The Teacher Toolbox

Tonight I’ve added a few new software tools to my mind mapping page that you might like to explore and compare to your traditional software of choice… or coloured pencils.

When Dr Jim and I were working together in Melbourne last year he recommended the online mind mapping tool Mindomo to the punters that attended our sessions. I’ve since found that the beauty of this tool is that you can embed multimedia into the mind maps. Nice!

Recently Mindomo has added a new desktop version of the software to the site so you can work offline. This is a nice feature as oh so often a lesson can go ‘belly up’ if the internet goes down while relying on Web 2.0 tools.

The crux of my mind mapping page is still the conventions of mind mapping. At the bottom of the page I’ve included my ‘mindmap on mind mapping’. This resource outlines the most of the conventions of mind mapping and I find that the quality of the mind maps produced by people after exploring this scaffold greatly increases.

I have also included a link to a mind mapping rubric that I have found useful. I hand out the rubric and explore with the students before setting them off to work.

I’ve also included a Youtube video from the man himself, Tony Buzan as well as a few links to books he has written on the topic that I have found extemely useful.

Feel free to experiment with my mind map on mind mapping and the mind mapping rubric

Adrian

Today I’ve put together this keyboard shortcut prompt card slash bookmark for people to download and blu-tac to the side of their monitors for reference.

The idea here is that when you are working in a word processing document you glance across to the prompt card and try and implement the shortcuts. Once the shortcuts become automatic you will find yourself wondering how you ever managed without them.

If you teach children, they love shortcuts. Hand out one of these bookmarks to each student and encourage them to experiment. Before too long the kids will be coming to you with a plethora of keyboard shortcuts that they have discovered.

Enjoy

Adrian

With the growing popularity if my blog and website I am constantly sent emails asking for ‘link exchanges’. Most people just want a link on a popular website to up their Google rankings so that their profile is raised. You would be amazed at how many online gambling sites think that their site would be great for my readers and their students

Occasionally though I do come across a genuine site that has a lot to offer the educational community. I’ve had a bit of a cruise around this FREE video site (but I haven’t signed up yet) and their look to be some excellent resources there.

At the moment the site focuses on the Sciences but I see that that they are branching out into poetry.

So check out the Teachers’ Domain to see what you can find to inspire your students.

Adrian

PS Here is the email request…

Hi Adrian,

I stumbled upon your wonderful site and became a quick fan of your
work.   I work for Teachers' Domain here at WGBH - Boston's PBS
Station.  I'm not sure if you are familiar with our site, but we are a
free digital library of resources for teachers in science, math,
language arts and social studies.  Our videos, lesson plans and other
resources help supplement teacher's lessons by engaging students with
PBS content and incorporating media and technology in the classroom.

We are about to expand our content next month in all subjects and I
was wondering if you'd be interested in posting about us on your site
or in your blog.  Please check out our resources - I think the would be
of great interest to you and your readers... and best of all they are
FREE!

Thanks and I look forward to being in touch.

Daniella
WGBH - Boston's PBS Station
www.teachersdomain.org

Firefox has been my browser of choice for several years. I love all the extensions you can add to it to make it really yours – Twitter, download managers, photo galleries, local spell check dictionary etc, etc.

Today Firefox is releasing Version 3 and they are trying to set a Guinness Book of Records for the most software downloaded in a single day. Let’s help them set a record and as a bonus get a really nice, flexible web browser at the same time.

If the link still points to Firefox 2 check here http://tinyurl.com/4e7fv5 to see when Firefox 3 will become available to you.

cheers

Adrian B

Oh, and I love the spell check function when you are blogging with children.

Hi All,

So glad I could drop by today and I trust you all have a little something to take back and implement at your school

Here are direct links to the resources I discussed today.

A bit about me – My bio

In the Beginning there was The Symmetry Project

The Starfish Web Design – Yr 3/4

Learning Centre Role Description Cards – A key to doing what I do with students.

The Science Wow Factory – Readers’ Theatre Scipts to Download – First Place in Global Virtual Classroom Project – Be sure to check out ‘The Floating Teabag’.

The Ace Kids Blog – 2007 – The joys of working with a really switched on teacher.

Puppet Poetry Movie – You have 3 minutes to demonstrate to the world how creative, intelligent and articulate you are. What will you do?

Scamper – The creative process I use to generate ideas. Substitute software for traditional tools. Combine software and different subjects.

Martian Postcards – SCAMPER in Action

Fractal Poetry Photostory – A place where Art, Poetry and Mathematics Collide

Ejay Software – Digital Music Software – try a demo

Photo Mosaic Freeware – We used it as a bit of a class fundraiser

Paint.Net - Great image manipulation program + Some of my printable tutorials

Artrage – Make sure you experiment with the ‘trace image’ feature.

3d animation - Anim8or – + I’ve added a Quick Start Guide here for you to download

Mind Maps Created in Cmap – + here is my Mindmap on How to Mindmap

The Original Ace Kids Podcasts - My Pod-o-matic Account that I use during consultancy days.

Stop Motion Animation made with Monkey Jam – A Few Tips and Tricks

adrianbruce.com – feel free to explore the site – download what you need and then hand it on to other teachers – Reading Games – Math Resources – Freeware – Lots of stuff.

The Teachers’ Toolbox = my blog – consider joing the other 15 000 people who are subscribed

Professional Learning Tools

Pageflakes – I have my Pageflakes account as one of my tabbed homepages.

Download Itunes and find some educational podcasters – Try David Warlick and Wesley Fryer to begin with.

Sign up for Twitter then head to my page to see who my Yodas are and then ‘follow’ a few to begin with. See who they ‘follow’ and pretty soon you will have instant access to many like minds. http://twitter.com/adrianbruce

Try out Edu ISland in SecondLife – The Discovery Education Network i a good place to attend workshops.

Try attending live workshops via Ustream TV – Here is Will Richardson’s ‘TV station’ – NB If you attend live you can take part in the chat session.

Have Fun With it All

Adrian Bruce

Over the last couple of years I’ve had the opportunity to work with some very clever students. Last year one of them knocked me up this T-shirt based on my site’s Alexa ranking. Tah!

Today when I was hunting for some files I came across it. I ripped into alexa.com to see if the rank had changed and was rather surprised to find that my site had popped up a little in the rankings. My 3 month average is the 417 219th most popular website on the Internet. Sort of makes you all warm and fuzzy inside So I jumped into Photoshop and changed the numbers to what they are today.

On digging around in the stats on the site I found that in certain countries around the world my site’s ranking is much higher. e.g .

Fiji = 2 696 th most popular, Barain = 16 196th, Australia = 44 000th, Quatar = 55 171 and that 5% of my traffic comes from The United Arab Emirates.

It was also nice to see just how many countries are downloading my resources and using them to educate. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/adrianbruce.com

All that said, I aim to keep the site growing. So feel free to get your friends to subscribe to my newsletter and pass my site around those who need the resources. I have heaps more ideas that I want to get online over the coming months esp poetry, 5 minute Science ideas, a heap more Math games, ideas on reducing ‘teacher stress’ and esp the reading games that people have converted to other languages for me to add to the site.

cheers

Adrian

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to chat with Gary Stager over a couple of days at a conference I was presenting at. This morning I tapped into Ustream to attend one of his presentations. It was c.7am here in Oz (which was fine) but Miss Emily wanted breakfast, nappy change, love, attention etc. What I found is that you can get rather good at one handed typing

Do make sure you check out some of the Educon channels. There are heaps of fantastic ideas there to interact with and implement with your students and children.

cheers

Adrian

A couple of nights back a friend and I were discussing our Myers-Briggs profiles and she suggested I do the Enneagram Test. It was 180 questions but it really nailed my personality and I have some insight into how I work best. Have a go at the test yourself then get your partner to give it a read

Take the Online Personality Test

cheers

Adrian

PS Remember to point your RSS reader to my new feed.

Hint – When you download Google Sky through my Space Page select the Google Pack link but then only tick the Google Earth box. The Google Pack is a very big download and I find doing them one at a time is much easier.There are many other resources worth getting your class to have a look at on my Space Links page.Google Sky is just one of the fantastic educational resources for exploring space I’ve added to the my latest Virtual Library page.cheers

Adrian

Recently I added this cool little tool that showed where all my visitors came from. It recorded the number of visitors for a day and where in the world people were currently online.

A couple of days ago I noticed that when I clicked on a link on my homepage an Ebay log in page would open. I searched the code on the page and found no references to Ebay or even _blank.

This morning I’ve taken the GeoVisite code off the page and all is well again.

Sorry for any annoyance

Cheers

Adrian