Making presentations - Prezi and Keynote

In my opinion, the two best options for making a presentation are the Prezi website, and Keynote on iPads. They are both very user friendly, easy to learn, and look great. I think they're both a huge improvement on Powerpoint, which has a huge set of dropdown menus and several ways to do everything.

To use Prezi with your class, you'll need to set up an account for them to use, which will need an email address. I make a new gmail account whenever I do this, which takes a couple of minutes to do. I then use this email address to set up the Prezi account. Make sure you use a different password for Prezi and the gmail account. You should share the email address and Prezi password so that your pupils can log in to Prezi, but they should not have access to the gmail password.

Prezi is a huge page on which you put text, pictures and video, and then the screen will zoom into each section in whatever order you wish. This video shows how it's done:


Keynote is similar to Powerpoint, in that you have a series of slides. It's much simpler and looks better than Powerpoint though (again this is my personal opinion!). The video below shows how to make a Keynote presentation:

Videos

Got a few minutes that you'd like to use in a worthwhile way? Take a look at this site for videos suitable to show your class. It's a collection of news stories and viral videos from around the world.
You'd be able to generate some interesting group or class discussions and probably some follow up work too (eg note taking, summarising, predicting) - or you could just watch and enjoy them.
A personal favourite:

Newspaper Generators

There are a few ways to make newspaper pages using websites. Newspaper Generator will adjust to fit your text and creates a realistic looking folded page like this:

It doesn't offer a spellcheck feature though - definitely best to get the children type their article in Word, then copy and paste onto this site. You can't save either, so once you've pasted the text in, just print or take a screenshot to save.
You can also try this which is similar, but will fill a whole page with other stories.

Book Creator

A fantastic, really easy to use app that lets you add photos, video, sound and text to make a book. Once you make a book, just save it in ibooks (as shown in the video below). You can also now save it as a video so that the book can be put online - fantastic for our website.

Book Creator for the iPad from Book Creator on Vimeo.

Using AirDrop to share photos between iPads

I sent this info out as an email a while ago, but thought it would be useful to put here too.
The quickest and easiest way to share photos or video between iPads is to use the AirDrop function:

1. Make sure both iPads are connected to wifi.
(If they don't connect automatically, remember to go to tap on Settings, then wifi, and choose LT-OPEN. Then open Safari and put your username and password to get online).

1. On both iPads, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to see the Control Centre:

2. Tap on the AirDrop icon, and select Everyone:

3. On the iPad that has the photos you want to share, open your photos, and tap Select in the top right, then tap on all the photos you want to share. A blue tick will appear on each one:

4. Tap the arrow in the top left of the screen and then tap on AirDrop. In a few seconds, this will appear on the iPad you're wanting to share with. Tap accept and that's it!

Commonwealth Games

Some resources for teaching about the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth Games:
 
Game On Scotland website

 Commonwealth Class Education Pack (pdf)

 Red Cross website - Teaching activities linked to the Commonwealth Games designed to help young people explore the idea of a welcoming refugees and asylum seekers.

 Countries of the Commonwealth flag printables - colouring pages, bookmarks, booklets and themed writing paper for every Commonwealth country.

Commonwealth Games page on Twinkl - mainly display resources, but also a bingo game and some themed writing paper.

Primary Treasure Chest website - lots of display resources, also wordsearches and worksheets.

All about Clyde, the Commonwealth Games mascot - games to learn about the Commonwealth countries. Might be good to explore with your class on the Smartboard.

A fascinating wee maths trick