"Create and publish using iBooks Author and you could win a share of $20,000! This great app is now available free for New Zealand schools from the Mac App Store. Simply create your own iBook for your students and you could win!"
Published: 24/12/2012
The team at INTERFACE would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and an enjoyable holiday. We'll be taking a break and will return on Monday 7 January. Festive wishes to all our readers. ...
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Published: 14/12/2012
The market for educational technology for young children is booming, but there is scant evidence that many of the apps, games, e-books, and websites meant to improve basic reading skills are... more >
Published: 14/12/2012
Ed tech consultant and 'Fandroid' Leslie Fisher explains why educators need to pay attention to Android users to prepare for the future. Apple may have a runaway success in education with its... more >
Published: 14/12/2012
Analysts are sounding a proverbial death knell for e-readers, which have declined 36% in 2012 as buyers turned instead to multi-use tablets. Both IHS Suppli and IDC recently issued dire... more >
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Weebly for Education (education.weebly.com)
Weebly for Education (education.weebly.com) is free and allows teachers to easily create class websites and blogs. Students can also be added to class accounts in order to develop e-portfolios or to publish website assigned projects. To build a website simply drag and drop desired content elements on to your page, things like text, photos, maps, and videos. At any time you can change the theme, add pages, RSS feeds, a blog page, forms, surveys and more from the multitude of readymade fields. Hierarchy can be added to the pages by dragging the page tab left or right then back on the home screen, the page will appear under a page heading or alongside the main elements. When you’re ready, publish your creation. You can even publish to your own domain if you already have one.
Animaps (animaps.com)
Animaps (animaps.com) extends the My Maps feature of Google Maps by letting you add animation. You can add text, multiple location stops, and images. Maps that you make can be shared. When you send your Animap to friends it appears like a video – they can play, pause, slow and speed up the action!
SoundCloud (soundcloud.com)
Everyone has sounds to share and now you can do just that with SoundCloud (soundcloud.com). Use the site to record a sound, voice or music, or upload audio you’ve already created. Then share them privately with your friends or publicly to blogs, sites and social networks.
Skqueak (skqueak.com)
Add voice, sketches and live zooming to pictures with Skqueak (skqueak.com). Every picture has a story and you can use this app to explain the meaning or what’s behind a specific image. It could be a great addition to a school projects, making otherwise unnoticed images, really stand out.
 
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The End of Not Knowing
I had a very curious flash of insight the other day. Not a revelation as such but one of those moments that happens a thousand times a week and just occasionally you see the right juxtaposition to make you realise what just happened. I was driving my family to Glasgow. We came around a bend in the motorway and, slightly abruptly, met the tail end of a traffic queue. It was abrupt because there were no signs indicating any roadworks. When you meet a queue before you see the signs, you naturally start to think you're in for a bit of a wait. Everyone wants to know just how long. The driver of the car in the lane next to me started edging his car towards the centre line, craning to peer down the queue and see how far off the obstruction was. Without even really thinking about it, I slid open my iPhone that was mounted on the dashboard playing music. I fired up the TomTom app, picked my destination. In a couple of seconds, the phone beeped to show that the obstruction was 1.1 miles from my current position and that the delay to my journey would be approximately four minutes. It's not that GPS navigation systems with live traffic data are particularly new; it was just the contrast between my experience and the frustrated, anxious driver in the next lane that made me think about this. It felt like I had a sixth sense: data. Source: Fraser Speirs
BYOD - the pros and cons
Having reached critical mass with the number of devices that arrived in my room last week, it has set me to thinking about the biggest challenges and the pros and cons of the BYOD system.
60 Seconds – Things That Happen On Internet Every Sixty Seconds
World Wide Web is growing at rapid pace. On average, more than a billion new pages are added to it every day. To give you an idea of how big world wide web is, our Infographic 60 Seconds will cover some really interesting facts about websites that we use on day-to-day basis.
Creating & Reading on the iPad: PDF vs. ePub
One of the most easily accessible and applicable functions of the iPad across the curriculum is to use it as a reading & note taking device and there are two fantastic websites, that when used in conjunction with the iPad, make it incredibly easy to turn any web based content ( blogs, websites, articles, primary source documents, etc...) into either a PDF or ePub document, right on the iPad.
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FEATURED IN OUR LATEST ISSUE...
Published: 21/11/2012 | Issue 44
  During a recent visit to New Zealand, INTERFACE caught up with HP’s Education Strategist Elliott Levine. Here he shares with us the worldwide trends he observes in education and ICT, and how schools can learn from them. Schools need to stop making the same mistakes and start learning there’s a better way to embrace ICT,...   more
Published: 21/11/2012 | Issue 44
At the start Term 2, Year 5 and 6 students in Room 3 at Lakeview School were given an iPod Touch to use in class. Here Tim Nelson explains the thinking behind the initiative and the outcomes so far. The whole process started as an appraisal discussion between me, the school principal, Ed Hodgkinson, and my appraiser, Tim White. We were looking...   more
Published: 21/11/2012 | Issue 44
  Husband and wife Glen and Monique Storey are teachers at Te Akau ki Papamoa School. In their spare time they’ve been working on iOS apps for kids they work with and have just released their first one, StoryBot. The idea for StoryBot came from working with one of my students who has Down’s Syndrome. I needed a way that he...   more
Published: 21/11/2012 | Issue 44
  The red carpet was out and the TVNZ reporter was was live on air with newly-published young authors at Waiau Pa School. The launch of the collaborative fan fiction novel Fuel To The Fire was a fitting finale to a special project, writes David Kinane. For several years now I have been encouraging teachers to use FanFiction.Net as a...   more
Issue 44 - Term 4, December 2012
ALL THIS AND MORE IN OUR AUGUST ISSUE. GET YOUR COPY TODAY!
 
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