New apps - Animoto and AudioBoo

I've remotely sent out two new apps - Animoto is a really easy way to make a wee video, and AudioBoo is an app to record sound.

To use Animoto, you just open the app, and it'll ask you to click on up to 12 photos or videos from your iPad. Once you've clicked these, you then select a theme, and it puts the photos and/or video clips together for you into a slideshow complete with music - you don't need to do any editing at all. (You can add some text if you like though). It does mean that it will trim your video clips to fit, but it works really well. This would be a great way for even infant classes to create their own videos by slecting the content they'd like. Because Animoto is a free app, you can't save the video into your camera roll - it saves within the app and on the animoto website. From there, you can share the video by using Airdrop (a quick way to share with a nearby iPad) or by emailing the link. By all of us using the same account, it means I can easily share videos on our website if you'd like to.

AudioBoo is another free app, and allows you to record up to 3 minutes of sound. Again, if we use the same account, I can upload recordings onto our website if you'd like to share them(you can hear examples on the p5b page of our website). Please give these a go, and just ask if you need a hand.

Music

Just realised that I haven't posted about two of my favourite music making sites, so here you are:

Incredibox is a fantastic site that lets you layer beatboxing samples to create your own music. There are now three different versions, and you can record a composition which is saved onto the site, and you get a link to share it with others. Really worth a look - suitable for all ages.

Isle of Tune is a music sequencer, where you build a town and each house, tree, lampost etc creates a different sound when a car drives past. It's a great way to compose your own music or try to recreate a piece you already know.

Robert Burns

Click here for a downloadable version of this map:

There are some other links to Burns and Scots poetry on this blog from last year

Wondermind - exploring how our brains work

This game on the Tate Gallery website looks really interesting. It's probably best for p5 - p7, and has games and videos which explore and explain how our brains work, based on the theme of Alice in Wonderland. It introduces neuroscience to children in a fascinating and fun way. This would be great to look at together on the Smartboard, then let children play the games in the ICT suite and discuss how they got on.

Classical Masterpieces App

Classical Masterpieces is a free app with 20 pieces of classical music. Leigh-Anne recommended this, and suggested it might be agood idea for Big Writing lessons - would save you searching for music online or using the CD in the box - thanks Leigh-Anne!

Any other recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Using ICT to help teach about direct speech

There are several websites for creating fake text messages like the one above, and would be really handy for reminding children when writing to:
 * take a new line when a new person speaks
* enclose the speech and punctuation in speech marks
* a comma follows the text (like the little bit at the end of a speech bubble)
You could try iphone text generator, fake phone text and i fake text
 

Blooms Taxonomy film clips - may be useful for introducing or discussing thinking skills.

Pirates of the Carribean:

The Simpsons:

Finding Nemo:

For Blooms Taxonomy illustrated by Harry Potter click here