Inspiration

Impossible is not a fact ... it's an opinion!
For more ways to inspire your students try Inspiration, or Kidspiration, software. With such a strong emphasis on the key competency of Thinking Skills, I consider these programs to be essential in the classroom. Very rarely would I consider paying for software, but would make an exception with Inspiration.

There are so many things you can do with it! It's a fantastic concept-mapping tool for your students or, if you only have one computer and a projector, use it to put the whole classes ideas together. You can brainstorm, group, compare, organise, arrange and rearrange. It's also fantastic as a writing frame, especially for our more visual learners, and with one click turns a colourful diagram into a word document. Download a free trial here.

mmmm ... del.icio.us

By now most of us have heard of delicious, the social bookmarking site. What does 'social bookmarking' mean? Just that - it's a way of storing our internet favourites, and being able to share them with others (or not!).

As part of our cluster inquiry project, I've set up a delicious account with some sites that might be useful for your Discover Tasman project. This can be shared amongst yourselves, or with your students. View this at: http://del.icio.us/discoverit . Just click on the 'tags' at the side (these are keywords used to describe a site) to see a list of websites on that topic. For this project, you will find the most useful, and reliable, sites under the tag 'new_zealand'.

Our lead teachers have set up their own accounts, and now share their bookmarks with each other. A couple have set up an account for their school syndicate, and will use this with their students for directed internet searching. Of course the kids can get into this site from anywhere, so can easily continue with their research from home.