There’s been a lot of talk about ICT in schools recently and changes are afoot! Find out about what’s going on and some of the people involved in making a difference.
Changing the Game
Categories: video of the week
Fancy yourself as a Video Game Designer???
The BAFTA Young Game Designers competition invites young people aged 11-16 to submit a design concept for a new video game, helping them to learn about the different roles within video games design and the value of key subject areas for entry into the industry.
This year, entrants can also submit a game they have made for an additional chance to win. A panel of games professionals and celebrity gamers judge the entries, and the winners in both categories will be announced at BAFTA’s Children’s Awards in November.
The winning team will receive a prize package that includes a BAFTA Young Game Designers Game Concept or Game-making Award; a visit to a games studio; and the opportunity to develop their game further with experts at Abertay University. Get Involved!
Creating a Regsiter/Login Form in Excel
A reoccuring question that always crops up is “How do you make a login box in Excel”? Well there are a number of different ways to go about doing this but not many tutorials online and definately not many that are straight forward to follow.
Below is a playlist of 8 videos, each step is approx 2 minutes long and should lead you through the process. As is was recorded on a high screen resolution I would definatley recommend watching it Full Screen and in HD.
I’ve also pasted the code used in the video below:
LOGIN BUTTON CODE:
Private Sub cmdLogin_Click()
Dim strUserName As String
Dim strPassword As String
Dim Usr As Variant
Dim Pwd As Variant
strUserName = txtUsername.Text
strPassword = txtPassword.Text
Usr = Application.VLookup(txtUsername.Text, Range(“users”), 2, False)
Pwd = Application.VLookup(txtPassword.Text, Range(“pass”), 2, False)
If IsError(Usr) = False Then
If Application.VLookup(txtUsername.Text, Range(“users”), 2, 0) = _
txtPassword.Text Then
Sheets(“Input”).Select
MsgBox “Login Successful!”
Unload frmLogin
Else
MsgBox “Incorrect password!”
End If
End If
REGISTER BUTTON CODE:
Dim regusr As String
Dim regpwd As String
regusr = frmRegister.txtUsername
regpwd = frmRegister.txtPassword
Worksheets(“Users”).Range(“A2″).Value = regusr
Worksheets(“Users”).Range(“B2″).Value = regpwd
Worksheets(“Users”).Range(“C2″).Value = regusr
Sheets(“Users”).Select
Rows(“2:2″).Select
Selection.Insert Shift:=x1Down, CopyOrigin:=x1FormatFromLeftOrAbove
Sheets(“Home”).Select
MsgBox “Registration Complete”
Unload frmRegister
One idea that was worth £113m after SIX WEEKS!
There have been a number of classic games that have been reinvented for the App Markets (words with friends – scrabble / monopoly) but the reinvented of pictionary by New York based App company OMGPOP called Draw Something, also referred to as Drawsome! has blown them all out of the water.
You may have noticed a few people with there phones out, fingers tracing patterns on the screen;giving out a few giggles – well they’re probably playing Draw Something.
Downloaded 35m times in the six weeks since it was launched, it’s now the top downloaded free app in 85 countries across the world. Not only that but OMGPOP was snapped up by fellow addictive online game company Zynga for a staggering £113 million pounds in cash!
Have you got an idea for the next record breaking App? IT may be worth investing your time into App development…
App Inventor is back!
Thankfully MIT have now taken over the Android App Development tool (previously supported by Google Labs).
For those of you who don’t know MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is a private research university devoted to the advancement of knowledge and education of students. They also brought us the brilliant programming application Scratch!
Creating an App Inventor app begins in your browser, where you design how the app will look. Then, like fitting together puzzle pieces, you set your app’s behavior. All the while, through a live connection between your computer and your phone, your app appears on your phone.
You can build many different types of apps with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like MoleMash or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend’s faces. You can even make use of the phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.
But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android’s text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.
To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a professional developer. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.
Categories: Uncategorized
SOPA Online Blackout
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a new bill introduced in congress that proposes that the U.S government can block certain sites and links from internet users in the States.
Many organisations are protesting about these proposals, which is why many of them have been blacked out (mainly in the US). Even though this is a U.S government proposal SOPA affects us all. Whatever it may be, whether we write about business, education, marketing, social media. In light of SOPA’s widely protested issue, this infographic takes a look at the world without Wikipedia – a world of information in itself – could be lost.
Quidco rewards you for shopping with £££££’s
Quidco is the secret to smart shopping, and the UK’s No.1 cashback and voucher site. Quidco will save you £100′s from just doing the shopping online that you would do anyway!
Once you join Quidco, you can browse or search for the retailer you plan to make a purchase from and see what offers they have and how much cashback you can get for FREE!
Click a link which will direct you to the retailers website and make your purchase as normal – all tracked by Quidco and then sit back and watch the money roll in – it’s a no brainer really!
If you still need to do some Christmas shopping, or even if you don’t SIGN UP…it’s a no brainer really! I’ve been a member for a few years now and it all adds up, infact I’ve nearly hit the £600 mark and have nearly another £100 tracked.
Socrative: Engage the class using any device!
Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets. I was actually surprised how simple and staright-forward this was to get up and running, infact the stated 3 minutes is an over estimation!
The basic idea is that a teacher logs through a mobile device/laptop/desktop and selects an activity which controls the flow of questions and games. Students simply login by accessing http://m.socarative.com through a web browser on any computer or mobile device and can instantly interact real time with the content.
Student responses are visually represented for multiple choice, true/false and Short Answer questions. For pre-planned activities a teacher can view reports online as a google spreadsheet or as an emailed Excel file.
Check out the video explanation below and give it a go yourself – get all your students involved, not just individuals!
Have you joined the Apple Revolution?
Have you considered how the use of Apple technology could impact on teaching and learning? If you’ve not seen what is possible then you definately need to investigate.
I recently got my hands on an iPad and it’s had a significant impact on my teaching and students learning. There is just so much scope for this technology compared to anything that’s come before. I’m sure you heard the same story when tablet computers last made their way into schools, which was executed very poorly – the problem was this technology just wasn’t ready, or some would say just did not work as advertised.
Well here’s your solution – and it works! If you want to take full advantage you’ll also have to get yourself an Apple TV, a small box which plugs into a projector or TV that provides a wireless link to your iPad. When you have this set-up you can seamlessly stream what’s on yout iPad to the projection screen! Brilliant!
I’ve been playing around with this for a few weeks now and love it! Apart from that I can’t put the iPad down there’s so many things to explore and so many apps you could use in lessons. So far the use of an iPad has impacted my lessons in a number of ways:
- I can walk around the classroom and control what students see on the board
- I can set up my lesson ready to go (no need to log on and load up PowerPoints, Websites, Videos, YouTube etc)
- I can access loads of Apps covering so many areas, I’m sure they’ll be more than a few Apps for you!
- I can more easily inject pace (I use a timer app to set off an alarm at set intervals letting me know I need to move on).
- I can record students feedback, thoughts, questions, work, ideas and then instantly stream them to the projector and share this with all students,
These are just a few ways in which I’ve used this technology so far, but I’m sure you’ll come up with many more once your get stuck in! I’d love to hear how you get on – so please leave comments!
Scribd – make your documents viewable over the web!
Scribd is an online document-sharing website which allows you to upload documents of various formats (Word, PowerPoint), which can then be accessed online via www.scribd.com
If you have your own website or blog you can also embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. If you’ve had a look through this site you’ll see that’s exactly what I’ve done!
Scribd is a great resource to use with students as you can upload documents to the web, with the assurance taht they are all able to view the document without having to download or have specific software installed on their homecomputers.
Give it a go, it’s great!
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