Primary Bits and Bytes

(Posted by Fiona)

Please pass to any interested teacher:

An opportunity has arisen for an experienced classroom teacher to undertake a research and development  project working with the ITCAS team. The project will offer an opportunity to work for a one day a week over one term based at ITCAS. The agreement of the head teacher must be obtained before applying. There is some flexibility about the starting and end dates but we envisage that the project will take 10 days over the autumn or spring terms.  The dates will be negotiated with the school but we would prefer the work to take place on Fridays if possible.
The purpose of the project is to develop a Primary (EY-Y6) scheme of work covering e-safety which can be shared with all Kirklees schools. This can draw upon the currently available published materials and lesson plans, but will give Kirklees schools a framework from which to deliver lessons in this very important area.  We  expect  the person selected to have some experience of delivering the e-safety message in their own school, either with parents or children, and also have some examples of similar development work which they will be able to present as part of the selection process.
To apply we will require a letter detailing why you would like to be considered for this project, the experience of e-safety issues you have to draw on and previous experience of creating curriculum related materials.
The closing date for project applications will be  4th September 2009

If you have any questions please email  or  ring Eileen  at ITCAS on 01484 22 5724  (860 5724)
The application form is attached or can be obtained by sending an email to Eileen.torr@kirklees.gov.uk

(Posted by Fiona)

This would make a good Citizenship project for the end of term, it was posted on Becta’s Safetynet forum by Will Gardner, CEO of Childnet:

The ‘Youth IGF Project’ aims  to capture children and young people’s opinions, thoughts and wishes about the future of the Internet, and then to feed these directly into the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

To reach the widest possible audience in a short space of time, Childnet have created primary and secondary project packs for schools who want to get involved in the project and would welcome as wide participation as possible. All schools returning survey material will be entered into a prize draw for a free e-safety session to be held in January 2010.  Youth responses that particularly stand out will be featured in a video to be presented in Egypt and young people may also be asked to consider contributing to discussions in Parliament on this topic .

The project packs contain lesson plans and instructions for running lessons - and are a perfect afternoon activity in the run-up to the end of term. We hope that many of you will engage in this project and Ellen ( ellen@childnet.com ) and Lucinda ( lucinda@childnet.com )in the Childnet office are happy to answer any further questions.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) a UN mandated meeting in the Autumn.  The IGF is a four day international gathering that gives governments, the internet industry, organisations and individuals the space to debate what should happen to the Internet in the coming years thinking specifically about Access, Openness, Diversity and Security.  Historically the IGF has had little input from young people. Childnet’s Youth IGF Project aims to capture the voice of young people so that the it can be represented at the forum in November.

(Posted by Dughall)

On Thursday 4th June we held our first ICT Showcase event. The event was primarily an opportunity for schools across all phases to come and share the innovative and exciting work that they are doing in ICT.Here are just some of the areas that were on show:

•  Multimedia work, with sound and animation
• Digital video creation
• ICT used to support music, art and literacy
• Games making
• Innovative website development
• Creating a school radio broadcast
• Presenting a school TV station
• Using podcasting, blogs and wikis
• Use of control software
• Using the learning platform
• Using mobile technologies such as PDAs and UMPCs

For more information and details of the schools and what they did, look at the brochure that we gave out on the day.

Visitors included representatives from the LA’s Secondary, Primary, Middle and Special Schools and also the PRUs. We also had members of CHYPs and the Learning Sevice as well as LA advisors from nearby Authorities and representatives from interested commercial parties.

Visitors gave extremely positive feedback without exception. Here are a selection of comments:

“Excellent demonstration of the power of ICT to Improve learning” - Cathy Morgan (RM)
“Excellent, thanks. A good way to see what’s going on in ICT and talk to others.”
“Very impressive with great enthusiasm from the pupils.”
“Really impressive how all the schools are doing so much creative work in lessons and enthuse kids to join after school clubs. All work was amazing, well done to everyone involved, inspirational teachers and enthusiastic pupils!” - Helen & Julie (Dewsbury Rams)
“Lots of new technology we now want in our school. What fantasctic, confident children to explain and demonstrate.”
“The session has been inspiring, interesting and enjoyable.”
“Great to see students of all ages and abilities involved.”
“I really enjoyed the hi-tech equipment and cool software.” (Pupil demonstrator)

I was able to visit most of the stands and was overwhelmed by how articulate, confident, enthusiastic and skilled the young people were. Also impressive was the breadth of examples that were shared and the range of technologies on show from Digitalblue cameras to a full blown portable TV studio, from netbook computers to ‘6 worksatations from 1 PC’ solutions.

We tried to get video interviews with the young people but found on the day that the background buzz that was typical of the whole day interfered too much with the audio. Fortunately, Netherthong Primary School came equipped with an Easispeak microphone and managed to conduct some interviews with visitors. Here are a couple of examples:
    
While I’m on with Netherthong, they were sharing examples of their use of Comic Life software, and even used it on the day to produce this fantastic record of the goings on.

A huge thank you goes to all the schools and children that made it such a fantastic, memorable day. What was intended as a one-off is looking likely to be an annual event!

(Posted by Dughall)

Here are some more things worthy of consideration:

• This page that includes some pictures from the Hubble telecope lets us know, in jaw-dropping fashion, just how small and insignificant we are. Here are some stunning shots of the Space shuttle’s final servicing mission to Hubble.
• This resource, posted to the TES website by marthamonkey looks to be useful for anyone planning on teaching a unit on spreadsheets/Excel.
• Autocollage is a Microsoft application that is now free for ‘education purposes’ and looks to be a useful tool for sorting/displaying large numbers of photos quickly and easily. You know, when you return from that school trip.
• While we’re on with photos, I was planning on using Photostory 3 with a group of kids in a few weeks time, but I’ll also look into Photopeach, Animoto and Capzles before making a final decision. The latter three have the advantage of being online applications. Oh, and there’s Photovisi, too
• See the bigger picture with Block Posters. You can take a small photo and blow it up to huge proportions for printing. I haven’t tried it, but know of schools that have. I gather that there is a degree of ‘pixcelation’ that will either add/detract from the effect depending on your taste.
• The only way I can think to describe Deepleap is ‘Scrabble on Redbull!’
• This great online presentation by Mark Warner (Teaching Ideas) is called ‘16 Ideas for ICT in the Early Years’. It does what it says on the tin.
• This is little more than a distraction but if you like sprinkling sand…
• If you want to add a little something to those VLE/web pages (or ‘Pimp your Page’ as they put it) then you might want to look at Cool Text. There are some nice templates for zazzy logos, animated text etc.
• Free, downloadable resources (or ‘Doodads’ as she calls them) can be accessed from Mrs Pancake. They are aimed mostly at KS1 & EYFS.
• I enjoyed reading this blog post by US teacher, Miss Cal.Q.L8. She has pulled together a number of those killer classroom management strategies (many that I wish I’d known in my first few years in the classroom). There are some gems in there.
• Back in February, I posted about virtual Lego and BlockCAD software. Well, here’s the genuine article from Lego themselves. It is their ‘Digital Designer’.
• Teacher Simon Haughton has produced this ‘Junior ICT Companion’. A great website detailing everything ICT in child-friendly chunks. Thanks, Simon.
• Some of you may already know about ‘Wordle’. It is a great tool for looking at a body of text in a new and different way by producing ‘…clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.’ There is also ‘Wordsift’ that does a similar job.
• Here’s a page of games that you might like to diddle with.
• I love the way Google occasionally has a themed logo on certain days. Why not let the kids enter a competition - Doodle for Google - with the possible result that their logo might feature.

(Posted by Dughall)

‘Teachmeet’ is a wonderful CPD concept. It takes place in an evening and is an opportunity for school practitioners to share the innovative and interesting ways that they are using technology to impact on learning. The evening is a bit like a comedy/stand-up open-mic session where contributors speak for 7 minutes (micro presentations) or 2 minutes (nano presentations). I was lucky enough to attend and speak at Teachmeet BETT 2009 and mentioned it in my post about the Bett Show.

Anyway, I know it is short notice, but I’d like to publicise the forthcoming Teachmeet Midlands that will take place at NCSL in Nottingham this coming Friday. All the details you need are on the Wiki page. However, if you are unable to make it in person, you can also follow proceedings via Flashmeeting (a live video/audio stream from the event). You can access the feed from here from 5.30 pm GMT on Friday. Also, if you are a Twitter user, you can follow procedings with the tag #tmm09.

I will be speaking for 7 minutes on the excellent work Mandy Jackson is doing with her Y2 children at Gomersal First School, using the DBPrimary environment.

If you can make it, great. If not, try to catch it via the Flashmeeting feed.