YHGfL have long been championing the use of technology to bring external expertise into the classroom, whether that’s for training teachers or enhancing the learning experience of pupils. In partnership with Tute, we offered our YHGfL Advocate Schools the opportunity to dip their toe in the water of online teaching. Several schools took up the offer, some to work with gifted and talented pupils and some to give additional support in literacy or maths. The feedback has been excellent, pupils have really enjoyed the sessions stayed fully engaged throughout. The initial and end assessment is really useful to be able to assess impact on learning, perfect for showing how pupil premium has been used.

Follow the link to see a video created by pupils at Ryburn Valley High School in Calderdale.

http://static.tute.com/tutelessons.html

In a special collaboration Tute and YHGfL have got together to offer YHGfL schools an immediate 10% discount, additional technical support and special starter sessions so schools new to the concept of online teaching can try it out without committing to a huge expense.

If you’re interested in giving it a go, contact us at YHGfL or go direct to Tute.com

On the 5th and 6th May conquermaths.com are offering all of their resources, lessons, assessments and fun skills tests absolutely free to all!

They’re also offering some great prizes and the last time we promoted something with prizes our region were big winners!

Take a look:

http://www.maydaymaths.com/#!/

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

Students aged 11 to 15  from around  the region attened our first Mobile Hack Day with  a number of them having never coded before.  After about 30 minutes of introduction the students were coming up with app ideas and starting to implement them in the Weejot AppStudio. With the ability to use its built in templates and HTML, students were able to create interactive apps about their favorite boy band and football teams. Other students were able to take the design a step further by programming in  small amounts of Javascript.

Feedback from the session was tremendous with a number of students continuing development of their apps after the event.

There is a short video of the event on eViews  HERE

The Weejot publishing service

Weejot is a mobile publishing service that provides tools that enable real-time publishing of mobile apps using the web. By using mobile optimized web pages instead of native phone apps (like the apps you download from app stores), you can reach far more people, far faster and with no time wasted in any approvals process.

Non-technical users can use ‘AppTemplates’ to create and publish apps to any device and developers can use the Weejot API to develop AppTemplates using HTML and Javascript.

Weejot is also a great way to learn the languages of the modern web. HTML5, CSS and Javascript are the main technologies and because we do not limit your ability to create whatever you want – the possibilities are endless!

If you work in education, perhaps either within ICT in a school or for an Education Authority looking for a teaching tool for all your schools then Weejot are committed to providing free accounts for students in schools, universities and authorities who use Weejot to assist in the teaching of programming skills.

For further information click HERE

YHGfL are able to support schools using this resource, for more information email contact(at)yhgfl.net

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

Give your students the opportunity to engage with real scientists and be inspired by life in the field with this  FREE programme of video conference events and live chats. Students will discover what it’s like to perform cutting-edge research in one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. 

Appropriate for Key Stages 2, 3 and 4.

If you would like to participate, check that your school group can take part on all of the dates listed below. If it can, please register your interest by emailing the NHM with your name, the name of your school, age group of your group, and a contact telephone number. As usual YHGfL will be able to support any schools new to the technology and has an amount of loan equpment available.
Tel: 020 7942 5555
email: videoconferencing@nhm.ac.uk

Date and times

Friday 5 October 2012, Primary: 9.40 – 10.10 , Secondary: 10.30 – 11.00, Pre-trip videoconference live from the Museum

Tuesday 9 October 2012, Primary: 10.00 – 11.00, Secondary:11.00 – 12.00, Online chat with scientists in Borneo

Friday 12 October 2012, Primary: 9.40 – 10.10, Secondary: 10.30 – 11.00, Videoconference live from Borneo

Tuesday 16 October 2012, Primary: 10.00 – 11.00, Secondary:11.00 – 12.00, Online chat with scientists in Borneo

Friday 9 November 2012, Primary: 9.40 – 10.10, Secondary: 10.30 – 11.00, Post-trip videoconference live from the Museum

A new report released on the 19th September which aims to help schools ensure they are handling pupils’ personal information in-line with the law. The report has been written by the Information Commissioner’s Office, and gives practical advice on how to comply with the Data Protection Act. It was prompted by a survey of 400 schools across nine local authority areas that showed that whilst awareness of data protection laws was generally good, schools need to pay more attention to complying with data protection law.

Read more

http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2012/report-offers-school-data-protection-advice-17092012.aspx

STARS is the theme for 2012’s National Poetry Day,  on Thursday October 4th.

It’s a day for poetry readings, events, competitions, quizzes, exhibitions, commissions, creations, recitations and more, all planned and launched by the poets and poetry lovers of the UK. Find NPD on Facebook, follow the Tweets for updates and announcements.

Click HERE to visit the NPD website for more information, resources and events around the country.

Don’t Forget ……..

Schools in our region will be able to celebrate with a FREE  live Video Conference  to local poet and author David Harmer. A couple of spaces are still available click HERE for further information and booking details. David’s Happy working with all keystage and can taylor the sessions round any  subject or theame.

This hands-on workshop is for schools looking to engage with iPads or iPods in the classroom. We will be looking at what you need to consider before purchase; your wireless infrastructure, storage, and support requirements’

The day will feature school case studies and discussion about their experiences from other regional practitioners. We will demonstrate some of the features of the device and how it can be used with children.

The final section will allow delegates to sample some of the ‘Get you started’ apps available.

Click HERE for further details and booking information.

Space’s still available :

03/05/2012 4:00 pm

From coffee cups to skyscrapers, Google Sketchup can add an extra dimension to sketching or drawing. This free 3d modelling software can be used to get a flavour of house building or architecture amongst other things. In this free, online workshop you will learn how to use the basic tools, import downloaded models from the internet, and finally, to create a house or other buildings. Google sketchup is a great tool for linking geography, art, design and ICT covering a wide range of curriculum areas.

Starting at 4:00 this 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. If you aren’t sure what to do we will happily run a quick test session with you first.

Click HERE to register on the YHGfL website.