Primary Bits and Bytes

(Posted by Fiona)

Espresso are running FREE Writers Workshops for Kirklees primary schools. The following information comes from Helen Daykin of Espresso:

‘I thought you might want to know that we are running some FREE Writers Workshops in conjunction with the YHGfL.  The workshops are aimed at Literacy and ICT Co-ordinators although anyone with a teaching responsibility is more than welcome to attend.  The workshop looks at how to engage the reluctant writer with the use of digital content using Photo Story and Movie Maker.  The content we use will be taken from Espresso but if a school doesn’t have our service they can use other digital content that they may be using in school.

As well as walking away with many great ideas to use with their pupils at school the attendees can opt for a full 4 week free trail of the Espresso content for their school if they don’t already subscribe.  This is great way of teachers having a look and a try of Espresso with their pupils and teachers in school enabling them to make an informed decision. Schools can just opt for a trial if they aren’t able to make of the half day workshop sessions.’

Here are the full details:

espresso_on_trial_YHGfL_LD_LR

Huddersfield relucant writers flyer

Please book your place using this link:

http://www.yhgfl.net/News-and-events/eLearning-Events

(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.