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)

The National Education Network would like as many teachers as possible to complete their eSafety survey:

‘Can you help in research to understand what you think about the Internet?

The National Education Network (NEN) Safeguarding Group is a national group concerned with your Internet safety. We (the NEN and Lancaster University) want to understand more about your experiences with the Internet, with social networking sites, and with mobile devices.

This new research, being conducted across the UK by the NEN and Lancaster University, ask you to complete a simple survey.

Answers to survey questions will be used to support the needs of the NEN and those of your school. Taking part is entirely voluntary, all survey responses remain anonymous, and no electronic links are set up if you respond.’

(Posted by Fiona)

Meltham CE have had success with their birdbox – it’s a case of third time lucky! The birdbox with webcam has been in the school grounds for two years and remained empty, relocating it seems to have done the trick. A pair of coal tits have nested and the chicks hatched three days ago. You can view the live webcam on the SEGfL birdbox project portal.

The portal has a large number of school birdbox webcams, mostly from the south of England.

(Posted by Fiona)

I had good intentions of  posting about the latest ICT network meeting the day after it happened, but I blinked and suddenly it’s 2 weeks later! It was an enjoyable meeting with several presenters. Victoria Parsons from YHGfL demonstrated free resources available from YHGfL and the National Education Network (NEN). She showed the NEN Grid for searching the free resources by subject and key stage. Here are a few of the best freebies:

Audio Network – a huge bank of high quality copyright free music

NEN Gallery – free high quality images, sounds and video clips

e2bn Myths and Legends – includes a myth creator

The Birdbox Project – a selection of live birdbox webcams

Simon Briggs and Elliott Moores from Smarter Solutions demonstrated the Fizzbook Spin working with SmartSync software. The software allows documents, web addresses and video clips to be sent straight to each child’s  computer over the nerwork. It also has useful classroom management tools such as being able to send messages or freeze screens when it’s time to listen. For more details see their website.

I introduced a new CPD publication from Becta called 21st Century Teacher, which can be used to raise teacher awareness of how they could make use of ICT. It also includes a questionnaire which teachers can use to identify areas for development. The toolkit can be dowloaded from the Becta website (publications section).

The next meeting will take place on Wednesday 23rd June at the Deighton Centre.