Alternatives to Microsoft Office for the Mac

I was at a school the other day where they had some lovely Mac computers but didn't use them much because they "could not write on them!" I suggested they download Neo Office which is a free alternative. I have since looked into Open Office and like it better as there is a wider range of functions which could be great for schools. The presentation tool is much better and the Draw programme is fantastic. There is also a maths programme which looks very useful. Have a look yourself here.

National Library update

I wonder how many of you are aware of the wonderful resources for students on the NZ National library site. Have a look around the great list of resources. The Living Heritage site is worth exploring. I remember working with a school to produce a learning experience about their community and putting it on the site - the templates are easy to work with and the students love to see their work on display with the other schools who have contributed.

Calling online gamers! Be a freelance scientist!

Harness collective brainpower through online gaming!
Games with a purpose to harness idle computer gamers (is there such a thing?) hope to enlist the help of gamers throughout the world to solve problems. As a spin off from this Google have set up a game to label objects as quickly as possible to help improve the image search engine.
Another one is Foldit which involves puzzling your way through folding or designing protein structures to help biologists design the next generation of drugs!
Or how about classifying images of a million different galaxies to help answer some of the biggest questions in cosmology.
(from the New Scientist magazine Nov 2008)
Here is an interesting article about how Web2 can save the world, mmmm!

Create a Band in your classroom using mobile phones

While researching for my latest book which is about music and ICT I came across a new application for mobile phones which let you turn your phones into musical instruments. It is based on the motion you use, for instance if you strum your phone it makes a guitar sound, if you wave it up and down it becomes a drum! Probably causes a cacaphony rather than music but find out about it here.

Learning at School 09

I had a great time learning more about ICT tools at the conference. I went to a Scratch session - I had attended one at Canberra last year but the NZ teachers were fantastic and really well prepared with good ideas for linking Scratch to the curriculum. Check out the Scratch forum for some ideas on how to use this in the classroom.
I also learned about green screening on the Mac 09 (I must upgrade my programmes on my Mac!) I had a great session with Stuart Hale pm RED learning more about Hyperstudio 5 which has just been released. I saw this in operation at Tatahai School last year on the Apple bus tour and the students were really doing some great stuff with it.
The keynote speakers were very inspiring - perhaps you could search for them on Academic Earth They all have blogs and it is worth it to put them on your Google Reader to keep up with latest thoughts and ideas. I particularly like Pam Hook's blog Artichoke, she has an interesting way of stating things!Derek Wenmoth has a great blog - that's where I found out about the Academic Earth site.