http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Celestia is "free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions."
Celestia lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
http://www.theopendisc.com/education/
The OpenEducationDisc is a compendium of software produced with students from KS1-5 in mind. Now published on a DVD, there is something here for everyone. 600 were produced for the BETT show and went like hot-cakes.
Marble is a geographical atlas and a virtual desktop globe which lets you quickly explore other places on our planet.
You can use Marble to look up places, to easily create maps, measure distances and to retrieve detail information about locations that you have just heard about in the news or on the Internet.
Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.
The current version can plot interactive graphs of various types. Graphs support control points, which users can click and drag to interact with the graph. Interaction is controlled by simple but flexible scripts. There are example scripts on the website.
The application is Java based, and can run on the desktop or as an applet on a web page.
Sympl is still at a very early stage, with plenty of plans for the future. I would welcome any comments or suggestions. Please also consider cross posting comments to the Sympl forums (http://www.sympl.org/forum).
Hi
I have just started a one day a week research project with the Specialist Schools Trust (under their iNet programme) - into the use / abuse of Web2.0 technologies.
As part of that (and an ongoing idea), I would like to start to address the duplication / wasted time & effort that all teachers find themselves in when writing / updating schemes of work.
As recommended by Miles Berry, I am offering to present a pair of sequential sessions, based around the Poplog system, available here www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html
My science coordinator has just asked me if we have a branching database program on our Edubuntu thin client system; we don't. Anyone have any recommendations?
The idea is like that of a classification key - a series of yes/no questions which the children create, and later respond to, to identify which of a set of objects is which. See, eg http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/subjects/science/databases/ . They are mentioned in the QCA KS2 ICT scheme of work, but not, as far as I can see, in the post-Rose curriculum.
Arduino is an open source hardware that is easily programmable and provides an interface between the real world the digital world. Originally created as a rapid prototyping tool for interaction designers, we believe it is the ideal tool for encouraging children to make their ideas come to life by creatively combining design with technology.
We would like to present our experience with a group of 8 to 11 year old girls and have a discussion about how this approach might be adopted in a school environment.
C&T is an eclectic company of drama professionals, technologists, teachers, web designers, animators and writers working with partner schools all over England to bring new, creative learning practice to students and teachers through a blend of drama, applied learning and digital technology.
