Website of the Week; Dustball Checker*

Many classes I teach are graded solely on coursework. With the internet so readily available students will occasionally turn to 'cutting and pasting' when they have left assignments to the last minute, or if they don't understand the work. Clamping down on this has been one of my goals this year.

The Dustball Plagiarism Checker is a brilliant tool for doing this. On the first page you copy and paste student work into the box. It seems to carry any amount of text and even if the original document has pictures it works around them.

After this, hit the 'check' button and a new page will pop up with a selection of sentences and the verdict - 'ok' or 'suspected plagiarism'

Finally, and this is my favourite bit, by clicking on the 'possible plagiarism' bit you get taken to a google page showing the websites. You are then able to present the sudent with the website that the text was taken from. It's also worth checking these as sometimes there are a LOT of hits with the same sentence - in this case, it's simply that the topic means a student is likely to write that combination of words. If there's only one hit returned, and it matches a lot of the work, then it's likely to be plagiarism.

* A quick note: All of the websites I write about are genuinely ones I use in my classroom - they are not sponsored links or anything like that. I write about them mostly so I have a quick place to get the link from. This does mean that some weeks I won't write about websites because I don't have any new ones.

Website of the Week: Wordsift (An 'evolving' dictionary)

Students often don't know what words mean. Yesterday, my 18 year-old students looked at me blankly when I said the word "Evolution". "Darwin?" I ventured. "Monkeys into men? Butterflies changing colours in cities?" Nothing. *Sigh*.

In this case I usually suggest students look at an online dictionary. However this usually results in their being confused about words in the definition. Alternatively students look in a thesaurus and then end up with words in their essays with completely different meanings than the ones originally intended.

Wordsift is a visual dictionary that gives pictures and a 'mind-map' of related words to get around this. It was particularly helpful for Evolution, producing the following screen:

The pictures on the left, taken from google, gave an image that students immediately identified with ("Ah, monkey into men!") and the box on the right gives a series of words. Hold your mouse over them and a plain english definition appears. Click on the other words and a whole new word constellation begins. The map clearly shows how closely related the synonyms are and gives students a chance to find out their meaning by holding the mouse over them.

Great for showing the whole class when stuck with a concept.

Website of the Week: TED Talks (Ideas worth spreading!)

I am slightly obsessed with TED Talks and while they're more of an indulgence, occassionally I find very cool stories to share with students in my classroom. In it's own words: "this site makes the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free." There are more than 400 talks on a range of topic and they are always completely captivating.

- My favourites include Aubrey de Grey talking about the possibility of humans living for a 1,000 years. Sounds crazy right? Not when Aubrey says it! This was a great addition to our unit on human ageing and caring for older people.

- A good one for teachers is "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity". It's a bit obvious but still a good reminder about the benefits of play.

- Finally, there is a whole science theme page. I struggle to teach my health & social care students some of the science-y parts. Using TED is helping us to see science in new, more exciting ways.

Even if you don't love playing video in your classroom (I have to say I try to avoid lengthy clips where possible), TED is a refreshing way to let exciting new people into your class and open your students' eyes.

Website of the Week: Award Maker

I like to give out certificates and prizes all year round, but the end of the year is a particularly good time for celebrating achievement. MyAwardMaker has hundreds of fun templates for recognising the time and effort put in by our students. They also have a great 'tips' section encouraging teachers to step away from rewarding 'intelligence' and instead creating goals related to other skills, such as leadership or positive attitudes.

All awards are free, easily customisable and downloadable.

Website of the Week: Folder Lock & Drop.io

The inevitable finally happened. I lost my memory stick. And not just a stick, it was my 40gb external hard-drive that I have lovingly carted around for the last four years. I've been in denial for the last 3 months but acceptance has now stepped in. It's lost.

Sensibly most of the work is backed-up but my concern is the material on the memory stick. Grades, personal documents and student letters. Again, I'm reasonably cautious about the material I have on my drive but I was still concerned.

So, my new stick/drive is using Folder Lock, a free encryption programme that works on USB sticks. It does need to be downloaded so I can't use it on school computers, but I have put it onto my school laptop and will only be transferring files from that.

Equally, I've become a big fan of keeping files online rather than on a memory stick. www.drop.io is possibly one of the best applications I've ever come across. It gives you a 100mb drops for free, meaning it's big enough for almost all documents. And it's fast too - way faster than uploading documents to email.


So, try them out and if you happen to see a blue and silver hard drive with 'L.McInerney' sharpie-d onto the side please drop me a line!

Website of the Week: Puzzlemaker

Occasionally I find a teacher who has never used Puzzlemaker. How do you live without it? It's FREE (you don't need to buy the CD although I'm sure it's great) and simple. Cryptograms are an essential part of daily working life. Working with EAL students also requires a healthy dose of crosswords and wordsearches. Personally, I'm useless at Fallen Phrases but many students love them.


When you get to the page, click on the name of the puzzle you want and you will be given a template to fill out. Finished puzzles are displayed as html and can then be copied into Word/Powerpoint, etc.

Enjoy!

Website of the Week: Optimist World

Students at my school have pretty tough lives already. Because of the way they are portrayed they often turn their nose up at watching the news or reading the media, and they are often bitterly cynical about the world.

To get around this I have started sharing http://www.optimistworld.com/ during form time. Optimist World provides daily 'good news' stories about the positive things happening in the world. For examples, diseases that have been cured, lost items that have been returned to owners or amazing sporting feats.

Gimundo also has updated good news to share. Updates were very rare until recently but it now appears to have new owners and is re-establishing itself.

Starting the day with positive emotions has been shown to broaden students' thinking repertoires and build long-term resilience. So go on, try and share a little happiness today.

Website of the Week: Online Stopwatch

Give students a competitive edge by timing them with tasks. One of my favourite revision games "I have, who has" requires students to match a series of keywords a bit like dominoes. So, each student has a card that goes something like, "I have Four Pillars of Islam, Who has the name of the Prophet?" Then, hopefully, the student with "Mohammad" on his card says, "I have Mohammad, who has Mohammad's wife?". And so on....

Timing this makes the whole process extra special and the class take to it extremely well. Online Stopwatch means I can time students visually by having an extra-large stopwatch on the board. This gives added excitement!

If you teach more than one class, create a 'leader's board' where each class displays their best time.

Website of the week: Screedbot

Screedbot is a simple, free and easy-to-use website that provides scrolling text messages. Write in your text and it converts it into a .gif . Copy and paste this into powerpoint and you can have scrolling messages on your screen as students enter. Helpful when you're trying to deal with getting students settled and need to display interesting instructions for those who settle themselves.

Website of the Week: Trouble Getting Students to Listen? Use Oddcast!

Struggling to get students quiet and listenting is a daily battle for most new teachers. You've tried counting down, you've threatened detentions, you've even wrote the work on the board to see if they will start without verbal prompting and yet you are still being ignored. What to do?

A colleague of mine noticed that students listened to recorded instruction -- even when it was of her own voice -- much better than they would listen to her in person. Using an old tape-recorder stolen from the Languages department she would tape instructions and play them on a cassette player. It worked! At least until the novely wore off....

Recently I came across Photoface Oddcasts. This software easily injects novelty into recorded instructions. Simply upload a photo of a face (I used mine in the trial but I expect celebrities would go down well with students), write what you would like it to say and 'send' to yourself. The result is a photo that 'speaks'.

In the example below I am reading Benjamin Zephaniah's poem "The British". This was used as a word-gap exercise. Students had a sheet with the poem on and had to write in the missing word from the recorded instructions. (Again, this idea is thanks to Catriona). Try it and see what you think!

Click here to see the video move

PS - Yes, it does make your face look scary - but that's half the fun!

Website of the Week: Strip Generator

Strip Generator is a free online comic-strip maker that helps create fun resources. Using the website's ready-made figures and icons you can quickly make clear diagrams showing students how complete tasks. It's super-simple, as you simply copy-and-paste your new picture into powerpoint or a word document. This supports visual and EAL learners brilliantly.

For example, here's one I included in a lesson about University Aspirations:

Or try adding the names of students in your class for further interest at the start of your lesson....

I use these on worksheets, for starters, plenaries, instructions and -- in the future -- I plan to get students to create them in lessons to explain concepts. Just think, cartoons explaining a scientific investigation or a timeline of historical events!

http://www.stripgenerator.com/

Creating imaginative assessment tasks with Rubistar

Without SATs at KS3 there is no longer a need to stick to exam-format assessment to find levels for learners. In many subjects, but particularly the humanities and arts, assessments that tap into artistic or verbal skills are appreciated by students but finding ways to objectively assess these skills may be time-consuming and downright difficult.



If you would like to use a greater range of assessments check out http://www.rubistar.4teachers.org/. On this site you can use ready-made templates to assess everything from scientific drawings, to persuasive essays and role plays to set design. The templates are fully adaptable so you can write in language from subject level descriptors and any other elements that you have asked students to include.


To the side is an example from a Year 8 assessment framework that worked really well with a naughty all-boys' class who appreciated being able to speak a newscast rather than writing a lengthy script.



Look out for more details of 4teachers.org in future posts