A Brilliant Portal for Budding Filmmakers

ACMI - or the Australian Centre for the Moving Image has just created a new portal for teachers and students to learn about and find resources about film making. 

Generator has downloadable audio and video that you can use in your own video production - a stroyboard generator to help get your ideas froim paper to silver screen and loads of tutorials and expert advice from accomplished film makers from around the world.

The royalty free video and audio is great enough on it's own but if you teach media there is also a whole collection of resources that show you how to incorporate film into your classroom. 

Check out GENERATOR here.

Create Timelines Online

Timetoast allows people to create interactive timelines, which they can share anywhere on the web. Anyone can join Timetoast and start creating and sharing their own timelines in minutes, all they need is a valid email address. It's completely free!

For the first time you can actually embed a timeline into a blog which is great which I have done below.  It is not visually amazing but ceratinly does the job.

Both student and teacher will find a purpose for this in their classroom.  I highly recommend checking it out here

Excellent web based generator for teachers and students

Create a Graph is very simple to use web based Graph Generator that I can highly recommend for younger students who may find a spreadsheet such as Excel a little daunting.  A very simple interface lets you select from Bar, Line, X&Y, Area and Pie graphs and takes you through each stage of the graph making process in simple to understand language.

There are examples and tutorials, not that you will need them and you can output graphs as either a traditional paper based printout or get a hyperlink to view your graph online.

Be sure to take a look at Create a Graph next time you are doing a statistics and data lesson with your kids and want to generate a graph simply whilst teaching your kids the steps required along the way.It's free of course with no sign up required and there are a few other useful tools to be found on this site also.

By the way if you are looking for a great lesson plan on Creating Pictographs on Computer with younger students.  Here is one from my lesson plan section.

Microsoft Education Labs New Projects

Just a quick one today that I have blatantly ripped from Dana Oshiro at www.readwriteweb.com.  Much thanks for this info about some new Educational Projects from Microsoft Labs.

Microsoft's Education Labs launched a new project this afternoon and it's better on trees and the environment. The group just announced a new Math Worksheet Generator where teachers can generate math problems and email them in paperless Word format to their students. In addition to Math Worksheet Generator, the group also announced plans for two additional projects to be released in the Fall.

Math Worksheet Generator: Built on top of Microsoft's math engine, this product is for teachers who want their students to get more problem solving practice. Instead of having to search for new worksheets or photocopy old ones, teachers can enter a sample problem and the generator determines the structure of the expression. From here the tool produces similar problems and generates a matching answer sheet. Teachers can use this tool for their entire class or tailor worksheets to individual work plans.

Microsoft Folder-based Sites:: Education Labs also announced plans to roll out a website creator in mid-October. With this tool, teachers will be able to convert Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents into html files. From here the files can be shared with students as web pages and all the files are hosted at no cost through Microsoft. The group is currently testing different admin rights in order to allow for student uploads.

Flash Cards: This product allows you to create and browse flash card decks and create favorites with your Windows Live ID. Teachers create decks by adding images, text and sound to their cards. From here students flip through the decks in Silverlight 3. One interesting part of this project is that as students answer questions, the software remembers incorrect answers and prompts those problem cards more frequently. This project is due before 2010.

For more information on these projects, visit Educationlabs.com or check out the 30 minute demo video at the bottom of the Math Generator page.

Thankyou again Dana.