Tuesday 6 October 2009

Free Software shown to Primary Headteachers

Here are the slides and links from last weeks Heads and deputies forum talk. If you have any queries or comments, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

During the talk I mentioned the following:

The Redbridge Animation Competition, featuring £250 worth of free software and utilising the brilliant Anithings Software:

Telling your story from Stripey Design on Vimeo.

We then looked at some free software that could be downloaded and used in the classroom in discrete or cross-curricular ICT. These are:

Google Sketchup, a 3D modelling tool, suitable for Key Stage 2. Use this application to design buildings and add them to Google Earth.

 

The Next Application was SCRATCH, this is a free alterantive to Control Technology as pupils have to programme the software to create anything from a simple animation to a car chase game. Nicholas and I have written activities for this and intend to train Subject leaders at our next event in November.

Scratch: overview from andresmh on Vimeo.

Next we looked briefly at two free applications available to any teacher that has joined the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network. Once a member you can get your hands on:

Auto-collage- a tool that lets you mash a mix of photos together in a sort of Photoshop style collage. This could be great to share a number of ideas on a theme or topic.

Here I am showcasing this tool on my SMART Board

 

And finally, SongSmith, also available on the Innovative Teachers Network. Watch the video below as it will give you the full breakdown on what this great new tool will do:

 

If you have any queries about the content in this blog post or anything you remember me mentioning during the talk, please comment or send me an email.

2 comments:

  1. The Songsmith software looks good. I think Picasa from google is a better alternative to the Auto Collage thing. Picasa is also free and has a very wide range of photo organising and touch-up features as well as an easy to use collage option. http://picasa.google.com/

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  2. Thanks Mark - I'll take a look at the collage option in Picassa

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