it4L

As part of a course I was running last night, I had cause to revisit Picasa, Google’s free image manipulation software, and I must say that it was well worth revisiting. I had forgotten how powerful it is. A particular favourite is the ‘collage’ facility, which enable you to take a number of images and display them in a number of  interesting ways. So - just a reminder - if you haven’t used Picasa for a while, or you have never used it and are in need of some imaging software, have a go! You can download the software from http://picasa.google.com

Thinking about artists whose work lends itself to ICT, came up with Mondrian (obviously!), Jackson Pollack, Klee, Miro, Kadinsky, Josef Albers, Jasper John. There must be some really obvious ones I’ve missed - but who?

The seventh eLearning Awards competition is now open and schools are invited to submit entries for the eLearning Awards 2007 that exemplify the best use of ICT in education. Entries are welcome from schools or teachers in EU Member States, EEA Countries, EU Applicant Countries as well as Switzerland and Israel. Entries can be made from now until 31 October 2007 online at http://elearningawards.eun.org.

The aim of the competition is to promote the use of ICT in education and to encourage schools to collaborate. A gallery will showcase on the eLearning Portal contributions from all around Europe. This year’s sponsors include Young Digital Planet (Platinum sponsor), Intel, Promethean and InterWrite (Gold sponsors), Telefónica O2 and MICHAEL (Bronze sponsors).

Prizes (cash and equipment) will be awarded in categories highlighting best practice in the use of ICT in the areas of:

o       School of the future
o       The e-safe school
o       Promoting digital literacy
o       Creativity (arts)
o       Foreign languages
o       Sustainability (environment)
o       Maths, science and technology
o       Social networking for collaborative learning.

A detailed list is available on the eLearning Awards portal.

Entries will be judged by a panel of experts and the winners presented with their prizes at a prestigious event on 6th December at the annual EMINENT Conference in Brussels, to be opened by Jan Figel’, European Commissioner for Education, Training and Culture.

To mark this year’s anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, The Parliamentary Archives and Show Me (www.show.me.uk) are launching a competition to win a trip to Parliament.

Read the rest of this entry »

View gorgeous art every day with the Rijkswidget, from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, “the first museum in the world to offer a ‘widget’.” Not only will you be able to feast your eyes on some of the world’s most beautiful art, but you can also get background information on each work by mousing over the arrow at the bottom of each picture. The Rijkswidget widget is a free download which requires Yahoo! Widget Engine (Windows) or Dashboard (Mac OS X) to run.

I caught mention of the The Cloud Appreciation Society whilst driving with radio 4 on this morning - went to the website and thought it was a great resource whether for geography/science, art, poetry or philosophy - there’s even a bit of humour.

The ‘Doodle 4 Google - My Britain’ competition asks young people across the UK to design a doodle that represents what it means to be British today. The winning doodle, which will be displayed on the Google UK homepage for a day, will be seen by around 18 million people.

This is the first nationwide Doodle 4 Google competition and is open to every school in the UK.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember Mr Potatohead? Well, now the randomly faced toy has gone up-market with an artistic interpretation at Mr Picassohead.

Class 2 of Hope CE Primary School are the winners of our digitalbrain Christmas animation project, with their fantastic angel animations, created in Macromedia Flash. You can view the animations by visting http://hope.shropshire.digitalbrain.com and following the links from the front page.
The school wins a Flowgo box, which will be presented early in the new year.

Originally posted by Andrea