Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons next week!

(Actually this could probably be called a 1 second wonder as it really is that simple)

Tiny URL – http://tinyurl.com/

This is a free website where you can take long and complicated URL’s and convert them into simple, short and convenient addresses that can easily be written and copied from the board just by copying the URL in and pressing a button. I showed a class this week how to use it and they had never seen it before, I was uploading some of our class notes to my Sky drive and then converted the very long URL to just a few characters.

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Tiny-URL-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help
brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be
posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to
read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons
next week!

Many Eyes – http://www-958.ibm.com

This is a brilliant tool to create your
own visualisations, it has the normal word cloud examples like Wordle and Tagxedo
but it also has so much more, there are lots of different types such as maps
and graphs. You can also use this as a visual way to compare data such as that
collected in surveys or for example in a Science practical. I just wanted to
have a quick go with a new class of mine here in the Seychelles. We were
talking about what they thought about their school, they all chose one word to
add to the visualisation and this is what it looked like.

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/what-we-think-about-our-school-iss

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it
only takes a minute…’

Happy Manyeyes-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons next week!

Here is my first from the paradise island, this is the beach right next to my house taken last night (a bit of sunshine for you)

Toondoo – http://www.toondoo.com/

Toondoo is an awesome free online comic paper, it is really easy to use and within just a few minutes students can create and customize their own comic strips about whatever they want to.

One way I have used this, this week is by getting students to interpret a concept from verbal/textual form (provided by teacher) to a visual form (created in ToonDoo).

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Toondoo-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons after Easter! I hope you all have a great holiday!

Blabberize – http://blabberize.com/

This is basically a site where you can make any picture talk just by uploading your picture then assigning a mouth wherever you want to on the picture. You can then record a narration on the website or upload audio content that you have already recorded, yes it is really that easy. It is a nice way to get students to present and talk about their learning without standing up at the front of the class and doing it.

Here is one I made earlier:

http://blabberize.com/view/id/331604

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Blabberize-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons the following week.

Spaaze – http://www.spaaze.com/home

Special thanks to a great Biology teacher at Saltash.net called Fionn who passed this site to me this week. It is similar to http://en.linoit.com/ & http://corkboard.me/simple & http://www.wallwisher.com/ but is basically a real time collaborative online sticky note site.

I tested it out and tweeted out the link to see if anyone else contributed to it to test out the collaboration element of the site. Here are the results, although it is still live so it could continue to have contributions and I am not moderating it anymore as this goes to press!

http://www.spaaze.com/board/77c934f7b8a282a7590c05b6479c1784 

One tip to share it you must publish it!

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Spaaze-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons the following week.

Special thanks to one of my favourite French teachers Gwenn for once again suggesting this great tool! Her last suggestion was Zondle which is awesome – see here: http://whydidthechickencrosstheroad.org.uk/2012/01/27/1-minute-weekly-web-wonder-week-17/

I love this studystack, it is a great online revision site for students, no need to create extra log in’s because you can use your facebook details, you can then create your own online flashcards or use the ones already created about many different subjects. The best thing about this though is not the flashcards but the revision games you can create using your own content such as hangman, crosswords, word searches, unscrambling words and tests and quizzes. You can then save or print off the answers and results or embed them on your blog or social networking sites. Brilliant!!!

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy StudyStack-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, agggghhhh shiver me timbers and walk the plank! To help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons the following week.

PiratePad – http://piratepad.net/front-page/

This is a great free tool where you can instantly without creating an account share and start collaborating with a notepad. Basically you click on the link above, click on the big green pirate frog which takes you to a new pad with a specific url. If you share this url with anyone else anywhere in the world you can start writing on it together and at the same time. You can then save what you produce or export it or just keep the url safe. It is so easy just give it a try!

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘Call that an anchor?’ Sorry I meant ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Piratepadd-ing ohhhh arrrrrr

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons the following week.

Voicethread http://voicethread.com/

Is basically a digital-storytelling website that allows teachers and students to share their stories through audio, images, videos or text. Others can then comment on these in several ways such as 1) voice with a microphone, 2) or voice with telephone), 3) text, 4) audio file, or 5) video with a webcam. You can share these with everyone around the world or just the people you invite to view them, it is also free to sign up to a single educator account although does have some limitations. There is also a video tutorial on the site on the homepage showing how to use it.

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Voicethread-ing

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends, I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons the following week.

Photopeach – http://photopeach.com/

Is still one of my all time favourite tools which is a bit like photostory apart from you can chose music from the library. The best bit that I love about Photopeach is the two added little extras that they have at the end. The first is that at the end of your show or throughout it you can add a quiz section where you write questions and then the audience get to select multiple choice answers and see if they are right. I think that this is a great way to get students to test other students knowledge which could also be really useful for revision not only for the student creating the show who has to come up with suitable questions but also for the ones watching it making them think of the answers. The second is that at the end of watching you then have the option of leaving a comment like you can on most of the video/show type sites however this is different as when you leave a comment it stays on the video itself as if you were watching the credits. I think this has great potential for peer assessment and peer feedback and think it is just awesome. Here is an example of one students work. http://photopeach.com/album/blo8nv

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy photopeach-ing!

Thank goodness it’s Friday, to help brighten up your day and to help you with your planning at weekends or the long half term , I will be posting a weekly web based idea that will take just 1 minute of your time to read about. If you like what you read then why not try it out in your lessons the following week.

Special thanks to Paul Horrell @Hozmeister who shared this great resource again!

TinEye – http://www.tineye.com/ 

What is it?

“TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.” Taken from the Tineye site.

I used it with one of my classes this week at the start of the lesson, students were given one image electronically in which they had to first of all find the original source then read the text and answer some questions which was a slightly more unusual way to start the lesson.

There are probably many other ways you can use this in a creative way.

In the famous words of Gary Barlow ‘it only takes a minute…’

Happy Tin-Eye-ing!