June 2006 - Posts
Came across Starfall this week. It's quite American but I love the 'Car Race' interactive book. On the LHS you can select word building activities and on the RHS a story.
I like the fact that you can select individual words within each story to hear.
Health warning though, they talk about magic 'e' rather than a split digraph.
James Barrett
The following alert has been posted on the EIS site:
"Domain Names for schools (e.g. School.Kent.sch.uk) were allocated nationally and registered by the LEAs.
There are no charges for these domain names, and they require no renewal unlike ordinary domain names.
The majority of the domain names for schools in Kent are administered by a company Global Crossing.
A company calling themselves Safenames has been contacting schools to say Global Crossing have not received payment for the schools domain name and requesting bank details.
If you should receive such an approach do not provide any details and request that they contact the EIS helpdesk.
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EIS has recently become aware that schools may receive a domain renewal notice for their domain names. The notice is from a company called Domain Registry Services, 154 Church End, Cambridge. Normally a renewal notice comes from Nominet or the ISP (probably RM or Unisys for most schools).
Should you received such a notice, call the EIS Help Desk on 01622 672779."
Mandy
I can strongly recommend paint.NET, having used it myself for several months, as a free alternative to PaintShop and a huge improvement on Windows Paint (which it has been designed, as an academic project overseen by Microsoft, to replace).
Layering and advanced effects are available, yet it is simple enough for Key Stage 2 pupils to use, for example to add effects to photos. I particularly like the semi-transparent tools which activate when you hover over them.
Download from: http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html (link updated 16/12/06)
Helen
Have you discovered the TES Resource Bank yet?
In just two months since the TES Resource Bank was set up 1,000 resources have been uploaded by 258 users.
The most downloaded resource is Phonic Games, submitted by jambam, which has been downloaded 1276 times and has had rave reviews.
But the best rated resource, downloaded 1143 times, is the Lifecycle of Butterfly Photographs, submitted by MinesAMalibu.
Information taken from the TES Breaking News.
Let us know of your favourite resource on the TES Resource Bank.
Other popular Teaching Resource Websites include:
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/ (Kent Teacher Mark Warner)
http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/
Teacher Resource Exchange http://tre.ngfl.gov.uk/
Mandy