exhibits
Web 2.0 tools
SPARK includes a selection of some of the many web 2.0 tools that offer a range of possibilities for learning and teaching, from supporting collaboration to providing new ways of authoring content.
Animoto
Animoto produces TV-quality music videos using your photos and video clips. You choose a soundtrack to underscore your photo images or video clips, and Animoto will construct a video that works in time with the soundtrack. It offers teachers and students alternative ways to capture and share student's work for presentations, portfolios or assessment.
Comicbrush
Comicbrush is an online comic book tool where you can create and share a comic using any combination of your own drawings, photos and ready-to-use artwork.
JamStudio
JamStudio is an online music creation tool with thousands of loops and samples which support students to make their own music tracks.
Prezi
Prezi is a flexible online presentation tool where you zoom around a giant canvas rather than moving through a set of slides.
Wetoku
Wetoku is an online interviewing tool where you can record webcam interviews and instantly embed them in your website.
Futurelab tools
Stimulating debate, exploring and planning futures, thinking frames, curriculum design and innovation mapping.
Education Eye (coming soon)
Education Eye is a free, engaging and easy-to-use online space that gives access to a wide range of useful and relevant innovations across educations’ varied communities. Connecting people with innovative uses of digital technology, new resources and new approaches to teaching and learning, will help inspire further innovation in education.
Exploratree
Exploratree is a free web resource where you can access a library of ready-made interactive 'thinking guides' or 'frameworks' which can support students' projects and research. As well as providing a set of ready to use thinking guides, which are completely customisable and shareable, Exploratree also enables teachers and students to create their own simply and easily.
Infocow (coming soon)
Infocow is a free-to-use, learner-centred resource that aims to support young people to have a voice and take action around the principles and issues important to them.
Million Futures
Million Futures presents six questions about future life and learning in the UK, gathering all kinds of views, thoughts and ideas on virtual paper planes. You can explore the planes already in flight and create your own planes to share your views.
Power League
Power League is a free web resource for exploring any topic, through sampling group opinions and provoking group discussions. Create your own online leagues or use the existing ones. The project set out to explore the possibility of creating a web application that would allow young people to engage with issues of power, citizenship and politics.
Mobile learning applications
Focusing on mobile technologies that could be used to support learning, including the use of media scapes and augmented reality.
Augmented reality
Augmented reality is where the real world is blended with virtual information. This could mean using your webcam to view a 3D virtual character on your table, or seeing information about the nearest restaurant when you look through your mobile phone camera.
Create-A-Scape
A 'Mediascape' is a term used to describe a collection of location sensitive sounds and images that are placed in local landscapes that can then be experienced via a PDA hand-held computer and headphones. Mediascapes are a potentially powerful way of engaging with the world around us. Using PDAs they offer new opportunities to explore and interact with the landscape in exciting and varied ways.
Alternative interfaces
Demonstrating alternative ways to engage with technology and digital media, for example through haptic or tangible devices
Haptics
Haptic devices provide users with the opportunity to interact with virtual experiences on the screen and to receive physical feedback. This means that users can feel what it would be like to touch the thing they are seeing on screen. There is increasing interest in the use of haptic and tangible devices for education. A broad base of research explores the role physical actions and interfaces can have in supporting learning. Haptic devices are already used in vocational teaching environments such as developing skills in medicine.
Space Signpost
The Space Signpost consists of an interactive moving signpost linked to computer interface. The signpost moves to point to an object in the solar system of the user's choice and displays the changing distance to that object on an LED screen on the sign. The computer interface provides further information about this object, and offers users a range of different options for interacting with three-dimensional representations of objects within the solar system.
Games for learning
Games are becoming increasingly used in the classroom. The games on show in the exhibition illustrate different approaches to the use of games for learning.
Kodu
Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using a game controller for input.
Spore
Spore Creature Creator is a tool for creating your own creature based on the commercial game. You can assemble your creature from a wide range of parts using a drag-and-drop interface. Creatures can be animated and shared.
