eTwinning is the online community for school and college staff across Europe. You can register at any time to find partner schools, set up joint classroom projects in all curriculum areas and collaborate online in a safe and secure environment.

Get hands-on training in eTwinning, delivered by two eTwinning Ambassadors at this free workshop in your area:

Tuesday 21 May
09:15-15:15
New Bewerley Community School
Bismarck Drive
Beeston
LEEDS
LS11 6TB

The workshop will be run by two experienced eTwinning teachers, who will take you through the eTwinning platform, introduce the various tools available and offer advice for using ICT throughout your classroom projects. They’ll also talk about their own experiences of using eTwinning in the classroom.

The workshop is open to teachers from nursery, primary, and special schools at all levels of eTwinning, including complete beginners. Lunch will be provided.

Register for your place now.
https://etwinning.wufoo.com/forms/etwinning-full-day-workshop-south-leeds/

22 May 2013 – On-line – 16:00 to 17:00

Microsoft Partners in Learning is a 10-year, almost 500 million dollar global initiative aimed at improving teaching and learning to help educators and school leaders connect, collaborate, create, and share so that students can realize their greatest potential.

This on-line session will introduce teachers to Partners in Learning and the software available from the Microsoft learning suite.

The learning suite includes FREE tools such as OneNote, Songsmith, DeepZoome, PhotoSynth, Mouse Mischief, Worldwide Telescope, Skydrive and Kodu to name but a few.

Starting at 16:00 this session will last approximately 45/60 minutes and be conducted via Adobe Connect. All the equipment you will need is access to a PC with a set of headphones and microphone. If you aren’t sure what to do we will happily run a quick test session with you first.

To register for this session click HERE

Details will be sent on how to register for your FREE Microsoft tools.

Our colleagues at the London Grid for Learning have been working hard to produce yet another excellent resource for the benefit of all National Education Network members.

Viral Contagion looks at the real world maths that could occur as a result of an outbreak of a biological virus in an urban area.

Dramatized news reports describe the impact of the virus outbreak across South London, challenging students to consider the maths behind such scenarios.

This resource offers a collection of 4 discrete, differentiated lessons that provide an engaging and challenging focus for Key Stage 3 and 4 maths student
This unique learning resource features:

• High quality dramatized video scenarios
• SCORM compliant resources to integrate into any learning platform system,
• Downloadable Fronter room
• Computer models,
• Interactive whiteboard resources
• Full teacher guidance and support

www.viralcontagion.lgfl.net

24 April 2013 – On-line – 16:00 to 17:00

Microsoft Partners in Learning is a 10-year, almost 500 million dollar global initiative aimed at improving teaching and learning to help educators and school leaders connect, collaborate, create, and share so that students can realize their greatest potential.

This on-line session will introduce teachers to Partners in Learning and the software available from the Microsoft learning suite.

The learning suite includes FREE tools such as OneNote, Songsmith, DeepZoome, PhotoSynth, Mouse Mischief, Worldwide Telescope, Skydrive and Kodu to name but a few.

Starting at 16:00 this session will last approximately 45/60 minutes and be conducted via Adobe Connect. All the equipment you will need is access to a PC with a set of headphones and microphone. If you aren’t sure what to do we will happily run a quick test session with you first.

To register for this session click HERE

Details will be sent on how to register for your FREE Microsoft tools.

13 March 2013 – On-line – 16:00 to 17:00

Microsoft Partners in Learning is a 10-year, almost 500 million dollar global initiative aimed at improving teaching and learning to help educators and school leaders connect, collaborate, create, and share so that students can realize their greatest potential.

This on-line session will introduce teachers to Partners in Learning and the software available from the Microsoft learning suite.

The learning suite includes FREE tools such as OneNote, Songsmith, DeepZoome, PhotoSynth, Mouse Mischief, Worldwide Telescope, Skydrive and Kodu to name but a few.

Starting at 16:00 this session will last approximately 45/60 minutes and be conducted via Adobe Connect. All the equipment you will need is access to a PC with a set of headphones and microphone. If you aren’t sure what to do we will happily run a quick test session with you first.

To register for this session click HERE

Details will be sent on how to register for your FREE Microsoft tools.

As schools are now investing a lot in handheld devices  and e-book readers teachers may find this Free e-book manager a very useful tool. Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users for users of e-books. It has many features divided into the following main categories:

Library Management

Calibre manages your e-book collection for you. It is designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e., a single entry in your library that may correspond to actual e-book files in several formats.

Calibre can sort the books in your library by: Title, Author, Date added, Date published, Size, Rating, Series, etc.All you need to do is download your e-books  into one folder, in whatever format, eBook, ePub or PDF and with a couple of clicks it will upload the books to your device.

You can easily search your book collection for a particular book. calibre supports searching any and all of the fields mentioned above. You can construct advanced search queries by clicking the helpful “Advanced search” button to the left of the search bar.

You can export arbitrary subsets of your collection to your hard disk arranged in a fully customizable folder structure, maybe by key stage or reading ability.

E-book conversion

Calibre can convert from a huge number and supports all the major e-book formats.

The conversion engine has lots of powerful features. It can rescale all font sizes, ensuring the output e-book is readable no matter what font sizes the input document uses. It can automatically detect/create book structure, like chapters and Table of Contents. It can insert the book metadata into a “Book Jacket” at the start of the book.

Syncing to e-book reader devices

Calibre has a modular device driver design that makes adding support for different e-reader devices easy. At the moment, it has support for a large number of devices. Syncing supports updating metadata on the device from metadata in the library and creation of collections on the device based on the tags defined in the library. If a book has more than one format available, calibre automatically chooses the best format when uploading to the device. If none of the formats is suitable, calibre will automatically convert the e-book to a format suitable for the device before sending it.

Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form

Calibre can automatically fetch news from websites or RSS feeds, format the news into a ebook and upload to a connected device. The ebooks include the full versions of the articles, not just the summaries. Examples of supported news sites include:

• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Economist
• Time
• Newsweek
• The Guardian

calibre also has a built-in ebook viewer that can display all the major ebook formats. It has full support for Table of Contents, bookmarks, CSS, a reference mode, printing, searching, copying, customizing the rendering via a user style sheet, embedded fonts, etc.

For users with apple devices we would recomend using it’s built-in content server over your network.

There are many sources of free e-books on the internet and to get you started YHGfL have a selection of FREE e-books available from Rising Stars HERE

To download the software click HERE

Calibre has an on-line manual HERE

13 February 2013 – On-line – 16:00 to 17:00

Microsoft Partners in Learning is a 10-year, almost 500 million dollar global initiative aimed at improving teaching and learning to help educators and school leaders connect, collaborate, create, and share so that students can realize their greatest potential.

This on-line session will introduce teachers to Partners in Learning and the software available from the Microsoft learning suite.

The learning suite includes FREE tools such as OneNote, Songsmith, DeepZoome, PhotoSynth, Mouse Mischief, Worldwide Telescope, Skydrive and Kodu to name but a few.

Starting at 16:00 this session will last approximately 45/60 minutes and be conducted via Adobe Connect. All the equipment you will need is access to a PC with a set of headphones and microphone. If you aren’t sure what to do we will happily run a quick test session with you first.

To register for this session click HERE

Details will be sent on how to register for your FREE Microsoft tools.

App Inventor lets you develop applications for Android phones using a web browser and either a connected phone or an on screen  emulator. The App Inventor servers store your work and help you keep track of your projects.

Your app appears on the phone step-by-step as you add pieces to it, so you can test your work as you build. When you’re done, you can package your app and produce a stand-alone application to install.

If you don’t have an Android phone, you can build your apps using the Android emulator, software that runs on your computer and behaves just like the phone.

The App Inventor development environment is supported for Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and Windows operating systems, and several popular Android phone models. Applications created with App Inventor can be installed on any Android phone.

The software has a simple view designer

control is programmed in using connectable blocks not unlike scratch.

This simple design makes it suitable for schools wanting to look at App design and control from Y6 upwards with many examples and downloadable samples to choose from to get you started.

Students will need a free Google account to use the system.

Look out for our on-line CPD session introducing the app inventor during the summer term.

You can login to  App Inventor HERE

Tuesday February 05 2013
 

Blogging is a great way to motivate children to write, share ideas and improve their literacy, but most commercial blogging software is unsuitable for an educational environment.

ShareIT was developed by YHGfL specifically for member schools, teachers and pupils. With a ShareIT blog you can post photographs, videos, animations and podcasts, so it is the perfect way for your students to showcase their individual talents.

This FREE 45 minute on-line session will introduce you to the basics of blogging, from creating your first post through to adding an image customising the look and feel of your blog site. This session is aimed at users new to the YHGfL blog or anyone looking for refresher training. Experienced users may be interested in Blogging for experienced users.

Starting at 4:00 the session will last approximately 45 minutes and be conducted through Adobe Connect. All you will need is access to a PC and a set of headphones

For further and booking information click HERE

500 words  short story competition 2013

The BBC are ready to receive your super-duper, simply spectacular short stories from children aged 13 or under.

Children can get inspired by watching the brand new 500 WORDS film on the BBC website, which includes top tips from Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Tulisa, Conor Maynard, Helen Skelton, Wretch 32 and Harry Judd!

Students could win themselves a pile of books as tall as Chris Evans, and 500 books for the school library!

 For further information see the BBC website HERE

You have until 7:00pm on 22nd February to submit your entry.