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There are a number of on-screen physics simulators that can be used to discover properties of materials.  Learners can use the computer to investigate the way things move and inter-react, generating questions and providing the means to find answers.  Using this genre of software there are opportunities for developing writing and visual creativity through storytelling and pictures, expanding young minds and getting them thinking.

  Moovl is a Futurelab-sponsored development that has been around for ages and has huge amounts of resources accompanying it. It requires a subscription of £100 a year but the learning gains for active imaginations can be immense.  There’s a wealth of discovery through experimentation to be had.

John Rowe from St. Mary’s Primary School, Albrighton, showed me Phun yesterday and  after five minutes I was hooked.  “What if I put a spring here?  What if I move this?  What happens if….????”  Within a remarkably short space of time I was seeing how things worked by creating my own machines on-screen.  Phun allows fluids to be modelled and is a bit more complex than Moovl, yet it’s free software and there is a community of users who post on a forum.  Users can  upload their creations to an online space.  If you can get access, there are a number of videos on YouTube showing how to use it and some examples of what can be done.

Please let us know how you get on with these (or other) tools - there’s no substitute for having exciting examples of work from the classroom.

Those doing work on Picasso might be interested in Mr. Picassohead, a site that allows you to create your own masterpiece in the style of the great master.  Using drag and drop onscreen, pupils can quickly and easily create those crazy portraits (with both eyes on one side - you know the ones) and raise discussion points about what makes a great piece of art.  The pictures they create might generate starting-points for a number of activities in creative or descriptive writing, including screendumps^* of their own images alongside those of others to discuss the differences. They might try to replicate some of their onscreen designs on paper, or even using art software such as the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, Photoshop, Paint.net, 2Paint a Picture, Doozla …. the list could go on into Web 2.0 apps like Splashup or Aviary though there might be problems with registering (Splashup requires no registration).

Add a comment to this post with your favourite art software and suggest ways you might use it, or even share your favourite sites for creative stimulus.

^*Use the printscreen key or a screengrabber such as Gadwin Printscreen, or on a Mac use Cmd-shift-4.

Every week it seems there is a front-page headline proclaiming another government agency data stick lost, or a laptop stolen exposing personal details of thousands to persons unknown.  Clearly the amount of damage done will be limited to the nature of the data exposed and how accessible it is to those who have obtained it, but exposing personal data to persons unknown could be career-threatening.  Data that is encrypted to a suitable level will never present a security risk yet many teachers carry data sticks that contain personal details of pupils such as names, Unique Personal Numbers, details of academic achievement and behavioural/health issues - all wide open to the next person who picks up the mislaid data stick in the street.

Schools need to assess the risks of sensitive data being removed from their systems.  A Shropshire County Council policy for schools information security can be found here, and  Becta offers some Data Security advice for schools .  One of the basic Technological safeguards suggested is that removable data be encrypted.  Data encryption used to be a potentially arduous and expensive task.  It’s not so difficult or expensive any more and with this in mind it might be suggested that encrypting personal data held on portable devices is essential.  Becta offers a list of data encryption programs that are of varying ease to use.

Having just installed TrueCrypt I can confirm that this is a user-friendly program and I would be happy rolling out to teachers to encrypt data sticks.  It has versions for Mac OS-X, Windowsand Linux.  Data can be encrypted on an entire drive or simply within one folder/directory, and the ecrypted directory can be hidden altogether to prevent data from being demanded under duress (although I can’t see this being a problem with the majority of the kinds of information we have in education).

Now to think about an article concerning  encrypting emails…

Dear Steve,

Today, we’ve launched a new collection of free online whiteboard resources.  They are from our Absorb courseware, and offer a wide range of simulations, animations and models across secondary school science, D&T and mathematics.

You’ll find these resources at www.yenka.com/freecontent/

Teachers in your LEA can use them in schools and at home, and there’s no need to register - just search or browse for the content you want.

Celestia is a (free!) 3D space simulation, that enables you to virtually navigate around the solar system and beyond. You can travel at different speeds, zoom in and out and view information about the planets, stars and constellations. There is a ‘tour guide’ for easy navigation, a solar system browser and - a good place to start- an excellent demo (through ‘help’). You could use this in its most basic format to give children some idea of distances, speed and position  of planets in the solar system, or you could use some of the ‘add-ons’ for even more infomation. You can download Celestia from here (use the Kent mirror)

Scratch is a new, exciting and free piece of software which enables the user to easily create programmes to control sprites on screen and create animations, stories, even video games. It is aimed at children and consists of a number of customisable instructions that ’snap’ together. A fantastic resource to get children collaborating, sharing ideas, problem solving and getting creative! You can see a BBC article and interview here. You can download Scratch from here,  and also see what other people are doing with it.

During the conference many delegates attended short taster sessions demonstrating a range of collaborative technologies.  To follow these sessions we are putting on the following courses:

May 4th (am) - Introduction to blogging
May 25th (am) - Introduction to Flickr & Del.icio.us
June 27th (am) - Finding and producing podcasts
July 4th (am) - Using a wiki or Google Docs in the classroom

Agendas can be downloaded from here.

All courses will be at Shrewsbury Training & Development Centre, running from 9.15 until 12:15.

Cost is £75, £60 for subscribing schools, non-Shropshire delegates £90.

All these sessions will be hands on and you will need access to your email account during the morning.

The E2BN gallery is at http://gallery.e2bn.net
All images are copyright free and downloadable at high resolution/size.

Lifehacker has produced a list of 11 free applications for your pocket pc, they can be viewed here.

ADB Idea Outliner, Audiopod, Avvenu and Skype for Pocket PC all seem to offer some potential for educational use.

Assist-I.T. has developed the My Learning Toolbar to support struggling learners. The toolbar integrates with Word and provides a range of frequently used tools all in one toolbar, for example, frequent homophones (confusables), increasing text size and space, colour background and the ‘research’ tool for accessing synonyms and encyclopedias on line.