Tools

Animation	Tell a story using timeline animation
	Many animation tools can be used to build narrative^(ta), and visualisations^(ta) of work. These artefacts can act as stimuli for dialogue^(ta), dialogic teaching^(ta), questioning^(ta), and shared reasoning^(ta). KERPOOF (http://www.kerpoof.com) allows primary age pupils to make artwork^(tool) and timeline^(tool) animation^(tool). The well-featured animation tool can be used to animate a story.
Animation	Script a narrative or conversation to explain a topic
	Narrative animation tools afford opportunity to setup questioning^(ta) and visualisation^(ta) through the use of multimedia. By recording an explanation, teachers can replay it many times in the lesson, observing the students and editing markup on an IWB (see e.g. [1]) for a shared dialogic^(ta) space for thinking. First sights of XTRANORMAL (http://www.xtranormal.com/) character animation^(tool) tool may deceive that this is for learning languages. However, XTRANORMAL enables students to make narratives^(ta) and conversations that explain almost any topic. We have seen it used to handle a question and answer session on student options. Animation is edited on a timeline. Voice can be added by talking or typing.
Blogs	Get students to categorise their blogs
	Enquiry blogger is a set of plugins for the blogging^(tool) platform WordPress. Users are asked to tag their posts on an inquiry^(ta) project, and these tags can be analysed and visualised^(ta) to support student progress through their project. Consider a scenario where a class works on their individual blogs^(tool) but also use this tool to categorise their posts. Using it they may express how they are doing. The resulting blog displays a diagram to show how many times each category has been used by learners. Colours show which categories are most popular and a click takes the user to those posts. This is a set of plugin tools that can be added to Wordpress. Developed by the Open University Knowledge Media Institute, and University of Bristol’s Centre for Systems Learning & Leadership. Another plugin in this set will generate blogs for a whole cohort. EnquiryBlogger is at http://learningemergence.net/tools/enquiryblogger/
Blogs	Write for an online audience
	Writing for a public audience when blogging can encourage pupils in their language^(ta) development and offers opportunities for ICT mediated assessment^(ta) including peer assessment^(ta) for example via the use of the 'comment' features. Still a popular approach to language teaching, and still underused, blogs^(tool) offer the easiest of ways to publish school news or lab discoveries or whatever winds me up today. Blogging websites allow video and photos to be included alongside text. For example, underneath each post is a comment button which gets feedback - but you can control what happens with a setting. Each of the blogging web sites below offer an overwhelming range of features. All of them generate a 'feed' (RSS feed) where a reader can subscribe to new posts. The RSS is used to alert your readership of new articles, rather than have them re-visit a site that does not change. Services that offer blogging include, BLOGGER (www.blogger.com); WORDPRESS (www.wordpress.org) and TYPEPAD (www.typepad.com).
Blogs	Questions and discussion around a blog
	Blogs offer a great space for collaborative^(ta) writing and language^(ta) development. Urtak adds to this by encouraging questioning^(ta) on blogs, to engage pupils in reasoning^(ta) together and collaborative dialogue^(ta). Urtak.com provides a way to solicit comments on blogs^(tool). The comment, described as ‘collaborative^(tool) polling^(tool)’ takes the form of questions which visitors rank as important or not. URTAK is said to offer a way to gain better information from your community, and to typically engage people more than a simple comment box underneath a blog post. You may choose to use such a tool to poll opinion on a science issue. But by allowing questions to be asked in response to questions, Urtak offers an approach to explore.
Poster	Make a multimedia poster
	Creating posters - and especially online multimedia canvases - encourages pupils to select relevant information, and use mathematical thinking^(ta)/scientific thinking^(ta) and language^(ta) to explain an issue. GLOGSTER (http://edu.glogster.com/) is like an onscreen poster^(tool) where you can add music, photos, videos to perhaps record an event. The onscreen posters can be published on social sites and more. A teacher account provides a login with class management.
Video	Broadcast live video from school
	Engaging pupils in creating video, and building a narrative^(ta) encourages them to think about their language^(ta) and explanation skills. They can be used to engage pupils, to revist their explanations, and keep them "on task" through the use of roles and drama^(ta) tasks. While USTREAM (www.ustream.tv) looks like youtube - it is both different and done differently. Its edge is to allow live broadcasting^(tool) over the net. For this you need little more than a web camera and microphone. Even more remarkably, this 'video streaming' service allows you to broadcast video⁽ⁱ⁾ directly from a mobile device using a iphone application. Seemingly USTREAM is used by big name broadcasters and home 'lifecasters' alike and is very noticeably supported by advertising. With millions of users, the content is diverse and like all such things, merits a preview before a class dives in. Nevertheless the prospect is that of a school or class having a TV channel to communicate. The USTREAM story is that it was was first used by soldiers to broadcast news back to their families. Short of reporting back from a war zone, your class might broadcast back from your field trip.
Spreadsheets	Numbers, graphs and maths
	Spreadsheets can be used to engage pupils in the scientific method^(ta) and mathematical thinking^(ta), both as a tool to record results, and - through the use of functions and graphing techniques - a higher order^(ta) reasoning^(ta) device to problem solve and explore the best visualisation^(ta) and analysis techniques. Some online tools (including Google Drive) support many of the functions of desktop spreadsheet applications such as Excel, and can thus be used for collaborative^(ta) document editing. A spreadsheet^(tool) may have found itself in school by accident, but in no time at all, its calculating^(tool) and graph^(tool) drawing abilities found it a secure place. In science teaching, a spreadsheet is a ready-made results-table that quickly produces a graph. Graphs are a key tool for analysing data and a spreadsheet makes them with ease. In fact, spreadsheets can produce an astounding range of graphs. Our role as science teachers may be to encourage pupils to communicate effectively using graphs. The ability of spreadsheets to organise, record and analyse data fulfils aspects of exploring science. If you had a table of students’ personal data, you could sort it into order of shoe size, or work out the average size of the class. You could draw a bar chart to see how the shoe sizes vary across the class. Or draw a scattergraph to see if the sizes vary with height. You might also search for those with black hair and see if they have an eye colour in common. Students can similarly use a spreadsheet to sort and search for patterns in the properties of elements in the periodic table It may be clear already that students using a spreadsheet in these ways have to work scientifically. They would need to define what they want to find out, collect data, organise it and analyse it. A case can be put that the use of a spreadsheet belongs, and probably deserves a place in science teaching.
Chat	Use an online study area to support students
	Study Hall is an attempt to combine the best of social networking^(tool) and collaborative^(tool) document storage and editing. It can be used for collaboration^(ta) on documents, structured group work^(ta) and dialogue^(ta) online, and homework^(ta) tasks as well as in class or continuous inquiry^(ta) based projects. Study Hall (http://i1.studyhallapp.com) is aimed at education and it allows you to create a virtual study area on the web. You can upload notes^(tool) and assignments and support your students via their mobile devices and social networks. The thinking behind this application is that learning is about “thought provoking discussion^(ta)s with peers and teachers”. Study Hall provides a means to connect distant people and it is easy to see its role in online tutoring. But take a look to see where else it may be valuable.
Chat	Talk with your students in an online chatroom
	Chat rooms afford opportunity for collaboration^(ta), group work^(ta), and group talk^(ta). They can offer opportunities for dialogic teaching^(ta) through the use of group based effective questioning^(ta). Many chat tools also integrate with other Tools. You can set up a chat^(tool)room at “chatzy.com”. Then publish the link to the room, and perhaps a meeting time, to allow an out of class discussion^(ta). You could use this tool to have an out-of-class discussion (perhaps someone is unwell). Can an online chat make dialogue more effective? Can it make group discussions more inclusive?
Questionnaire	Encourage students to chat in class
	A tool for encouraging synchronous dialogue^(ta) and a means for assessment^(ta). TodaysMeet.com offers an easy way to gain feedback^(tool). You set up a ‘room’ and send everyone the link to it so they can type their comments or engage in ‘chat^(tool)’. Todaysmeet can be used at a moment’s notice as seemingly membership is unnecessary. This tool could be used in a lesson to encourage effective dialogue using Ground Rules and in turn assessment.
Chat	Video conference and message using text
	Chat tools provide opportunity for real time collaboration^(ta) and dialogue^(ta). HALL (hall.com) provides real-time collaboration^(tool) one-on-one messaging^(tool) and video conferencing^(tool) for project teams. This can happen over the web, via their desktop PC or their mobile devices. It is intended as a business tool to provide an always-open window between people who work together remotely. Equally you may know of a learning situation where the need to collaborate is indeed similar.
Collaborative	Make a questionnaire
	Google Drive can be used as a collaborative^(tool) document editor for group work^(ta) and collaboration^(ta) in class and homework^(ta) settings. Google Drive - or similar tools - can also be used to deliver polls^(tool) and questionnaires^(ta) to pupils in and out of class. If you need to collaborate^(tool) or 'co-create' some text, a spreadsheet or a presentation, people with a Google account can edit the same document at the same time. One day, probably yesterday, doing so will be as passé as keeping all your work in the cloud^(tool)! However, Google Drive also allows you, or students to make a questionnaire for circulation. To make an online questionnaire^(tool), go to GOOGLE DRIVE (previously Google Docs at drive.google.com) and create a form (instead of creating a document as one might normally). You will find a choice of question types to use, such as multiple choice and free-response answers. Look and you'll find a very useful button for copying a question so that you can edit the copy. When you have finished, the link to the question form is circulated to students, their answers are collated into a spreadsheet that will appear on your Google Drive. A comparable survey^(tool) tool called SURVEYMONKEY (www.surveymonkey.com) is much used for customer feedback. Either of these versatile devices may be used by students to research, poll opinion and more.
Mindmap	Plan and make a mindmap
	Mind mapping tools can engage pupils in higher order^(ta) reasoning^(ta) around the visualisation^(ta) of a problem, topic, or subject. Computerised tools often support embedding multimedia into these maps, providing a richer document and potential to engage pupils in creating videos, images, and text around a particular issue and organising these. Teachers could think about what sort of information pupils should include on their maps - keywords, key people, concepts, times, artefacts, etc., and whether or not the maps are used to display their knowledge of a domain (concept mapping) or to build new ideas and evaluation (brain storming). MINDMEISTER (mindmeister.com) is an incredibly easy mind-mapping^(tool) tool. It lets you put ideas in boxes and link them together - as one does in concept mapping^(tool). A box can contain a picture or a document or a link to a web site. MINDMEISTER might be used to make a ‘poster’ summarising a course. Furthermore, several people can work on the same mindmap at the same time.
Data logging	Collect and handle data from experiments
	Data logging tools provide opportunity to engage pupils in the scientific method^(ta) and higher order^(ta) reasoning^(ta) and problem solving over data collection and analysis. They can be used collaboratively^(ta) or individually in inquiry^(ta) based learning. Data logging is the process of recording measurements from sensors. A weather station pretty well fits this definition. The station captures readings from sensing devices and it may also display what is happening right now. The station offers a better way to study the world. While many people would say that measuring with technology is more accurate; more modern or 'the way to go', the real benefits are the important advantages for learning. Some are less than obvious: You can monitor extremely fast or tediously slow events. Thus you can now investigate a whole range of things you would have needed to overlook. You can design and make equipment to solve problems for 'technology or D&T' projects. You can measure tiny changes with precision - for example to find out whether wearing white clothes could offer comfort on a hot day. The measured difference between black and white clothes is slight, by the way. You can see results appear live and immediately, get a tacit understanding for what’s happening. This incidentally lets you modify your experiment when you see readings going awry. You can gain data to analyse, evaluate and test hypotheses, much as the science and maths curriculum require. In short data logging offers ways to do core science experiments, such as studying insulating materials; or acceleration of a trolley on a ramp; or electromagnetic induction. But it also offers a strategy to promote good investigative science in schools. Data Handling: When you first come to use the technology like this, using the technology to take the science further, using it to quantify differences; to derive data and to model it, may well seem a long step ahead. However, making use of data so conveniently collected, really deserves to happen in mainstream teaching. When you see the need, it will help to know there are data handling packages designed for use with data collected from sensors. One might imagine that a spreadsheet could handle this - however, these data handling packages can take readings at points on a graph; calculate net changes; calculate graph areas; plot a rate of change against time; fit this to a model and more.