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Kodu is a free game programming environment from Microsoft.  Formerly only for the XBox, it’s now been ported to the PC. Kodu is a visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone.

Key Features

Kodu provides an end-to-end creative environment for designing, building, and playing your own new games.

• High-level language incorporates real-world primitives: collision, color, vision
• Runs on Xbox 360 and PC
• Interactive terrain editor
• Bridge and path builder
• Terrain editor – create worlds of arbitrary shape and size
• 20 different characters with different abilities

You’ll find the following tutorial excellent in terms of getting started.

The Online Degree Programs site has some great tips, tools and tricks for using Google’s much anticipated Wave service.

Create a PDF from any website.

Click Here to try it out.

Enter website URL in URL box and press return. A PDF is then created and can be downloaded to your computer.

Design a software application for the SMART Table, and you’ll have the chance to win your own SMART Table.

Prizes

The grand prize for the contest is a SMART Table. SMART will also promote the winning application on the SMART website for one year, giving your school the potential to establish a revenue stream.

Click Here  to find out more.

I’m not really one for dictionairies but definr is great and lightning fast too!

To support European Safer Internet Day and the launch of the new digital code for children “Zip it, Block it, Flag it” Microsoft is offering all UK schools the opportunity to host their own parents awareness session. These virtual sessions offer your school the opportunity to host a parents evening with a presentation led by a Microsoft volunteer to inform and educate parents on the technology their children are using and how they can keep them safe when online.

For further details click here.

Increasingly many publishers are producing content designed for delivery through VLEs, this is usually presented in SCORM format and often contains a number of PowerPoint files with embedded flash content. Many of us would like to re-engineer this to meet our own needs. The following routine outlines how to disaggregate some of this content content into its component assets, namely extracting embedded Flash content from a PowerPoint.

Part 1

1. Download the extractaflash.exe file from here
2. Place this extracted file into C:\

Part 2

1. Open Powerpoint File
2. Make sure the Active X control is enabled
3. Go to the slide with the embedded Flash File
4. ‘Select’ it with your mouse and drag it to the desktop – this creates a Scrap file….which is really called Scrap.shs
5. Now move the Scrap file to C:\

Part 3

1. Go to Start–>Run and type cmd
2. On the Command line type cd\ [enter]
3. Now type exactly ….. C:\extractaflash.exe c:\Scrap.shs c:\output.swf
4. Your flash file is now called output.swf in c:\ that can be renamed to whatever you want to call it —remember the .swf extension!!

Like all PowerPoint users, there are times when I’d like to make my slides a little more interesting and interactive, this usually involves Flash. But how do you embed Flash content easily and quickly into PowerPoint. Swiff Point Player is a Free Microsoft PowerPoint Add In that enables you to easily insert and play their Flash movies in their Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

I hear on the grapevine that CAPITA will be demonstrating their new concept app at BETT 2010. The new ‘concept app’ launching at BETT this year is SIMS ‘Discover’. The new ‘Discover’ app is designed essentially to make  SIMS data a lot easier to analyse. so you can. You can now manipulate data more visually than ever before – data can be pulled from lists and presented in a range of graphs from bar charts, pie chart, progression lines and Venn diagrams.  

So, for example, you could create a Venn diagram with three circles — pupils with below 75 per cent attendance, pupils with below average attainment, pupils with more than a specified number of behaviour incidents. The intersection of the three creates a group who may require intervention. This group can then become “dynamic user defined” – that’s to say, the software will continue to keep membership of the group up to date as students move in or out of that intersecting field.

Capita have also finally gotten round to looking at their user interface. SIMS by its very nature is a powerful and consequently complicated product. Taking a leaf out of Apple’s book. Capita have employed a UI designer to address the challenge of making SIMS easier to use, yet retaining the powerful functions under the bonnet. At BETT it will show how touch-screen technology and graphics will be able to present the teacher with a highly accessible and multi-functional “dashboard” for the day’s work. There’ll be student data, with realtime alerts, general announcements, quick links to lesson content – lots of information and support on a screen that’s kept uncluttered and attractive with the aid of an advanced graphical interface manipulated by touch and gesture.

Does ‘Discover’ deliver? – well take a look at it when visiting the CAPITA stand at BETT, ask yourself does it allow you to do the things you’ve always wanted to with an MIS easily and quickly?