Hallowe’en Week

Today kicks off the week leading towards Hallowe’en.  This week and next shows the effects of chocolate and the wrappings that it comes from in the classroom.  It’s amazing to find the places where rolled up candy wrappers end up as the contents are eaten when the teacher’s back is turned!

One of my truly favourite movies was “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown“.  It looks like it’s going to be shown again this week on ABC.

The realities of pumpkin carving in the classroom are a little messy but, no worries, the internet takes care of you.  Here are some links to some interesting virtual pumpkin carving sites.

• Swan’s Pumpkin Farm – Create your own Jack-O-Lantern
• Cub Pack 81 Online – Pumpkin Carve
• GlassGiant – Pumpkinizer
• TheoWorlds – Pumpkin Greetings
• Better Homes and Gardens – Carve-a-Pumpkin

As you can see, there are no shortages for resources to replace the newspaper on the floor, scooping seeds and inside contents, sharp knives, etc. of the traditional activity.

Plus, these play nicely on a SMART Board and are friendly to experimentation.

GEC Computers in the Classroom – October 2009

Since they’re just images, you can capture those images in a number of ways.  Once captured, they import nicely into an application like Comic Life for resources for some story creation and story telling.  From a mathematics point of view, it’s a great opportunity to talk about symmetry and proportion.  In the science classroom, the pumpkin proves itself to be one of the hardiest things you’ll find on a farm, withstanding the fall weather.

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links for 2009-10-25

• Eight Ways To Use School Wikis
  "Wikis are a great tool to help a school enrich instruction, and increase communication and collaboration among staff. They are also free (for educators using wikispaces) and provide unlimited storage for digital materials including video, screencasts, presentations, pdfs, etc. "
  (tags: wikis teaching collaboration wiki web2.0 education howto edtech)
• Building Maker – Create 3D buildings online
  "Building Maker is a 3D modeling tool for adding buildings to Google Earth. It's fun to use, and an easy way to get on the 3D map. Here's how it works:"
  (tags: google science earth googleearth buildings 3d maker tools)
• Time Duration Calculator: Time between two dates/times
  "This service calculates the duration, counting the number of years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds between two moments in time."
  (tags: calculator dates_times time math tools duration)
• Findings – For Decades, Puzzling People With Mathematics – NYTimes.com
  "On Wednesday, Mr. Gardner will celebrate his 95th birthday with the publication of another book — his second book of essays and mathematical puzzles to be published just this year. "
  (tags: puzzling nytimes math gardner nytimes.com book)
• Create Your Own Comic | Marvel Super Hero Squad | The Official Web Site
  Create your own super hero.
  (tags: comics resources web2.0 comic marvel create generator book)
• ArtisanCam – Activities – Picture Book Maker
  Create your very own children's book
  (tags: writing languagearts elementary)
• OOo4Kids
  "This page is the entry page of the OOo4Kids. The idea is to provide a 7-12 years software, based on OpenOffice.org source code, say, extremely simplified"
  (tags: openoffice ooo4kids opensource education office wiki)
• Science Lesson Activity Generator – Think Bank Ltd
  "The Primary Science Activity Generator Producing over 3,600 different learning activities for primary science lessons "
  (tags: lesson science generator)
• Create A Graph
  "Graphs and charts are great because they communicate information visually. For this reason, graphs are often used in newspapers, magazines and businesses around the world."
  (tags: graph science math)
• Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines | Mac – Page 1 | Macworld
  "Macs are relatively hassle-free—most people can get by without doing any routine maintenance at all. But you can greatly reduce your chances of problems, both big and small, by regularly performing a few simple tasks."
  (tags: macworld mac routines maintenance)
• Ultimate Top 10 Lists – Listverse
  Ultimate collection of top 10 lists.
  (tags: cool lists reference interesting list history blog fun)
• KDE and Gnome Comparison
  "This is not, by any means a comprehensive look at the differences between KDE and Gnome, but it should give new users a small taste of the two desktop environments' different strengths and weaknesses and their philosophical approaches to usability. "
  (tags: gnome kde linux ubuntu)
• The 10 best educational websites – Times Online
  "Online information has come on leaps and bounds since the days of the CD-ROM encyclopedia. We bring you the top education sites"
  (tags: educational websites education web2.0)
• Tips and Tricks: Making the Most of Google Calendar
  "There’s more to Google Calendar (GCal) than meets the eye. At first glance, it seems no different from the printed desktop calendars that used to dominate employee desks."
  (tags: tricks google calendar)
• The Future Is Big Data in the Cloud
  "While when it comes to cloud computing, no one has entirely sorted out what’s hype and what isn’t, nor exactly how it will be used by the enterprise, what is becoming increasingly clear is that Big Data is the future of IT."
  (tags: cloud storage data)
• YouTube – Shape of my heart
  "Two time world magic champion Shawn Farquhar shows you his slight of hand. "
  (tags: magic slightofhand)
• Apple Learning Interchange – Apple 1 to 1 Learning Initiatives
  "
  Apple has been fortunate to work with hundreds of innovative schools across the country, and we've carefully studied the common factors for successful 1 to 1 learning implementations. The following educational institutions have shared their 1 to 1 story in video: "
  (tags: learning_environment pedagogy AppleLearningInterchange interchange laptop 1to1 1:1)