as follows:

1. Enter the RSS URL in cell A3. 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeResourcesForEducation
2. Enter the following formula in cell D3.
=importfeed(A3, “Items title”, False, 4)
3. Enter the following formula in cell E3.
=importfeed(A3, “Items URL”, False, 4)
4. Enter the following formula in cell C3 and replicate it in the next 3 cells.
=D3
5. Enter the following formula in cell B3 and replicate it in the next 3 cells.
=HyperLink(E3, C3)
6. Select Share, Publish as a web page, Start publishing
7. Select HTML to embed in a page
8. Select Sheet1
9. Enter the cell range.
B2:B6
10. Copy the <iframe> code and select Close
11. Paste the <iframe> code into your blog or website

NB: Set widget=false and add gridlines=false to remove extra unwanted features. Adjust the height and width to suit your site.

Original Spreadsheet:

Resulting RSS feed:

The whole collaborative nature of Google Docs provides a great way for students to keep track of their own progress in completing tasks for any subject area.

It is fairly straightforward to set up a colour coded spreadsheet that will allow students to change the appearance of the document by simply pressing one key.

Just select ‘Format, Change colors with rules…’ and decide on the rules you want to use. If you are not sure how this works then have a look at the settings on this shared document or just select a cell and ‘press the delete key’ to see how easily it works!

I am using the above template with my classes this year and the students have been enthusiastically updating their progress as they go along, without having to be constantly reminded to do so!!

This is also a great way of enabling parents to keep track of their own child’s progress as a non-editable version of the document can be published to the web, as shown below.

First came across this idea looking at Dan Stucke’s own version for his Y11 GCSE class. Many thanks Dan

With PostLearn you can become part of an exciting new project aimed at the education sector.

PostLearn is a new kind of education job board which is currently growing a network of edubloggers to help provide more value to educators as they browse blogs and educational resources by also providing links to possible employment opportunities.

PostLearn makes use of different individual personal learning networks (PLNs) to suggest job opportunities and positions to edublog readers and social network members.

In the words of one affiliate “PostLearn is a new an education job board powered by bloggers.”

Direct links to the job posting page (and individual jobs themselves) are spread out across the PostLearn affiliate network. One fifth of all revenue from paid postings will be shared back to bloggers and affiliates who’ve posted the badge/widget which tracks direct traffic and purchases.

PostLearn is currently inviting all bloggers or social networking administrators to join their affiliate network.

Additionally, any organization or individual with an education related job posting can post for free by sending an email to Joe@postlearn.com.

Finding interactive multimedia resources online is a great way for educators to enhance teaching and learning in their classroom. From web apps to interactive whiteboard activities, the Internet is loaded with high quality resources that students will enjoy. Here is a list of 20 free resources for educators to try out this year:

TeacherLED – TeacherLED provides teaching resources for use with interactive whiteboards. The interactive whiteboard resources contained on this site are for math, English, and geography. Teachers can also find information on how to create their own interactive whiteboard resources.

Crickweb.co.uk – This free site offers 169 educational resources that educators can use with interactive whiteboards. Educators will also find 15 free games for kids between the ages of 4 and 11. The site also links to more than 100 other free resources online.

What2Learn – What2Learn offers free game-based learning for students. Teachers can also use this site to track progress, access more than 1,000 interactive resources, and create original games.

Interactives – Interactives offers free interactive games and activities that can be used by educators to enhance learning in the classroom. Interactives cover math, science, language, history, and art.

SMARTboard – SMARTboard provides several free online activities that educators can use with or without interactive whiteboards. The activities cover elementary, middle, and high school education.

BrainPop – The BrainPop educational site offers animated and interactive games that students can play online. There are games for science, social studies, English, math, arts, music, health, and technology. * Small selection of free content. Majority of content requires paid subscription. PD

FunSchool – FunSchool offers free online games for K-6 students. Throughout this site, educators will find hundreds of entertaining yet educational games sorted by grade level.

Visuwords – The Visuwords site is a free online interactive graphical dictionary and thesaurus. To use this site, simply type in a word to find a neural network of word associations and meanings.

FunBrain – Within the FunBrain site, educators can find dozens of interactive educational games that younger students will enjoy. The games help with math, reading, and other subjects.

BGFL – The BGFL site offers free online activities and games that can be used with an interactive whiteboard. Throughout this site, educators will find resources for foundation, primary, and secondary education for English, science, mathematics, and other subjects.

SimplyBox – SimplyBox is a free web app that gives you the capability to capture and organize sections of web pages. The web sections you collect are organized into boxes that can be easily shared with students or colleagues.

Rader’s Numbernut.com – This all inclusive math warehouse offers free online activities that students of all ages can use to improve math skills. The activities can be used on your computer and also work well with interactive whiteboards.

ScribLink – ScribLink is a free online whiteboard that can be used to collaborate in real time with students and colleagues. With this site, you can draw, upload images, chat, voice conference, and transfer files.

PrimaryGames – This fun learning site features games for language arts, math, social studies, science, and more. The site was launched by a science and technology teacher who originally created the games for his own classroom.

eField Trips – eField Trips allows students to take virtual tours of exciting monuments and attractions around the United States. Each tour features a virtual experience, field journal, and “ask the expert” question and answer opportunities. To access the tours, you must sign up for a free account.

Tramline – This site is loaded with virtual tours and field trips that students can take to explore the world of science. The tours explore everything from ecosystems to prehistoric life.

Mathsframe.co.uk – Mathsframe offers several free math resources that teachers can use with interactive whiteboards. The resources cover calculating, counting and partitioning.

BookBuilder – With this site, you can create, publish, share, and read digital books to your students. BookBuilder is perfect for teachers who want to customize learning through original books that will interest students.

Classtools.net – Classtools.net offers free tools that teachers can use to create their own interactive games to embed into blogs, wikis, websites, and more.

Earthtrips – Earthtrips allows students to take a virtual tour into the history of the earth. In this virtual tour, students are presented with raw information so that they can study earth science as professionals.

MegaZine 3 is a powerful pageflip engine, which allows you to create striking interactive pageflip books. Include text, images, videos and background sounds.

You can also add a ‘zoom’ function to your image by including a link to a high resolution version of the same image.

A certain knowledge about HTML and/or XML is needed in order to use MegaZine 3 but if you have the basics then setting up a book is extremely simple as an intuitive XML structure is used to control the content of a book. But, even if you do not know any HTML there are a couple of tutorials provided in the forum, which will help you to get started.

Creating books with MegaZine 3 could prove to be a nice incentive for those students needing to learn HTML.

Check out the demo book to see all the features in action!!

Google Docs Spreadsheet provides a lovely motion chart widget which will very easily bring your static data to life! I can see this little tool being very useful for projects in ICT, history, geography, mathematics, social studies etc….

You can see the motion chart in action at Gapminder World as well as viewing many interesting videos using motion charts.

Gapminder also provides an excellent tutorial explaining how to use the motion chart widget.

Check out this interactive example, from Gapminder, to see what can be done.

Did you know that you can easily use Google Toolbar to find your search terms within a web page using the highlight button? If not, have a look at this short video? There is no problem if you have several different terms as they will all show up in different colours. Very useful for searching long, text based sites and for correcting HTML code!

This is just one of the many useful tools that can be added to Google Toolbar. My favourites include the spell check, translate and autofill.

As well as this, you can add buttons for one click access to your other google accounts such as gmail, google docs, calendar, groups etc. Use the button gallery to search for items that are useful for you – hundreds to choose from.

You can now even add buttons that support google gadgets – when you click on the button, the gadget will pop down from the Toolbar, no matter what site you are on and close when you are done with it.

And, did you know you can access all of your Toolbar settings and custom buttons from any computer, no matter where?  Just make sure you select the option to ‘Access your Toolbar settings everywhere’ in the Toolbar sign-in menu.

Then, when you sign in to Google Toolbar on any computer where it is installed, your settings will be updated and any changes you make during that session will be saved.

Powerful stuff indeed!!!

Cobocards is a handy application for creating flashcards. The editor is very easy to use and enables you to format text, add images, add mathematics formula and include links.

You can, also, print the flashcards (in pdf format) making it very easy to produce a nice laminated set for the tactile learner or for offline study! There are three print options available:
* Question on front and answer on back
* Question and answer on same page
* Sequential question and answer (ideal for mobile devices)

Cobocards provides lots of nice features, including tagging, commenting and tracking, which allow you to collaborate with others both in creating and studying the flashcards. Very useful for promoting collaboration in the classroom.

At the moment there is no facility to search for other flashcards created with Cobocards on the site. But, the Cobocards team are currently “working hard on a pool system” which “will be a platform for searching published flashcard sets, user, tags, etc“. In the meantime, if you do know the URL of other published flashcards it is very easy to import them and edit them as you choose.

Cobocards is a work in progress and you are encouraged to add any suggestions for improvements/features on the users’ wish list.

I like what I have seen so far and there is still more to come!!!