There are some good websites where you can pick up some good ideas and resources. Here are just a few of them. Do explore them.
- Excellence Gateway Employer challenges has some real-life examples of how technology can be used.
- Debatepedia describes itself as the Wikipedia of debates. As well as starting or contributing to debates, you can read debates in progress. It could provide a good starting point for discussing pertinent issues concerning the use of technology in everyday life.
- Halfbakery The Halfbakery is a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression. Check it out first though, because some of the inventions are not suitable for displaying in the classroom. You may wish to search through them and provide a direct link to, or summary of, a suitable one.
- Why not is an open-source repository of ideas, covering a whole range of areas of life. The idea (sorry!) is that people have an idea of a way of solving a problem, and other people contribute their thoughts.
- Instructables: people send in instructions about how to do a variety of things.
- And don’t forget Makezine, which I mentioned in 7 Ways to make IT real: #4 Use external organisations This provides information about products that have been invented, and instructions on how to make things.
cross-posted on www.ictineducation.org
Terry Freedman is an independent educational ICT consultant with over 35 years of experience in education. He publishes the ICT in Education website and the newsletter “Computers in Classrooms."
