it4L

The Rock IT 2007 website has just come online at: http://www.rockit2007.org.uk/ You can view this years finalist online to give you some inspiration for entering.
Rock IT is a competition for school bands in the UK and Europe.

When registration is open you will enter by submitting a video of your band performing an original song.  If you get through the regional heats which will mostly be run via video conferencing you will be invited to the grand national final in Birmingham.

As more and more Shropshire schools are entering the world of blogging after the recent conference, we have put together a very basic guide on how to get started with your ethink blog. Click here to get to it.

During the conference many delegates attended short taster sessions demonstrating a range of collaborative technologies.  To follow these sessions we are putting on the following courses:

May 4th (am) - Introduction to blogging
May 25th (am) - Introduction to Flickr & Del.icio.us
June 27th (am) - Finding and producing podcasts
July 4th (am) - Using a wiki or Google Docs in the classroom

Agendas can be downloaded from here.

All courses will be at Shrewsbury Training & Development Centre, running from 9.15 until 12:15.

Cost is £75, £60 for subscribing schools, non-Shropshire delegates £90.

All these sessions will be hands on and you will need access to your email account during the morning.

Dates: May 17, 24 and 31, 2007 (Participation in all programs required)

Time: 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. EDT

Target Grade Level: 6th-8th Grade Classes

Connection: H.323 Videoconferencing through Internet2 Commons; Internet2 Connectivity Required

Cost: Free!

Description: A quick survey of popular American media reveals a minefield loaded with exaggerated and downright unrealistic images of males and females in our society.

Female stereotypes primarily pressure girls and women to “look” a certain way, resulting in negatives consequences for females including negative body image and loss of self-esteem, eating disorders, job discrimination, domestic violence, and rape.

Equally as dangerous, male stereotypes send unhealthy messages to boys and men to “do” or “act” in certain ways. Such pressure to “act like a man,” reinforces in males that they should be tough, in control and dominant, leading to such problems as emotional violence against self, lack of respect for and aggression against women, commission of crime and violence, and even male discrimination in the legal system.

Using excerpts from film, radio, the Internet, television, magazines and newspapers, this workshop examines various ways in which males and females are portrayed in American popular media.

The purpose of this workshop is to give male and female students an opportunity to try to reach beyond gender differences to find what they have in common as students, young people, family members, citizens and human beings. The aim is to make these students more respectful and tolerant of one another and more secure in their own gender identity.

Session one of the workshop will consist of a presentation of source material in Powerpoint format, a review of pre-workshop study articles and open dialogue among the students. In session two, the artist/facilitator (Faye Kendall) will guide students through a visual art project, such as a collage, addressing issues brought up in the first session. In the third session, each school group will anaylse its art project during a videoconference presentation and a summary discussion involving all students will follow.

More information/registration: http://www.magpi.net/programs/myx-gender.html

If you downloaded SMART 9.5 and found that it appeared to no longer support .wav files along with a host of other sound and movie formats then help it at hand:

SMART has encoders available that will allow .wav files to be brought directly into Notebook but these have to be installed separately to avoid legal copyright issues. To enable this, please do the following:

1) Open SMART Notebook software.
2) Go to the Help, then use the Search feature, entering the term “video”.
3) A list of topics will appear and about 8 items down, find the topic ”Audio/Video Formats” and click on this.
4) Detailed information including a list of encoders that can be downloaded will be provided.

Audio/Video Formats Notebook supports .mp3 for audio formats and .flv for video formats.

If you would like Notebook to be able to support more file types, you need to install one or more of the encoders listed below. If you install additional encoders, Notebook will automatically detect them so that you can use the widest variety of audio and video files available.