Starter and Plenary Activities
All software and resources are free to use in state schools but should not be sold in any way, nor should the work be claimed to be the work of someone else. If you wish to place any of these ideas on a website please link back to www.MarkWilson.info.
Please note, the programs on this page are written in .net which means you will need the .NET framework in order to run them. You may download this from Microsoft here
Question and Answer Matching
Here is a small database which takes a set of questions and answers, prints them out on to a sheet of A4 paper which you can cut in half and give half to one student the other half to another student and the students have to race to find the matching piece of paper. This is a very basic implementation and is written in Access. If you are unaware of how to use the basics of Access you may struggle to use it.
Code Breaker
A program written in .NET which takes a short message which you type in and converts it into ASCII code which the students try to decode using the code sheet. Suprisingly effective.
ASCII Generator Code Sheet (Word Format)
Other Resources
Countdown Timer
If you want to get your students working to a deadline on an activity (e.g. 15 minutes), this little app is what you are after type in the time you want, when you want it to change colour then press start and leave it on the screen so students are aware of how much time they have remaining.
Detention Clock
Basic little application which you can show on your projector screen, if the class is noisy press start if they are quiet press pause. Uses colour to demonstrate length of detention moving from green to red.
Future Developments
At the moment, I am developing a system in which teachers will be able to plan, mark, take the register, view their timetable, and probably one or two other bits and pieces. This is actually quite a large undertaking and will take some time though with summer coming up I may have a couple of spare weeks to work on it.
I would be interested in hearing about other ideas for tools which would make classroom life easier for you and if you are lucky it may well end up getting developed.