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Hot Topics (Scholastic)
Hot topics is a set of nine CD-ROM products published by Scholastic, which provide interactive content accompanying a series of school textbooks. Users are given a huge set of ready-made slides (images, pdf worksheets, graphs, videos and audio files) and can drag and drop to create slideshows. Ready made slideshows are provided, but your own images, videos and sounds can be imported. Each slide can be annotated using drawing and text tools. Each CD-ROM contains differentiated lesson plans for three age groups, and printable activity sheets.
Captivate your class and bring the curriculum to life! Hot Topics Interactive helps you to teach your favourite topics with all the support and planning you need. These exciting resource CD-ROMs make it easy to teach exciting topics that span the whole curriculum, covering more subjects in less time and having lots of creative fun. Just one Hot Topics Interactive theme lets children discover and learn from dozens of angles: doing experiments, making crafts and models, playing games and much more.
- Actionscript 3, using Flex and PureMVC
- Wrapped with MDM Zinc to create Windows and Mac installable executables
Data Handling & Create and Display
These series extend the source code of the Hot Topics project and add extra functionality. “Data Handling” includes a large range of annotation and graphing tools which let teachers and pupils annotate slides, create their own slideshows and add graphs to illustrate the data. Each title in the “Create and Display” series adds to the main resource bank, allowing the user to use resources from every title they have bought to create and display exciting and engaging art presentations to their class.
- Built in Actionscript 3, using Flex and PureMVC and Zinc
- Graphing tools provided in ’Data Handling’ to allow users to create bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, pictograms
- Shareable - inside any title installed on your computer, you can access all resources from any other title you have installed.
Use ideas from across the curriculum to discover ways of handling data…Each lesson has a maths focus, but draws on subject matter from all aspects of the curriculum, from history and geography to RE and literacy, making data handling a real-life skill that learners can relate to all aspects of their study. There are twelve lessons per book, each covering learning objectives for both maths and the subjects covered in the data. The lesson framework outlines how to teach the lesson, ways to differentiate for learners of varying abilities, and there’s all the data provided along with worksheets to guide you.
The software includes a full suite of Interactive Whiteboard tools, and lets the teacher adapt the slideshows, upload their own images, or even create entirely new slideshows of their classwork. There is a large image bank on each CD-ROM, as well as videos, planning grids, and activity sheets to support particular themes and displays. Importantly, each title in the series adds to the main resource bank, increasing the amount of digital resources in the series – allowing the user to use resources from every title to create and display exciting and engaging art presentations to their class!