Primary Bits and Bytes

(Posted by Fiona)

Here are the notes, presentations and handouts from last week’s ICT network meeting for those who couldn’t make it. There were presentations from Clare Askew and Victoria Turner (YHGfL) and Allan Qualters (AST) as well as updates from Dughall and myself.

Clare Askew spoke about the services available for Kirklees schools through YHGfL. Kirklees will be part of the regional grid for the next three years. This means that YHGfL will provide the broadband connection from Kirklees to the National Education Network (NEN). Clare also mentioned other services which are available, including free Sophos antivirus software, and a VPN solution using text messaging for security. The VPN solution is available to schools for £200 initial setup per school and then £4.50 per year for each user.

Victoria Turner demonstrated an audit tool for eSecurity, which is available on the YHGfL website here. The tool assesses how effective current arrangements are for keeping confidential data secure. She also mentioned the free blog (Classblog, which this blog is written on), podcasting tool, and upcoming video hosting which will be available shortly.

Allan Qualters, Advanced Skills Teacher for ICT, Lydate J&I School gave a presentation on effective use of visualisers. You can download it below:

Using the Visualiser

I gave an update on Gmail for schools, Google Apps for Education (Moople), ICT Mark and the future of support for schools from Kirklees Learning Service. The main points can be found in the presentation below:

ICT Network March 2011

There was an opportunity for those attending to complete a survey on the future of ICT network meetings, as these may change slightly when the new traded Learning Service begins in April. If you couldn’t attend, please give us your opinions using the online survey at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KCW9QBS

Dughall discussed renewal of DBPrimary for the next 12 months, and suggested small schools group together to reduce costs.

Please get in touch with us if you would like further information about any of the presentations.

(Posted by Fiona)

This term’s network meeting took place last Thursday (18th Nov) and proved to be a full and interesting afternoon. The first guest speaker was Diana Monahan, Kirklees Sensory Impairment Service who gave a presentation on adapting computers for visually impaired children. The excellent introduction had us all simulating impaired peripheral vision, which really brought home the challenges for children with this type of visual impairment. Diana explained the different types of visual impairment, and how computers can be adapted as appropriate for individual children. Here is the presentation and some useful information and handouts:

VI Inset for Primary ICT Coordinators

XPaccess

VI technicians handout on vision

Wordprocessing Without a Mouse

Providing Access to ICT

Helen Daykin from Espresso gave an update on the latest features in the product. She showed how straightforward it is to extract videos from Espresso to use in pupils own work, or to embed in a learning platform. She also demonstrated the latest search tools, which allow teachers to locate relevant lesson resources more quickly. Espresso are currently offering a free trial of the full product for Kirklees schools.  See the flyer below for full details:

Espresso Kirklees Flyer

The final guest was Andrew Flowerdew from Innovicity. Andrew first worked in Kirklees as a consultant for Tribal on the BSF project. He also works with other LAs across the country. Andrew explained the changes to school email accounts which will happen over the next few months. All Kirklees schools will be switched over from the current Squirrel Mail system to Google Mail by the end of January 2011. Accounts will be set up for free for teachers with the email address initial.surname@edukirklees.net; it will also be possible to set up pupil email accounts for a charge, schools can have pupil accounts set up for £100 so long as they express an interest by the end of the month. Staff accounts will be put in relevant groups such as office, head and ICT to ensure that people receive relevant emails from Kirklees.

Andrew also demonstrated Moople, which is a portal to access the new email system. Moople also provides another way of accessing free online applications and Google Apps for Education.

For further information on Gmail for schools contact Tim Green in the ICT Projects team:

tim.green@kirklees.gov.uk

Tel: 22(860)5731

The next meeting will take place on Thursday 10th March 1.15 – 4.15 pm. An agenda will be sent to schools several weeks before.

(Posted by Dughall)

Last Thursday, I was at a regional Conference organised by YHGfL and titled ‘Learn to Love Your Learning Platform’ in Barnsley.

The day was organized with a couple of ‘whole-class’ sessions for the 120 or so delegates with 40 minute breakout/workshop sessions. I ran one of the breakout sessions.

The day kicked off with a keynote by a representative of Cleveratom. He referred to a couple of resonant statements made by Professor Stephen Heppell some years ago regarding aspirations for learning platforms. In particular, that learning platforms should be about ‘Me, We, See’. Me = A place for my stuff. We = A shared space See = I can publish my stuff more widely. I liked the simplicity of this, but thought for a moment that he might have been referring to ‘C’ not ‘See’ as I believe a learning platform should be all about the ‘C’ as in:

• Communication
• Community
• Collaboration
• Constructivism

So I started my workshop by saying this. Yes, a learning platform can do things like provide online worksheets, links to external websites, SCORM-compatible activities, quizzes and so on. This is all very well, but I believe with a passion that it is about so much more than this as I said here at BETT earlier this year.

My workshop was then intended to take one feature that should exist in all learning platforms (regardless of supplier) and examine how that feature might be used to promote the ‘C’s. I focused on the use of Fora (Forums).

I started by describing what a forum is and why I like them. I described how I use various fora in various professional and social capacities including TES, Promethean Planet, UK Governors etc. I then went on to describe how a forum can be used in a primary school and suggested you think of them as ‘virtual carpet time’ – an online space to have those conversations, question & answer sessions, discussions etc.

I had decided to model the use of a forum ‘live’ in the session and (with the agreement of Netherthong Primary School) started a topic in their Year 5 class forum as follows:

Title: Help me out please Y5!

“Hi. Thanks for helping.
Would you mind making this boring sentence more interesting?
‘The cat walked into the garden.’
Thanks!”

I then left it alone and went on with my presentation that included showing delegates the following real examples from schools in Kirklees:

• Foundation stage (Age 3-5) (1): ‘Draw a minibeast’ (Our learning platform, DBPrimary has a lovely simple drawing tool in the editor – perfect for very young children).
• Foundation stage (Age 3-5) (2): ‘What do you know about castles?’ This included a reply (amongst many) from a 4 year old as follows “casl has a drorbij”
• Mixed Reception & Y1 (Age 4-6): ‘What is your favourite toy?’ We got written and drawn responses.
• Mixed Y2 & Y3 (Age 6-8): ‘Tell us about your favourite things.’ ‘What do you know about the Romans?’
• Mixed Y4 & Y5 (Age 8-10): ‘Share a joke.’
• KS2 Book Club (Age 7-11): ‘Future reads.’ ‘Book reviews.’
• Year 2 (Age 6-7) (1): ‘Ice in the classroom.’ (What have you liked about it? Any suggestions for what else we could do with it? Answers included adding glitter, freezing milk etc).
• Year 2 (Age 6-7) (2): ‘School council suggestions.’ (Answers included “Can we have lipsil?” through to “Can we have more teacher training days?”).
• Year 2 (Age 6-7) (3): ‘Moving to Year 3.’ (A thread for children to share any anxieties or expectations about moving up to a new class and new teacher).
• Year 6 (Age 10-11) (1): ‘Macbeth review.’ (Answers included: “I enjoyed the workshop a lot, I would like to be lady Macbeth because I like that she is evil and can persuade her husband. The part I liked best was where lady Macbeth couldn’t get the spot of blood of her hands because it was quite spooky.” And “I loved the MacBeth preformance i think it was really good , and i liked it when she had the blood spot on her hands i would like to be………………lady MacBeth.”).
• Year 6 (Age 10-11) (2): ‘Predict what you think will happen in the class book and why.’ ‘Weekly brain buster.’ ‘Maths & Literacy ‘Countdown’ questions.’
• Year 5 (Age 9-10): I returned to the Netherthong Y5 class forum as it is a wonderful example of how these environments can mature with the right kind of nurturing from adults. This particular class tend to ‘run’ the forum themselves. The teacher (Emma Barker) said “They pretty much run the forum themselves now and I just monitor and comment.” This is true; her children start threads for each other on an amazing range of topics (including a regular feature where a child posts a picture for others to guess what it is). Having said that, I know Emma also runs focussed/objective orientated fora such as group reading etc.

I could have shown many, many more excellent examples but time was pressing. Now was the time to rattle through other ways that a forum can be used with primary pupils:

• Discussion of TV shows (X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent etc).
• Tell a story one line at a time.
• Anything relating to PSHCE (Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education).
• P4C (Philosophy for Children) – post a stimulus and children generate questions.
• What have you enjoyed about…?
• What have you learned?
• What do you already know about…?
• Ask a revision question. (I have seen pupils asking and answering each others’ questions with minimal intervention by the teacher).
• Transition, twinning, collaborations across classes, year groups, schools etc.
• Have a discussion with a ‘made-up’ character – Santa, Historical characters etc.
• Ask a controversial question. ‘Do UFOs/aliens exist?’
• School Council suggestions.
• Have a whole-school forum – ‘Do we have a problem with bullying?’ ‘What do you think of the uniform?’ etc.
• School trips/residential visits – ‘What are you looking forward to?’ ‘What are you worried about?’ ‘What did you enjoy?’
• Focus on literacy – ‘Write a sentence with…’ ‘Write a paragraph that…’ etc
• What’s in the news? – Discuss.
• Life’s huge questions – ‘Why is the earth spherical?’ ‘Why is the sky blue?’ etc.
• Post a picture, poem, other stimulus and invite pupils to contribute thoughts, adjectives etc.

In summing up, I made a few additional points about using a forum with pupils:

• The importance of giving pupils a ‘Chat’ thread and also to keep a balance between fun and focus in a forum.
• Remember that not all children will contribute readily (just as in ‘real’ discussions) so keep an eye on who is and who isn’t.
• You can get an awful lot out of pupils for relatively little input.
• You do need to keep gentle heat under a forum to keep the children involved and keep it ticking over.
• Online communication and fora are NOT a replacement for ‘real’ chat, communication, collaboration and carpet time. They add to the existing situation – in the same way that elevators don’t replace stairs.
• Teachers/adults will need to keep an eye on things, moderate etc.

Before closing, I was keen to return to the thread I’d started and was thrilled to see more than 30 replies! Here are some of them:

The cat creepily stutterd into the dark garden.
The sleek ivory cat sneaked discreetly into the garden.
The black sneaky cat stride through the forest like garden…
the scary black cat stroled suspiscoucly in to the big garden.
‘The cat strolled into the garden rather cautiously as if expecting a predator to pounce on it at any minute!’
Cautious, scared the black cat wandered into the garden where, as it had suspected, a fox waited, baring it’s teeth, ready for a feast.
As I scrolled down the list of replies, there then started to appear hysterical pictures of cats that the children had found and inserted into their replies. The audience loved these!

It was great to finish the session with laughter and I hope delegates went away with some useful ideas.

(Image Source)

(Posted by Dughall)
This is a very brief post to celebrate some of the wonderful (spontaneous) e-learning opportunities that appear to have sprung up over the last couple of snowy school closure days.

Obviously, these are just the ones I’ve been aware of and credit goes to those wonderful teachers who have pushed the technical envelope to bring exciting and engaging learning opportunities to young children despite schools being closed.

The teachers themselves tell the story so much better than me, so below are links to their blogs with further details.

• Firstly, Nicola Stables (a Kirklees teacher) has blogged about her activities yesterday. Click here to read more. Nicola also refers to a couple of other examples (below).
• Peter Richardson has blogged about his use of Twiddla for a ‘Snow Lesson’.
• David Mitchell tells of his inspiring session on his blog, here.

These are just three (excellent) examples. So what have you been doing whilst snowed-in?

(Posted by Dughall) 

A couple of nights ago I was following a discussion on Twitter with the theme ‘How do schools educate parents as to the risks and benefits of Web 2.0 tools in Schools?‘ Although the discussion title was about Web 2.0 tools, the flow of conversation was themed more around Social Networking. This discussion has also been blogged by Stephen Anderson.

This is particularly interesting to me as I am seeing evidence of a greater awareness of social networking amongst our youngsters and evidence or a greater involvement in these networks by the children themselves. Last week, I was working with groups of 6 and 7 year old children. One of the questions I asked them was ‘How do your older brothers/sisters, Mum or Dad use the internet?’ Without exception, the first answer I was given was ‘Facebook’. I also had responses that included ‘Email’, ‘Ebay’, ‘Shopping’, ‘Games’ etc.

I have also worked with Y5 (9-10 yr olds) and asked the question ‘How do you use the internet?’ Guess what some of them say? Yes. ‘Facebook’ When I point out that Facebook’s Terms and Conditions point out that ‘ You will not use Facebook if you are under 13′, these same children often say ‘Well my Mum/Dad set up the account for me’. Is this worrying? Should we be concerned?

So social networking is clearly something that young people are ‘into’; it is out there in the world and they are engaging with it and it is here to stay. But do schools have a responsibility to do anything about it? Can they ignore it as something that happens outside school? These questions set me thinking about my own education in the 1970s. My teachers (as with today’s teachers) were charged with giving me the best possible preparation for the world I was to enter when leaving school. This included a thorough grounding in the full range of communication skills I would need: how to talk appropriately in various situations, how to write various genres of letter, how to write and speak persuasively etc. I got a great education in this respect. The world is different now. There are new and different forms of communication out there afforded by Web 2.0 tools and social media such as Facebook that didn’t exist when I was 10. I believe it is the responsibility of today’s schools to prepare young people for a world that includes these new forms of communication and this means educating them on the benefits and dangers therein. I have already mentioned how I believe the Learning Platform can be used as a vehicle for important e-safety learning, and I’d reiterate the importance of using it to help children learn how to use Web 2.0 tools appropriately and (more importantly) safely.

What about parents?  I think that it is vitally important to have parental involvement when discussing the benefits/dangers of social media.

With anything new, I believe it is best to introduce it with the youngest children (in age-appropriate ways). Also, with these youngsters, it is often much easier to ‘capture’ the parents at the same time – the younger the child, the greater the degree of parental involvement. We have a Learning Platform that includes many Web 2.0 features – blogs, fora, quizzes, surveys, ratings etc. I would advise, when first introducing the platform, that a letter be sent home to all parents with important information about this environment and about its positive aspects and also inviting them in to a launch event. At the launch, I would urge parents to see engagement with the LP as a ‘side-by-side’ activity that they do with the children. This, I believe, sets the tone for a healthy relationship between child/parent/social media for the coming years. I would also urge teachers to constantly deliver a message around e-safety and appropriate usage of the tools as the LP is used broadly through the children’s schooling.

This bottom-up model is all very well for kids just entering school and (as I say) can set the tone at the start. What to do, though, with older kids where Social Media engagement is already under way and embedded in their lives? Here I’m inclined to agree with those that advocate a side-by-side approach involving openness, dialogue and all parties in a sharing of the benefits/drawbacks. I agree with Drew Buddie’ Twitter comments when he says “Parents learning to use WITH their children can help banish MANY of the fears & worries” and “TRUST between parent & child is VERY important”.

Let’s involve parents at the start and keep that level of involvement going throughout a child’s schooling. That way we stand a chance of producing safe, well rounded and well prepared young adults who are able to use technological tools for collaboration and life-long learning.

Image courtesy of Jacob Botter’s Flickrstream