I must be the biggest fan of Intellitools ever. I've been using "Overlay Maker" to create activities for some time now, and you can have a look at some of those activities below. A recent addition to this section is the Intellipics Page where you can download some of my Intellipics activities, the overlay files that go with them, and also the intellitalk activities that run off the same overlays. For those of you who do not own Intellipics, I have included Intellipics Player, which is a runtime version of Intellipics.

There are more activities to be uploaded shortly, so watch this space. And I promise to sort them out a bit better instead of you having to scroll down the page - just bear with me. In the meantime, check out the Intellitools site. Cheers!

You will need "Stuffit Expander 3.51" to decode the overlays. Click - on this link - to get a copy.

New Activities

Story Writing This page contains several overlays that I have used with story writing, as well as some ideas on software to use for writing activities.
Other Activities Here you will find several ideas of how to use overlays for activities other than writing, for example as communication aides.

Body Parts - this very simple overlay lets students tell how many they have of each body part.

Hair and Eye Colour - allowing students to write about the colour of their hair and eyes. The cryptic name I gave it may have confused you so I thought I'd better explain.

Yummy Yukky - Intellitalk activity which uses the same overlays as an intellipics activity I wrote (included on the Intellipics Page). This is a set of two overlays that use the same overlay file. The only difference is that one is text and the other is pictures. Feel free to adapt it.

Silly Sensible - again, this is an Intellitalk activity that accompanies an Intellipics activity I wrote (also downloadable from the Intellipics Page) and it includes both a text overlay and a picture overlay.

Kid Pix Letters - Some education students from Queensland University of Technology made some slide shows in Kid Pix for my students in Mareeba. (You should check out slideshows - they can be used for a lot of great activities). These are the overlays my students used to write thankyou letters (which we did in Kid Pix - they looked great!)

Old (but still good) Activities

Daily News - a series of 4 overlays which enable students to write and share their daily news. If you have downloaded these before, they haven't changed except for the fact that I've just added the non-repeating function to each of the buttons.

Letter Writing - currently 7 overlays which enable students at a pre-reading and writing stage to explore the genre of letter writing. I've just fixed them up slightly, adding the non-repeating funtion to the buttons.

Tips and Hints

Using Intellikeys in vocab activities is the latest addition to this particular section. Feel free to send comments or to write with your own tips.

Where I have typed names of students and other people, you can also import digital photographs. We are lucky to have access to a colour scanner and a Quicktake 100 digital camera. Save them in your scrapbook for easy access.

Adhesive plastic on overlays (or a thin laminate) help overlays go that little bit longer, although the clear plastic sheet that comes with the keyboard is handy.

Try using foolscap document protectors to store your overlays in. Not only can you store them, but with some careful and creative trimming, you can slide the whole document protector into the intellikeys board and it works so well.

Tactile overlays are possible with items such as cotton wool, thin fabrics, foil paper, cellophane etc. You can print out an overlay and paste the items over it, or you can use the grid provided with the Overlay Maker software and manuals to draw up your own.

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