October 31, 2006
The Internet is potentially a rich resource for our children. An environment where they can play games, interact with other children and find a wealth of information.
Sadly, the Internet also includes adult content that has, until now, been difficult to block. The confrontation with some of this content, however, may leave children and youngsters with traumatic experiences. Or it may impair their emotional, moral or social development or instigate them to commit life threatening activities.
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October 25, 2006
Lifehacker has produced a list of 11 free applications for your pocket pc, they can be viewed here.
ADB Idea Outliner, Audiopod, Avvenu and Skype for Pocket PC all seem to offer some potential for educational use.
October 20, 2006
The self-review framework consists of a large number of statements describing ICT effectiveness in a school environment. It is divided into eight elements:
Leadership and Management, Curriculum, Learning and Teaching, Assessment, CPD, Extending Opportunities for Learning, Resources, and Impact on Pupil Outcomes.
Each of these is divided into a number of strands, and aspects, with statements across 5 levels from level 5 (nothing in place) up to level 1 (aspirational, or e-confident). A school can identify where it thinks it is against these statements, to gain a picture of its progress. Guidance is given on the sorts of evidence that may indicate a school’s position, together with exemplar schools, and action plans on how to move through the framework.
Since the launch of the self-review framework on 31st March, 2006, over 2,750 schools have registered to use the online matrix tools to evaluate their progress in ICT. There is one matrix tool for each of the eight elements of the framework. This means that a school does not have to do the whole framework in one go. This can be a daunting task. By completing one element at a time, a school can concentrate on those elements that fit in with their school improvement plan, or other initiatives that they may be involved with. The full self-review framework may take a year or more to complete, but it can also be done relatively quickly, if the school has already embarked on a self-evaluation path for ICT.
If you register (as a school or an individual) your progress through the element can be saved, and revisited.
The tool can be found at: http://www.becta.org.uk/schools/selfreviewframework.
The minutes from the secondary subject leader network meeting for ICT can now be viewed on GoogleDocs.
The minutes from the Secondary National Strategy ICT Meeting in Shropshire can now be found and read on Google Docs.
I have now organised the bus to BETT 2007 on Wednesday January 10th 2007.The bus is open to Secondary, Special and Primary schools and foundation stage settings.
CPD are going to handling booking and the course code is 62368C, please ensure you tell them if you want picking up in Telford. There will be no charge for the bus as the total cost has been paid for by Apple. The bus has 2 tables and we will be taking 10 apple macs with us. On the way down we will do some training on producing podcasts using Garageband with the hope that, during the day and on the return journey, people will podcast their trip.
The bus will leave Sainsbury’s, Meole Brace at 7am followed by a pick up at Telford Services just off the M54 at 7.15am and will leave Olympia at 5pm.
It is advisable to register with BETT beforehand, this will save you a lot of time when you get to Olympia.
If you have any questions send me an email.
October 19, 2006
To mark this year’s anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, The Parliamentary Archives and Show Me (www.show.me.uk) are launching a competition to win a trip to Parliament.
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i-board have made available a free storyboarding type activity with scenes and objects from one of the stories that are the origin of the Divali festivalSimply go to http://www.divali.iboard.co.uk (no registration required) - all activities are available so navigate into GREEN and scroll down for Divali.
Through the NAACE online community, a Year 6 class are asking for any schools who would like to be part of their online science investigation into temperature and dissolving, recording the results using collaborative tools such as Google spreadsheets. If you are interested, see here for the full email, and leave a comment on the school’s blog if you wish to continue.
This is a new DVD resource created by the Primary Strategy team, which is meant to make links between teachers use of ICT for teaching and children’s use of ICT for learning. It contains materials to support 7 areas of literacy and mathematics – early reading, reading on screen, writing KS1, writing KS2, calculation, problem solving, shape and space. It can be used as a CPD resource, or simply for the resources within it, which include• IWB files, interactive texts, video clips, lesson outlines and teaching sequences.
This is a free resource, but needs to be ordered from Prolog: Dfes@prolog.uk.com tel: 0845 60 222 60
quoting ref 0360-2006DVD-EN
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