Chess Kid

From iLearn Technology

Chess Kid is a fantastic way for kids to learn to play the game of chess and then practice their game against kids from around the world.   The Chess Kid environment is safe and secure for kids, students have no contact with strangers.  A parent or a teacher manages all access and friendships online and can easily monitor all activity.   On Chess Kid students learn the rules and strategies of chess and work to improve their game, memorization skills, patience, and sportsmanship.  Students can train with tactic puzzles and exercises, view video lessons, practice tactic against the computer, or read chess articles.  Chess games can be played online against other kids from around the world, in online tournaments, blitz chess, or against the computer.

Amazing

I may be one of the last people on the planet to have found out about this, but  friend of mine sent me this video yesterday morning. Later in the day, as I was browsing through the New York Times online, I noticed this op ed piece about the cyclist, Danny MacAskill, and the impact that the video, which according to the article is “the Top Favorited sports video in YouTube History,” on McAskill’s life.

What interested me about the video is not so much what it shows, mind-boggling as that may be, but what it implies about what isn’t shown: the the 10,000+ hours of practice, the falls, the miscues, the injuries, the pain. I’ve never quite grokked the skateboarding ethos: kids on the street spending hours and hours obsessively practicing a set of skills that have no practical value and often constitute an considerable annoyance to those within earshot. For what, exactly? But out of every thousand kids who waste amazing amounts of time on something they’ll never be much good at, and at the expense of learning something else that might actually serve a purpose, for them or somebody else, there are always perhaps one or two guys like MacAskill who manage to raise their skill level in whatever idiosyncratic discipline they are engaged in to the point where it’s somehow transcendent, inspirational, even somehow spiritual. The Zen of Bicycling.

Twilight

If your can’t wait for Twilight: New Moon to be released, some of these quizzes and activities might help:

How well do you know Twilight? quiz

New Moon video quiz

Twilight puzzles

A fun quiz in the lead up to the release of Twilight: New Moon next week.

Take this quiz and find out which Twilight: New Moon character you are. Please be aware that you do need a Twitter account for this one.

 

New Game

Thanks to Iain I have discovered a new game from the makers of Samarost, Machinarium. I loved the  puzzling point and click adventure / game that was presented in Samarost so visited the new game site. I have started with the demo but can’t get past the first screen – I need someone in the class to give me some clues!!!

Is this a game worth paying for? Comments please.

From Iain’s blog post

This time the action revolves around a little robot, cast out from a mechanical city by accident. He must find his way back home, rescue his girlfriend and prevent a gang of robot hoodlums from setting off a bomb.

Each area is packed with visual detail, from intricate backgrounds to fluidly animated characters. Machinarium’s world is not a still piece of scenery, it’s a living, moving environment loaded with personality. There’s so much to look at it can be difficult to know where to start. Somehow, though, you always catch wind of a puzzle on the screen and can manage to discover what needs to be done.

The graphics are slightly different to Samarost, this time done in scratchy pencil style, but stills retains that unmistakable Amanita feel, and will foster a whole new round of creative writing prompts for eager kids.

Machinarium is a magnificent game, and that’s all I really need to say. You’ll be hooked the moment you see the robot store an item in his belly.

Environmental Graffiti

I have just come across this site and it’s well worth a visit!

Environmental Graffiti regularly features photo essays of some of most interesting and unique natural occurrences on Earth. There is a range of interesting articles and photo sets from

The World’s Most Famous Gay Animals to The Most Incredible Geysers on Earth to Beijing’s Forbidden City.

Anne Frank

As we studied the Holocaust earlier this year I thought you might be interested in this from Larry Ferlazzo

The British newspaper The Guardian has just written about, and posted, a short video clip appearing on YouTube which shows a few seconds of Anne Frank.

Film footage of Anne Frank posted on YouTube

Anne Frank museum posts 20-second video of young wartime Jewish diarist taken on neighbour’s wedding day in 1941

The only existing film images of Anne Frank have been loaded on to YouTube by Amsterdam museum the Anne Frank House.

The footage, from 1941, is the only time Anne has been captured on film. The 20-second footage uploaded to the museum’s recently launched Anne Frank Channel shows Anne’s neighbour on her wedding day. A 13-year-old Anne is seen nine seconds into the video, leaning out of a second-floor window to get a better look at the bride and groom. At the time of the wedding the bride-to-be lived at No 37 Merwedeplein, next door to the Franks at No 39.

The scene was filmed on 22 July 1941, just under a year before the Frank family went into hiding above the family business. The family were discovered in August 1944 and Anne died in a Nazi concentration camp in March 1945.

You can also read more at Mashable

New Zealand Book Month

From Fiona Grant, ICT in English NZ, I have discovered that October is NZ Book Month.

Here are a few useful links from Fiona

Picture Books, Comics and Graphic Novels A selection of some of the best picture books, comic strips and graphic novels currently available for children aged 10-14.
From Billy Boyd’s – The Literacy Adviser Blog (The Arrival by Shaun Tan is delightful).

Inside Google Books is a blog with tips and updates for using Google’s book search

ReadPrint Free online books library for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast.

Literary Tweets 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter

Lookah

Check this out – A New Zealand site with software tutorials created by David Kinane and Interface Magazine.

From David Kinane

The aim of the project is to provide teachers with an easily accessible and searchable resource for software tutorials. Providing teachers with a series of tutorials that are easily digestible and sequential  based around a software programme is something about which I am passionate and for the last couple of years I have been creating videos tutorials to do just that. The Lookah site is a natural extension of this passion.

The tutorials that are currently on the Lookah site are based on a survey that Interface magazine asked of its readers, plus a few of my own favourite software programmes of course, plus a few that I created.  The result is what you see here and it is not an exhaustive list.  It is up to you to make this resource work.  If you need a specific tutorial on a specific software platform, I can create this for you, so please let me know. The Lookah project is phase one of a two phase project.

Ideas for Images

I need to place this here so I can direct students to it. Great ideas here, thanks to Diigo for the link!

25 Things To Do With a Digital Image

Another Game

Sorry, but I can’t remember where I found this link but this looks like another Samorost type game, The Blue Beanie! Have a go and let me know what you think.

Origami

Last week our Japanese intern teacher introduced our class to Sumo wrestling and then went on to get the students to create origami mini Sumo wrestlers. They then played ‘sumo wrestling’ with them by tapping on the cardboard ‘sumo’ mat to see whose character fell out of the ring first. Lots of fun and noise!

The other day Smashing Apps sent out a post with this,  23 Incredible And Creative Origami Artworks. Wow there are some amazing artworks here!

Here are a couple of them!

Information is Beautiful

While driving home from my usual Saturday ‘window shop’ I was listening to the radio. Wendyl Nissen was talking to Paul Holmes and happened to mention a website, Information Is Beautiful. What a great find and one I’ll certainly find uses for in the classroom.

According to the site banner,

Ideas, issues, knowledge, data – visualized! See what you think

There is a variety of news, data, interesting information and it’s all presented visually – think infographics! There is a page where you can see the full graphic of the visualisations and also a page where you can see the data used.

Here is an example of Caffeine and Calories visualisation. This site is certainly worth a visit!

A World of Possibility

The only conductor to ever lead the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Zander is a prophet of human potential and an unrivaled champion of joie de vivre.  Watch as he helps unlock the boundless potential of a 15 year old cellist and teaches the entire Pop!Tech audience what it means to live in a world of possibility.

I can’t embed the video so here is the link Benjamin Zander Pop!Tech 2008

Lateral Thinking

If you have trouble with some of the problems I read out just before the 3pm bell visit this site, Lateral Thinking Brain Teasers. Some of the problems on this page are the same as the ones we have had but there are some new ones.

Here is an example:

A man holidaying abroad fell off a yacht into deep water. He could not swim and he was not wearing anything to keep him afloat. It took 30 minutes for the people on the yacht to realize someone was missing. The missing man was rescued two hours later. Why didn’t he drown?

There are Hints and Solutions available BUT don’t look too soon!

Click on the other links available to find more brain teasers to get your brain ‘thinking outside the square’!

Here is another site I have just discovered with the same tpe of problems, Online Puzzles and Brain Games.

It has ”Captivating Daily Puzzles to Cross-Train Your Brain”.

There are more games than puzzles but it still fits in with our focus for this term on Thinking and Your Brain.

Quietube

Do you want to watch You Tube videos without all the clutter that surrounds the screen? Try using quietube.

quietube: Video without the distractions

To watch web videos without the comments and crap, just drag the button below to your browser’s bookmarks bar. On any of the supported video pages, click the bookmark button to watch in peace.

You can then make short URLs too, to send the quietube version to your friends. Easy as. Here’s an example.

And from Hey Milly

Quietube allows you to take a Youtube video and remove all the comments and other “crap” (as they say) from around the video and leave you with a white simple page around the youtube video. The main quietube page says that it also supports vimeo, viddler and the BBC iPlayer.

All you do is drag the small bookmarklet tool onto your bookmarks bar and then when you have a you tube video that you want to ‘quieten’ you click on the quietube bookmarklet and it changes your youtube link into a nice simple quietube page that you can then send on.

A pretty handy tool if you are like me and use You Tube a lot in your class!

I’ve just read a latest post from MakeUseOf.com and they have discovered a similar site, Silentube.

Silentube is a browser bookmarklet that lets you watch and share YouTube videos on clutter free interface. The application can remove all surrounding distractions and present video on a clean web page.

Using Silentube is a straightforward process, involving these simple steps:

1. Visit the Silentube and drag provided bookmarklet onto your browser toolbar.
2. Whenever you want to view or share a clutter-free video on YouTube, click  Silentube bookmarklet. You will be then directed from the regular (cluttered) YouTube page to a Silentube page that only displays the video.

Here’s an example.

Of course, better still you can download the videos and avoid the troublesome buffering!