File Share: Four pages of online resources

Climate Action Tracker

(climateactiontracker.org) tracks global government climate action and measures it against the agreed aims of the Paris Agreement. It evaluates targets and policies, as well as aggregating country action to the global level, to determine likely temperature increases.

Humans have been burning fossil fuels for hundreds of years. However, what percentage has been used up while you’ve been alive? Find out at Your Personal Carbon History (parametric.press/ issue-02/carbon-history/). Also learn about measuring carbon dioxide and its changing levels. Enjoy an interactive journey celebrating the beauty of Earth with Above the Clouds (earth. plus360degrees.com). The adventure is set to NASA images and text written by Carl Sagan in his book ‘Pale Blue Dot’. While watching, move your mouse to explore different views. City Technology (citytechnology.org) has a range of resources for learning about energy, force and motion. From ‘Fantastic Elastic’ to ‘MechAnimations’, each project features a video showing how to design, make and troubleshoot an item, downloadable lesson plans, and a list of materials needed.

Google Arts & Culture has recently launched Asian Pacific American Cultures (artsandculture.google.com/ project/aapi-cultures). This new hub is dedicated to the history and arts of these communities – including stories and artefacts – and how their contributions have shaped the US. Working with Discovery Education,

STEM Careers Coalition

(stemcareerscoalition.org) offers advice and information to encourage and inspire students in maths and science subjects. There are job profiles, classroom activities, news, and suggestions for afterschool sessions for exploring career pathways.

From Stanford University, Climate Change Education (earth.stanford.edu/ climate-change-ed) is a project to develop a curriculum for middle and high school science classrooms that addresses the fundamental issues of climate change. Resources include lesson guides, articles, maps, videos, and related links. How many times can Greenland fit inside Africa? It’s 14 but you wouldn’t know it from most world maps. Why every world map is wrong (bit.ly/ mapiswrong) explains how it’s impossible to make a flat map of a spherical world and how even the simplest changes in map design can influence our perceptions of size. Siemens STEM Day (siemensstemday. com) offers a library of free, standardsaligned, STEM-related activities – about 175 at last count. Choose by grade level and STEM topic or career path. There are educator resources and ‘5-minute refreshers’ on several subjects to kickstart and support lessons.

For a selection of 1000s of royalty free music and audio tracks check out Pixabay (pixabay.com/music/). The collection includes instrumental recordings across a wide range of styles. Filter by mood, duration and genre, or search by keyword. Download the MP3 file.

Dig CC Mixter (dig.ccmixter.org) is divided into three categories – Instrumental Music for Film & Video, Free Music for Commercial Projects, and Music for Video Games. Search by genre, instrument, and style. Content is licensed under Creative Commons. So, you need to credit accordingly. Harmony Square (harmonysquare. game/en) is a game about fake news, whose aim is to expose the tactics and techniques that are used to manipulate and mislead people. Over the course of four short levels, the player’s job is to upset the square’s peace and quiet by creating internal divisions and disharmony. 1914-1918-Online (1914-1918-online.net) is a collaborative project that’s creating an online encyclopaedia of the First World War. Involving more than 1,000 authors, editors, and partners from over 50 countries, it offers a ‘multiperspective, open-access knowledge base’ to help study and understand the Great War.

Why are the monsters disappearing? In Monsters vs Fractions (monstersvsfractions.com), your job is to solve the maths mystery. Players slice, swipe, and tap to learn about equal shares, fractional notation, and terms such as ‘halves, thirds, fourths’, etc. Choose from different activities and track students’ progress in the Teacher Mode. Interested in the history of our neighbour across the Tasman Sea?

Australian History Mysteries

(australianhistorymysteries.info) is a collection of case studies, videos and interactive activities designed to engage students with aspects of the country’s history, landscape and heritage.

INTERFACEONLINE.CO.NZ

From Bensound, Royalty Free Music (bensound.com/royalty-free-music) offers tracks in eight categories – acoustic/folk, cinematic, corporate/pop, electronica, urban/groove, jazz, rock, and world/others. Each comes with a description and duration, with play, download and licensing options. Practise and improve your typing skills with TypeScholar (typescholar.netlify. app). Using Wikipedia as its source for content, simply choose and enter a keyword. The site selects a related passage that you have to type. Compete to get your best time, speed and accuracy results. Each day, RealClearHistory (realclearhistory.com) publishes an update on notable historical events that took place on that date, along with other history-related commentaries and analyses. Search past dates or check out other content, including current news, history tidbits, biographies and memoirs, documents, and the map room.

Simplify your online research and notetaking with Spade (spade.tools). It allows users to directly annotate – with a pen, highlighter or textbox – automatically cite, and ‘webscrape’ (extract information from) webpages. Save and share notes and references with friends and colleagues.

Bloxels Edu (edu.bloxelsbuilder.com) is simple and fun way to create computer games. Using eight simple blocks with specific properties – terrain, liquid, collectible, hazard, action, power-up, enemy, and story – students design characters, stories, animations, backgrounds, and game play. There are instructional video tutorials and lesson plans.

Never worry about remembering your lines again with the Veed Teleprompter (veed.io/teleprompter) – part of the Veed suite of tools (see page 37 to win 6 months’ premium access!). Record your video and click ‘Teleprompter’ in the bottom right corner and type up the text for your recording. Change text speed and size as needed. Make posters, flyers, infographics, images, and all sorts of visual content with Easil (about.easil.com). There are pre-designed templates or create your own using the drag and drop editing tools. Under ‘Learn’ there are heaps of tutorials, articles, help and advice to get you going.

IdeaBoardz (ideaboardz.com) is an online sticky note-style board where you can make notes, post lists, record thoughts, reflect on ideas, set tasks, brainstorm activities, and the like. It can be for your own use or share the url link for others to see and collaborate with you on boards.

Create online forms and publish them with Jotform (jotform.com). From registration, evaluation and consent forms, to, feedback, polls and RSVPs, choose from templates or design your own by simply dragging and dropping questions and fields to build the form you need. Save and share. Want to know what your class (or audience) thinks? Questionwave (questionwave.com) lets you take questions as you’re presenting. Simply set up and share a link. With this, people can post questions that you can see and provide answers for, either as you present or afterwards.

Need a cool logo? Flaming Text (flamingtext.com) lets you to create your own logo from pre-made designs. These come in various categories, including 3D, movie, fire, nature, sport, horror, and texture. Customise the font, background, and colours, and ‘generate’. You need to sign up to download.

Want to record what happens on your screen? RecordCast (recordcast.com) is an impressive tool that combines screencasting and video editing. Record in three different modes – webcam only, screen only, or both. Once done, use the integrated editor to crop, add text, music, change background colours, and more.

Whimsical (whimsical.com) describes itself as a ‘unified workspace for thinking and collaboration’. What this means is that it can be used to create mind maps, flowcharts, Venn diagrams, sticky notes, wire frames, and more. Start a file and use the editor to add elements (text, boxes, arrows, colours, etc.). Invite others to edit or comment. Publish as a webpage or save as an image or PDF.

Organise ideas and manage tasks with Transno (transno.com). This is an easy-to-use tool that lets you write outlines and notes that can then be turned into mind maps and flow charts. It takes your documents, asks you to pick your structure and theme, and converts it. Use online or download the app (iOS and Android).

Forky (forky.io) is a simple tool for making colourful bubble and line diagrams. Essentially, it connects text boxes (there’s no support for images). Just start typing to create an initial entry. Hit the tab key and a new box appears. Move around the page to start new boxes with different links. Share a file to collaborate with others. Google Arts and Culture has unveiled a new exhibition, Music, Makers and Machines: A Brief History of Electronic Music. It’s worth a look in itself but as part of this is electronic music maker AR-Synth (artsexperiments. withgoogle.com/ar-synth/). Pick a synthesizer and place on the grid to create electronic rhythms.

Strofe (strofe.com) uses AI to help you create musical tunes. Start by choosing a mood for your track – Spooky, Sad, Chill, Happy or Spirited. Then select the genre, such as pop, reggae, retro or orchestral, and hit ‘Create Music’. The site will come up with a composition that you can edit. Lastly, mix and master, and you’re done.

From Chrome Music Lab (which has heaps of music-related stuff to explore), Song Maker (musiclab.chromeexperiments. com/Song-Maker) is a simple, fun way to make and share songs. Just mark notes on the grid, using your finger, keyboard or voice, choose the instruments and tempo, and play/save. Blackbird (blackbirdcode.com) is an online platform that fits between blocks-based options, like Scratch, and writing code in an IDE. It offers a series of interactive and progressive lessons using JavaScript, with students working on a customisable game. Once done, they move to a ‘workshop’ area. A teacher dashboard lets you view their progress.

Create your own mobile apps without having to actually write code with Thunkable (thunkable.com). Using the drag-and-drop design canvas, arrange command blocks together to make your program. There are a host of written and video tutorials to get you started for free. If you like it, there are educational packages available to purchase.

Browser-based Snap! (snap.berkeley. edu) is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language that teaches the basic elements and sequences of programming. Design and build programs by putting graphical commands in order in the scripts pane – like jigsaw blocks, they ‘snap’ into place. Preview the program anytime to see how it runs.