Friday, 22 March 2013

Web Services I use - The laundry list

This is going to be a bit of a laundry list, but I just got asked what Web Services I use and have realised it's quite a list. So this is directly from my current bookmark list.  Consider it a treasure hunt to find the gold.


IT Teaching


Games Development


Download - Compil Games
AGS - Adventure Game Studio
Wintermute Engine
Scirra.com - Home of Construct, the free open-source game creator
App Hub - home
Building Windows Phone Games with Microsoft XNA Game Studio | Tech·Ed North America 2010 | Channel 9
Make iOS and Flash Games with StencylWorks
MIT App Inventor
Android Cookbook: Home
Kongregate Labs
Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share
GameMaker: Studio™ | YoYo Games
Create Games - Scirra.com
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
Games at Sploder - Make your own Online Games Arcade, War Space & Platformer Games
How to draw funny cartoons. Simple guide to improve your drawing skills.
O2 learn - Lessons
Free Excel: Templates | Free Excel: Add-ins
What2Learn
MIT Center for Mobile Learning @ The Media Lab
News | Association for Learning Technology
index to music education viewlets
nstoneit.com E-learning Experiences
<e-Adventure>
Games in Education - Science
Code Year
Computing at School :: Computing For the Next Generation ...
ACMI Generator
TeachMeet / FrontPage
Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare
For Teachers – Google in Education
Hello World!
ClassTools.net: Create interactive flash tools / games for education
ictstarters - home
MoooJvM's Channel - YouTube
Prezi - The Zooming Presentation Editor
A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
Learn to Type | Free Typing Tutor | Typing Course
Paper.li – Be a publisher
Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds
Waterbear: Welcome
Under Ten Minutes | How to use Education Technology quickly.
freeSFX.co.uk - Download Free Sound Effects
Free Computer, Programming, Mathematics, Technical Books, Lecture Notes and Tutorials
YouTube to MP3 Converter - SnipMP3
Stock Photography: Search Royalty Free Images & Photos
SearchHash: make your own spreadsheet of hashtagged tweets to savour
Topsy - Real-time search for the social web
Free Sound Clips | SoundBible.com
Popplet | Collect, curate and share your ideas, inspirations, and projects!
GoBarbra.com | Make Your own customized Barbra Streisand song!
ICT Tools to support learning
ACMI Generator
easel.ly | create and share visual ideas online
Vegas Product Family Overview
5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic
All you need to create your own outside broadcast unit and stream video from almost anywhere | Learn 4 Life
Naace: The Video Production in Schools (Advanced) Course
GeoGebra
The Differentiator
Instructables - Make, How To, and DIY
Educreations
Search Stories
textadventures.co.uk
Scratch for Budding Computer Scientists: Introduction
Valve launches ‘Steam for Schools’ Program » Digital Leader Network
Computing History - The UK Computer Museum
digitalstudieswiki [licensed for non-commercial use only] / Welcome
Build with Chrome
Stykz • Downloads
Photo Pin : Free Photos for Bloggers via Creative Commons
The Teachers - Kodudes - The Write Buzz
Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine
computing
3mhothouse - lino
Training for Schools and Colleges

3d modelling


25 (Free) 3D Modeling Applications You Should Not Miss
Moviesandbox » an open-source machinima toolset
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
Best Freeware 3D Designing Programs
Storytelling Alice
Alice.org
Gamestudio game development system
3D Rad Development History
Wings 3D
insight3d - opensource image based 3d modeling software
Free 3D CAD with Motion Simulation : AR-CAD freeCAD
FreeOCR Downloads - Free Optical Character Recognition Software for Windows
Create timelines, share them on the web | Timetoast timelines
Power Searching with Google
EdFutures
TES webchats - how you can get involved - Article - TES
#TESchat - Julia Donaldson - Thursday 4 October 6.30pm - Resources - TES
TeachersPayTeachers.com - An Open Marketplace for Original Lesson Plans and Other Teaching Resources
Runestone Interactive
ClassBadges Is A Free Way To Gamify Your Classroom | Edudemic
Educational Touch Typing Course for Schools - Englishtype
iBooks Author: Publishing and distribution FAQ
Platformer Game Maker - Flash Game Maker on Sploder!
Udacity | Free Online Courses. Advance your College Education & Career
Coursera.org

infographics


List of Free Tools to Create Infographics for your Learners
K9 Web Protection Browser for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store
Kinovea
10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics
Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite with Free and Cheap Software
ICT and Computing - Raspberry Pi - OCR
AppShed - Build HTML5, iPhone and Android apps online for schools, education and business
zondle - games to support learning
The 22 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher Must Have ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
Chris McWilliam's ICT Subject Leader blog: Blog 17: Ideas for introducing game making
6 Chrome Extensions for Students « Kyle B. Pace
Popcorn Maker
Minecraft: Pi Edition | Minecraft: Pi Edition updates and downloads

Network Management


Meraki Systems Manager
Mac App Store - Apple Configurator

iPad


iPads in Primary Education: Apps for Creativity in Primary Education
StoryKeepers - iPad StoryTelling APPS
Top Five iPad Apps for Teaching Across All Content Areas | Edutopia
NimbleKit - Develop native iOS apps with Html & Javascript.
Reflector.app - AirPlay mirroring to your Mac or PC, wirelessly.
Animoto - Create Video Slideshows - Style Selector

Minecraft


Tutorial: Getting Minecraft Pi Edition running with MCPIPY Scripts | Python & Minecraft on Raspberry Pi!
Online Degree: 100 Essential Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

EYFS


LandingPage
Home
75 Open Source Replacements for Popular Education Apps - Datamation
FRAPS show fps, record video game movies, screen capture software
Knowmia - Technology for Teaching. Made Simple.
Build with Chrome
Get Revising
Computer Science Unplugged |

Saturday, 16 February 2013

Exclusive: First Look at Raspberry Pi's Minecraft

I take a first look at Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi and I believe that I have the first actual video of the program in action. You will be impressed at how speedily it works and for an alpha version it is remarkably stable. A very impressive piece of coding.  You will also be pleased to hear that once the file is downloaded you do not need an Internet connection to run it. 

How to install Minecraft

1. To download Raspberry Pi for Minecraft go to:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.minecraft.net/pi/minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz
2. decompress it: tar -zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz
3. Change directory to mcpi (Should be cd mcpi)
4. Either type in: ./minecraft-pi or use the file manager and click on it.

Minecraft controls:
=== KEYBOARD ===
W,A,S,D - Move (navigate inventory)
SPACE - Jump, double tap to start/stop flying, hold to fly higher
SHIFT - Sneak, hold to fly lower
E - Open inventory
1-8 - Select inventory slot item to use
ESC - Show/hide menu
TAB - Release mouse without showing menu
ENTER - Confirm menu selection

=== Mouse ===
Steer - Look/turn around
Left mouse button - Remove block (hold)
Right mouse button - Place block, hit block with sword
Mouse wheel - Select inventory slot item to use




Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation
More details at: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Friday, 8 February 2013

Teachers Guide to the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny little computer that costs about £30. It can do most things that a computer can do, but its size and the fact that it is very cheap makes it ideal for electronics projects. It was originally designed to be for the education market, but pretty quickly a lot of hobbyists have seen its potential and used it for everything from a small-scale web servers to brewery controllers. This guide is intended for teachers to help get the most from the device and find all the relevant resources.  There will be plenty more educational resources available as people release them.

Getting Your Pi

The Three official supplier are:

You can buy your Pi from a number of outlets and some come with necessary accessories.  If you buy a plain Pi you will need:
1. an HDMI cable and TV or DVI cable to suitable monitor
2. USB Keyboard and mouse
3. 2GB or larger SD Card. (To set up a card, see: http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup)

Teaching your first lesson with the Pi

Here are the 10 lesson ideas that you might wish to use with a vanilla Raspberry Pi


Programming with Pi

For educational purposes two languages stand out:

There are several books available if you would like something in print:
Enter: RPi for a 40% discount.

Hello World! is another nice book for Python.


Electronics Projects with Pi

This is really where the Pi comes into its own and people have been doing amazing things with the Pi. I wholeheartedly recommend that you have a look at the official Website and forums for examples: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

There are two projects that are really interesting:

  • Pi-Face - By the university of Manchester, simple to use interface
  • Gert Board - Bit more complex, but can get more out of it. Now available assembled. Good tutorial over at Tech Fruits

Other Useful Links






Friday, 4 January 2013

The curse of Operating System Number 6



In the OS world Operating Number 6 would appear to be a cursed number!  Let's take a look shall we.  Firstly let's begin with the Grandaddy! DOS.  It never made it past version number 6, thanks to a new fangled Windows!  It was not the only operating system to suffer under windows and Mac OS 6 was born at a time that it was dripping Market share to Windows 3.  Zeta BE OS version 6 was surrounded by controversy and eventually died the death of the unknown.



About decade later and we have the most famous failure of all... Windows 6!  Don't remember the name, well perhaps that's because they called it Vista.  In fact it was so bad, that Apple Sales people said that they greatest sales tool they had was Vista!  And finally we have iOS 6, which considering the fate of version number 6 of other operating systems isn't so bad, except when it comes to finding anything in the real world!

Still there is one consolation, Unix 6 was the first version to make it outside of Bell Labs and we can be very grateful for that, because not only did it give us Linux, but also Next, which in turn got us OS X.







Friday, 7 December 2012

3 Simple Scratch Tutorials

Here are 3 simple tutorials to get you started in Scratch. You will need a TES login for some of these, but most UK teachers will already have one and it only takes about 30 seconds to enter some details for everybody else. Click on the games to play and download them from the main Scratch Website.

Platformer using minimal code

Really uses very little code and students can spend their time making the perfect platformer.
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Platformer-using-minimal-code-Scratch-6178955/

Scratch Project

Spaceship

Everybody loves to fly spaceships and in this game you get to design a ship and move it around:
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Design-a-Spaceship-and-make-it-move-6113167/

I developed this code into Space Rescue 2 to demonstrate how far Scratch could be pushed:
Scratch Project

Zap Bad Guys

This game is addictive and despite the ridiculously simple graphics, students love to play it. There is plenty of room for expansion both graphically and levels.
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Zap-bad-Guys-Scratch-6170952/ 

Scratch Project

More Tutorials

Great Website with lots of enjoyable games to make.
http://www.eastonhome.co.uk/Scratch/index.htm

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Green Screen Studio or a TV and Raspberry Pi?

When you have a friend with an OFSTED inspection, hoping to teach an invigorating Maths lesson. You could go out and get a Green Screen Studio, multi-million pounds worth of special effects budget and some professionals in... Or you could leave it to us to knock it up for next to nothing....

So how did we do it?  

Well firstly, we used a Samsung Camcorder, a script, a nearby television and a video source on a loop. (The Raspberry Pi played the video)   We then edited in some library footage and we had a video ready to go.



Look for yourself, considering the DIY nature of the set-up it performed pretty well and opens up a wide range of applications. Imagine the possibilities for students to film themselves anywhere with anything in the background.

The Maths exercises to go with the video can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/#folders/0B-tNSVgcXSshTWlKSU9hTks3eVU

Monday, 3 December 2012

Game Editors Roundup


It would seem that every time I turn my back there is another games Editor. The classic and probably the one that started the genre is Scratch. Very simple to get started, ideal for primary, but limited in functionality. Scratch  (http://scratch.mit.edu/)

Microsoft then thought they could make one for X-Box and Windows 7 and make it 3d to boot. Kodu was born: http://www.kodugamelab.com/ It's a lot of fun and a great introduction to some of the key concepts, the only real limiting factor is that you can't design your own sprites.

Now the real gap in the market has been to find something that's a bit more substantial than these kits, but not as complicated as a full-blown programming language.

Html 5 based
Tululoo - http://www.tululoo.com/
Construct2 - https://www.scirra.com/

Java based
Greenfoot - http://www.greenfoot.org


App Development
Stencylworks -http://www.stencyl.com/stencyl/overview/
GameSalad - http://gamesalad.com/
Game Editor - http://game-editor.com/Main_Page
Game Maker - http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio

For advanced users we have some very advanced kit, but the catch is that you really need to have at least grasped the basics before tackling a large project.

Programming language
Python & PyGame http://www.pygame.org

3d Games kit
Tool for video game development, architectural visualizations, and interactive media installations
http://unity3d.com/

If you know of more then please, add it in the comments box.