Free tools
What's on the web? Here are a few fun
and interesting things - and they're all free!
NEWS Geographical Media is a monitoring tool designed to make it easy to follow news stories. It shows and compares the topics and people that are featuring in news media in different parts of the world. Formerly ‘I Spot a Story’, Spotery is a user-edited social news site, so you get some interesting alternative angles on stories. Post your own links, follow other contributors, or check out a range of categories, like science, technology, world, and business. Calling itself, ‘people’s media’, Allvoices is also a site that lets users share information, videos, images and opinions tied to news events – although it does include mainstream media feeds, as well. Search and navigate a news event by location and category. What’s topical on Google News? LiteNews is a simple word cloud of the most frequently used words in Google News. There are different categories to choose from. Click on a word to go to the Google News articles on the topic. THE NATURAL WORLD Developed by the Smithsonian Institution, Ocean Portal offers interactive resources designed to promote understanding, and stewardship of the world’s oceans. The Educators’ Corner has activities, lessons and other educational resources for teachers. The aim of Rainforest SOS is to raise awareness about the importance of rainforests in stopping climate change. Created for teachers, the website includes a range of resources, such as lesson and project ideas, games and activities, and short videos. Wild Music demonstrates how the sound of wildlife and nature inspires the creation of music. Among many activities on the site, students can compose music from the sounds of nature or compare their own hearing to animals. SCIENCE Microbial Life explores the world of bacteria. The site contains a variety of educational materials – including some fun-looking webquests – about microorganisms, the evolution of the microbial world, and our dependence on micro-organisms. Created as the online version of Popular Science magazine, Popsci offers a wealth of news, articles and commentary that’s easy to understand and search. Information is also organised in sections: gadgets, cars, science, technology, and DIY. WORDS One Sentence is an experiment in brevity. The idea is to tell a story in the fewest number of words – or at least the best part of it. Even if you don’t use the site, writing a story in just one line could be a fun concept to explore in class. Need a word that rhymes? Simply type in your word and Rhyme Brain will find words that sound similar. It can also offer alliterations and what it calls ‘insults’ – which look similar to Cockney Rhyming Slang. Unwords is a collection of words that people have made up, whether because there’s no associated word in the English language, or they think their word is better, or they didn’t know an actual one already existed. Whatever the reason, they don’t exist in dictionaries … not yet anyway. ECE From The British Council, What’s That Noise requires users to solve a fairly simple puzzle, by dragging-and-dropping pieces. This opens up the story book where you have to identify animals and sounds. Fun with Spot is a collection of online stories, interactive games, video clips, printable pages, all based on the popular books. You can also create your own Spot story and find out about the author. MATHS Calculator Soup is a list of online calculators. From basic to complex, they cover a range of specific functions from fractions, trigonometry and algebra, to finance, chemistry and statistics. Select, search or even request a calculator. Landmark Shark uses playing cards and sharks to help teach median, mode and range. Players are dealt five cards. They can exchange up to three to try to improve their score and are then asked various questions about the cards – find the mean, what is the mode, etc. Looking for a way to bring literature into your maths lessons? Try Mathematics and Children’s Literature. It uses three famous children’s stories – A Light in the Attic, Counting on Frank, and How big is a foot? – to illustrate skills such as geometry, volume, and measurements. Brain Den looks like a great way to test your logic skills and have fun. There are riddles, puzzles, logic problems and games on a range of topics from geometry to algebra to paradoxes to optical illusions. PLEASE
NOTE: PLEASE REMEMBER TO CHECK THE APPROPRIATENESS OF ANY
ONLINE RESOURCES BEFORE USING THEM IN CLASS. |
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