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There are still places on the primary SLG courses held at STDC next week-
Intermediate Training, 08/10/2009 09.15-12.00. This morning is aimed at teachers who have used the Gateway and now want to take this use on further. The course will be based around the development of a staff room but will have implications and uses across the school. including topics such as creating message boards, announcements, permissions and adding various webparts.
Using Class Pages will run on 09/10/2009, 09.15-12.00.This course is aimed at teachers who have had some experience (it need only be a little) of using the Gateway and want to develop the use of the primary class pages with their pupils.
If you would like to attend, please contact chris.walker@shropshire.gov.uk

Michelle D’arcy Jewell and myself ran a successful Sharepoint course on Monday that covered a range of topics including CSS, embedding Flash Movies and Webplayers. There was a lot of interest in the webplayer (see image below) which lets users select a video from a scrolling list of thumbnails. It is a free download from www.viscomsoft.com/products/webplayer/index.html

Scratch is a great programming/sequencing environment, intuitive and fun to use.  Yet it’s made much more fun with the addition of a pico board.

A pico board is an interface with a load of sensors on it.  Scratch can be programmed to read these sensors and their values, and then to take actions dependent on what the readings are.  There is a slider, a button, a light sensor, a sound sensor and four other sensors that can read resistance ( so could have many different sensors, home-made or otherwise, attached).

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National Schools Film Week (NSFW) provides teachers and their students the opportunity to see a wide range of films at local cinemas entirely free-of-charge. This year is the 14th annual festival and promises to bring you even more films in even more locations than ever before. From major urban centres to small towns, NSFW extends education into local cinemas, giving teachers the opportunity to use the power of film to cover many different subjects.

The festival is available to any school. Every year we are able to take more groups to the cinema. After a record attendance of 410,000 last year, we hope to achieve 450,000 in 2009.

We welcome bookings of all sizes. Some schools will bring an entire Year group or Key Stage while others attend on a class-by-class basis. We do not limit places to any number of students or schools to any number of bookings. As long as there is space in the cinema, you are welcome!

To book your places, visit the booking section or phone 020 7292 7300.