JUST FOR FUN

Enjoy!

TONY BUZAN

Tony Buzan is the inventor of mind mapping and its use in education. In this video he talks about creativity verse curriculum and how it shouldn't be creativity verse curriculum or curriculum verse creativity. I've watched it several times and still am amazed at the new things I pick up from each each time I hear it.

I also was reading the blog Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and he had some interesting things to say about it too.

Tony Buzan on creativity and learning how to learn
The reason I bring this up is because of this video (below) by Tony Buzan, who you may recall is the father of Mindmapping as we know it today (or at least the first to market it by that name). Buzan's presentation is perhaps not the most exciting, but hang with it, it's good. I think you will find the content very interesting.

So enjoy the video and let me know what you think.

SMILE

Here's another post just for fun. I can really relate to this guy.
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INSTANT POETRY FORM

A few posts ago I introduced you to a place called INSTANT POETRY FORMS. It's got about 35 different templates to help you kids write poetry. I've used two now and I and the kids like it a lot.

I figured out a new twist. First I have the kids go to our class blog THE SKINNY, and read the directions I have left directing them to the site and which poem I want them to take a shot at. By the way, I usually share some examples of that poetry style a few days earlier to get them thinking about what they'd like to write about. After they compose their poems, I have them copy and paste the poems into the comment section of that blog and now they are published authors. I also pick two or three of the most interesting and podcast them. We are in the middle of completing that project now and when we are done I will link to it.

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HUMAN BRAIN CLOUD

OK, I am not sure how to use this in an elementary classroom but it sure looks cool. If you come up with a way to incorporate it into a lesson please let us know.

It's called THE HUMAN BRAIN CLOUD. Here's what the site says:

About Human Brain Cloud

Thanks for reading this! I wanted to quickly learn Flash and Javascript while taking a break from making this game, and the result was Human Brain Cloud - a massively multiplayer word association "game" or experiment ... or something. The idea is that given a word, a player types in the first thing that comes to mind and the results are combined into a giant network.

Virtual Stopwatch and Virtual Timer

Now here is a handy little gizmo that I can't wait to try it in my classroom. It's from Google and it's actually two cool items in one. I cut and paste all the information from their site for you. And the best part of this deal is that it's free.

Click for online... Stopwatch Click for online... Timer

Our Virtual Stopwatch and Virtual Timer lets Internet users use their PC as a virtual timing device. The Stopwatch counts up from zero, and the Timer counts down to zero. The stopwatch and timer are both based on your PC's internal clock, so we can't guarantee their accuracy.

What are they for?

Use the Virtual Stopwatch or Virtual Timer to count down an ebay auction, time a meeting, experiment, speech, phone call, game, test, etc. Since the stopwatch and timer digits are large, they can be used with groups of people.

What's the Cost?

They're Free. The Virtual Stopwatch and Virtual Timer are ad supported, so they cost you nothing. Bookmark them for fast access.

TimeMe - contact@timeme.com - www.timeme.com

Copyright (c) 2007 TimeMe, all rights reserved, more...

PAUL POTTS

OK, I know this isn't a new tool or anything you could you in your classroom (but then again who knows). This is an amazing two minute video of the winner of the English version of American Idol. His name is Paul Potts and a more humble guy you will never meet. Enjoy

Paul Potts Sings