After watching the whole of my tutor group playing 4 Pics 1 word app on their iPhones and iPods and getting very enthusiastic about finding out the answer I decided to try and use the concept of the game in one of my lessons.
For those of you that do not know the app, it is a very basic app but has become very popular with my students. Basically, 4 pics are displayed and the player must link them all with one word. Easy!
I decided to trial this idea with a Year 8 group that love using iPads and love playing the 4 Pics 1 Word app. The lesson was looking at the properties of metals and one of the objectives focused on learning new key terms. I challenged the students to make there own 4 Pics 1 Word game using Comic Life app. Students chose a keyword that described the properties of metals and produced some excellent game cards. Some example can be seen below. These could be used to aid recall of the meaning of kewwords and we will be using these as a starter activity for the next lesson.
After being successful at an interview last Thursday for a new job, I thought it was best to tell my Tutor group that I will not be with them next year first hand before they found out from someone else. Understandably they were shocked, upset and concerned about the possibility of a new, unknown teacher taking on the group in Year 10.
After an onslaught of questions starting with What? Where? Why? When? One of my tutees was very concerned about the possibility of not being able to play the music game during tutor time again. After that genuinely worried response I thought I should share 9B3′s Music Game.
Using iTunes we regularly play ‘The Music Game’ with different themes and challenges. A number of ideas are detailed below. One warning, check for EXPLICIT content in songs before playing them.
1. Top Songs – Using iTunes you can view and preview the Top 200 songs on iTunes. This can be a simple competition between students to guess the artist and song title.
3. Higher or lower – Play one song from the Top 200 and then students must guess whether or not the next song is higher or lower in the charts. 2. Snip bit – Play the first 1,2 or 3 seconds of the preview so students can guess the song.
4. TV Movie/Themes – Search for TV Theme tunes compilation albums and students must guess the Movie or TV theme tune.
5. Think Fast – Play a number of songs very quickly one after each other and students must write them all down in quick succession.
6. Maths Charts – Students guess the chart position of each song that you play from the Top 200 songs, add them up and submit their answer. Closest group wins.
7. Links – Choose a theme or play a handful of songs. Students must come up with tedious link or suggest a theme.
UPDATES
8. Covers – Choose a covers album from iTunes and the students need to tell you the original artist and song title. This week was Reggae Covers.
9. Humming – Courtesy of Mark Cole, @WoolyBully9. Some students listen to the song and then have to hum back the tune to their team. Points awarded to the team who guesses the most correctly. Similar to Never Mind The Buzzcocks intros round, as seen below. Hopefully your students will have more success.
These are just some of the ways we use iTunes to make Tutor Time fun with 9B3.
Please comment with any other alternatives to our Top 9 Music Game ideas.
WordFoto is a great way to bring keywords from the lesson to life and allowing students and teacher to easily produce a sharable resource at the end of a lesson that will aid the recall of specific keywords learnt during that lesson. WordFoto is an app that turns your photos and words into amazing typographic works of art
WordFoto is only available for iPhone and iPod Touch but could be used on iPad. All subject areas could benefit from using this app to enhance the recall of keywords and linking them to their use within some difficult subject areas.
Some examples can be seen below of ways in which I plan to use the app within lessons. Students can choose an appropriate images from the internet or take a photo of an event, task or practical activity during the lesson to then make into a master piece later on.
After being asked to deliver a week of assemblies focusing on ‘World Technology’ , I decided to try a little experiment using the power of twitter. On a dark, wet and wintry Sunday (5:30pm) evening I sent the tweet below.
I was intrigued to see how far and quickly a tweet would travel without using #hashtags or mentioning any famous people. The tweet was only visible to my followers or anybody that happened to be searching my @gavinsmart username. RT and MT were the only way that this was going to work. After just a few minutes the tweets started coming in from around the UK.
It wasn’t long however until tweets were coming in from around the globe from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. By 10pm Sunday I had received 325 mentions and using twitonomy.com I was able to gather information about the locations of the tweets from all over the world. I also received an awesome tweet from @IanTLS who was 31,000 ft above the Indian Ocean.
@Cmdr_Hadfield who is currently tweeting from the International space station was mentioned by many people but I am still waiting patiently for a mention.
The annotated google map below shows the location of some of the tweeters than kindly replied to the request. Thank you so so much to all who took the time and effort to reply. All tweets can been seen in the tweet archive here.
Aurasma app is a new way to see and interact with the world. Aurasma is available on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Aurasma is an augmented reality app that’s changing the way that classroom displays can come alive. Adding an effortless way to make displays more interactive and improving an otherwise unchanged way of displaying students’ work and information within the classroom. Aurasma is the only application that lets you create and share your own augmented reality. This is one of the reasons why Aurasma is such an excellent app to engage students in the learning environment. Below is one of the ways that I have used Aurasma to bring one of the Literacy posters to life in my classroom.
Using the simple tools within the app, you can create your own Auras (as above) and share them with other Aurasma users and therefore anybody with the app can view the Auras that you make. This can lead to some awesome interactive displays. If you do not wish to make your own then you can choose from thousands of digital animations already on the platform.
There are so many ways in which this app could be used in education and I would love to hear some other ways that Aurasma is being used to enrich the learning environment.
Making movies always engages students and now using iMovies pre set Movie trailer templates students find it easier and even more engaging to produce an outstanding movie trailer. iMovie allows students to easily create a Hollywood-style movie trailer.
Students can choose from 12 trailers with stunning graphics and original scores by some of the world’s top film composers. They can also customise film studio logos, cast names and credits in outline view, add and adjust videos and photos in Storyboard view and add existing content from your library, or record new footage straight into the trailer
Students can produce a movie trailer to demonstrate their learning or share the knowledge they acquired during the lesson. The movie trailers can easily be shared with the world via YouTube from within the iMovie app.
Due to the limitations within the templates students must be concise with there information and carefully select the appropriate footage or pictures they wish to include. This avoids students sitting in front of a camera reading a passage they have copied from a book. The movie trailers are also an excellent way to introduce a topic, promote your faculty or promote an after school club.
BrainPOP UK Featured Movie app is an excellent app that allows students to learn independently in a classroom environment as well as on the move.
Students can download the app on their iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch and learn something new every day for free.
Students can watch a different animated movie each day, then o test their knowledge they can take an interactive quiz. This is an excellent resource for a tutor time activity as well as topical videos that may be linked to your particular subject area. The subjects Science, Humanities, English, Maths, Arts, PSHE & Citizenship, and Design & Technology. Site subscribers can log in and access all BrainPOP content directly from the app. A free trial can be obtained from www.brainpop.co.uk.
Recently I used the BrainPOP app to encourage students to learn independently from the teacher with great outcomes. Students where motivated to learn as they were in control. The element of choice motivated students to learn in a variety of ways. Students enjoyed the short animated movies and all feedback was very positive. Students felt that they learn better from using the app and that they found it easier to use than YouTube and BBC Bitesize because the way that the app was set out and the quality of the videos and quizzes. The multiple choice quizzes provide a competitive twist to AfL and all students enjoyed taking part.
Students also felt that they learnt more Keywords and the correct spelling of these important ‘Keywords’ as the videos have subtitles which helped lower ability students with their literacy along with helping them determine the important information from the video.
This can also be used an excellent way as a whole class with ‘Keyword Video Bingo’ either at the start or the end. Students write down a list of words that they expect to be in the video. While he video is playing students listen out for their keywords.This could either be used to assess their prior knowledge or AfL at the end of the lesson.
Overall an amazing resource that should be used by students of all ages and across all subject areas. Although the free trail will not last forever the pricing is very reasonable and would be well worth considering purchasing as a whole school and allowing to learn when ever they want to and using both desktop computers and mobile devices.
As teachers, we are constantly looking for new ways to engage pupils, yet we often overlook resources that are right under our noses. In my case, it was my 83-year-old grandfather John Smart, a retired hydrologist who probably knows more about some aspects of the science curriculum than I do.
But it took months of discussing various scientific concepts and experiments with him over the phone before the penny finally dropped and I invited him to be part of a lesson. He was thrilled and the results were priceless.
My grandfather worked for the Institute of Hydrology on a project in the Hafren Forest of Mid-Wales, where he focused on the management, monitoring and protection of water quality and its sources. So setting up a Skype call with such an expert, recording it and showing it to a Year 7 class to help facilitate their learning about acid rain seemed like a logical thing to do.
What was it that made it so special, and so different from me being centre stage? First, the access to such a specialist is often hard to come by. So finding friends or family members who can describe their experience in the field to pupils in the classroom is vital in giving purpose to young people’s learning.
A new face is also engaging and, when used as a voice-over to pictures or videos, can give a whole new slant to the lesson.
The process was simple but effective. I showed a three-minute video of my grandfather to my Year 7 class, accompanied by footage from his home. This focused on how acid rain was formed and the effects it could have on the environment, a key element of the key stage 3 science curriculum. We then investigated the effect of acid rain on plants.
In a follow-up lesson, pupils Skyped my grandfather. The lesson flowed, pupils were guiding their own learning and everyone got to talk to an expert. Not bad for 60 minutes.
Such e-learning approaches are easy once you keep your eyes open for opportunities. There might be a pupil in your class whose parent is a journalist, for example, or one whose relative runs a catering business.
Since the video of my grandfather was first uploaded to the TES Resources site it has received more than 6,500 views – 2,400 of them in one day – boosted by Twitter and @tesscience.
So if you’re a teacher searching for inspiration, look in your own backyard for ways to produce innovative lessons.
Gavin Smart is a science teacher and e-learning coordinator. He is also a member of the TES science panel.
VideoScribe.tv is a new exciting way to demonstarte learning or just make a very creative eye catching video! It includes all the drawing animations to wow your colleagues, classmates or students. It is empowers you to create a superb stop motion style animations but a lot quicker and easier.
You can choose from a wide variety of pictures that can be drawn onto the canvas and also a range of text styles to choose from.
Once you have edited your VideoScribe, you may share to Camera Roll, YouTube, Facebook or Dropbox where they can then be shared with the world.
Features include:
• easy to use
• ‘lifelike’ drawing style
• scale, rotate and arrange images & text with endless possibilities
• use our growing library of hundreds of images
• import your own logos or artwork (.svg format only)
• link to Dropbox for image import, music and exporting Movies
• search the web for images to use within the app
• draw anything to any timeframe
• add a backing track from our royalty free library or add your own (.mp3 format only)
• full colour, outline, black and white and more effects
• change the paper texture & colour
• draw the movie left handed, right handed or without a hand
• get advanced by setting camera positions
• iPad2 & iPad3 only: Record your own voiceover & mix with a backing track
• submit to YouTube, Facebook, Dropbox or share with the desktop version or other devices
• send to Sparkol presentations to include easily in your next presentation.
Below is my first attempt at making a video scribe and below that is one produced by students in less than 25 minutes!
RT @jonkay01: Well done Yeovil Town. Championship next season. Top club in the South West ahead of big-city neighbours in Bristol (x2), Exe… 15 hours ago
After watching the whole of my tutor group playing 4 Pics 1 word app on their iPhones and iPods and getting very enthusiastic about finding out the answer I decided to try and use the concept of the game in one of my lessons.
It wasn’t long however until tweets were coming in from around the globe from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. By 10pm Sunday I had received 325 mentions and using 
