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Is there a budding Hockney, Turner or Lowry sitting in your classroom? 10 Downing Street is currently running an art competition for young people, which is divided into three age groups: 5-7, 8-11, 12-16. The winning entries of each age group will be displayed in Downing Street.

There are four rounds and the closing date for this round is 25 February 2010. Each round will have a theme and the current theme it is ‘Keeping Healthy’. The entries can relate to how the students try to keep healthy, diet, exercise, do sports, hobbies etc.

For more information visit: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21130

Are you a budding news hound? Would you like to win a new laptop and a year’s free broadband? All you have to do is make a short report telling us how you think “technology is changing the way we learn”.

Your report could be a 250-400 word written article (with a picture) or a video or podcast of between 90 and 120 seconds. Tell us how technology is used in your school today or the how you would like it to be used in the future. The only limit is your imagination. So if you’re aged between 10 and 18 and attend a UK school, submit your entry by 30 November 2009.

30 lucky winners will get a laptop with free broadband and attend the 2010 BETT Show in London, to spend a day reporting on all that is new and exciting in the world of technology. For more details go to: nen.e2bn.org/livereporter

Last week as I was asked by William Brookes School if I could attend their Open Evening and give a demonstration of the new video conferencing equipment the LA has installed in the school.

I put out an email to a group of people I thought could assist me and Tim Boundy from Janet (http://www.ja.net/services/video/jvcs/) came up trumps.

Tim arranged for Audra May from The Service Centre at ClearWater, Kansas to connect with us.  This was arranged at 5:30pm on Wednesday and I was due to kick off at 7pm – no pressure!

At 6pm I arrived at William Brookes and found a phone that I could dial Audra on to find out the details of her Video Conferencing unit, on obtaining the details I used JVCS to launch the conference immediately.  I was amazed to see how easy this and I was soon talking to Audra via VC and not the phone.

Audra arranged for three sessions to run and I was able to grab a couple of students to interactive with her tutors.  The sessions broadly covered, Kansas and wheat, learning Chinese and a session on Chinese culture and school life.  During the two hours the number of students I have interacting grew and parents were amazed that we were talking live to tutors in Kansas, USA.

The sessions were tremendously successful and I would recommend using the Service Centre at Clearwater for VC opportunities. You can book the session via CILC (http://www.cilc.org/search.aspx).

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.

Augmented Reality technology has been just over the horizon for a while. It was even shown on the Gadget Show a while back so it must now be creeping into mainstream.  It’s been interesting to watch it develop and it would be great to see where it will lead educationally.  There have been  AR applications for various hardware out for a while but imagine the richness of an information source that reads your location and gives corresponding information on your handset about your surroundings. This article outlines some of the ins and outs of presenting data and information through AR.  As one developer says, it’s ‘…just like building a website.  You have your data source and you’re just trying to parse and present it in a meaningful way…’. The possibilities for businesses are huge if this takes off; conversely, the possibilities for mischief, misuse and hijacking of such a system for personal or commercial gain might also raise huge problems.  This could be a good lesson starting point for a discussion on the amounts and types of data that such a system could display on a handheld, where it could be gathered from, who would have access to and compile that data, and where there is a potential for the introducation of bias.

A rich source of AR content can be found at ARSights, where a huge number of 3D models have been built and placed on a Google Earth layer.  The models have been built in Sketchup and can be viewed in 3D by using a webcam and the printed marker page.

I’m looking forward to my 3D AR Top Trumps cards arriving soon.  3D Bugs or Ben 10 Alien Force in 3D cannot fail to be awesome.  Just for my children, you understand…

http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/news/articles/0509/internet_safety_events.htm

Safer Internet Day 2010, 9th February: under the theme “Think before you post”, SID 2010 will focus on how we’re managing images online and consequently, how we deal with privacy in digital environments. Insafe will be launching a pan-European quiz on 1st February, targeting two age-groups: 5-11 and 12-15 year-olds. The quiz will be open to individuals or school classes who will compete with the objective of becoming increasingly aware of their role in protecting themselves and others online. An online SID Fair will showcase participating organizations across the world, and schools are invited to register the events they will be running to mark the day.  Information on Safer Internet Day will gradually become available on www.saferinternet.org as from the month of September.

Enter this competition by posting your video response to the following question:

If you had 5 minutes to talk with the Attorney General on what should be different in the UK today, what would you say?

Please submit your entry by uploading a short film to the tab above. The competition closes at midnight on 16th September. The Attorney General will select up to 30 top entries selected, the winning entrants will be invited to become members of the Attorney General’s Youth Advisory Council. The first meeting of the Youth Advisory Council will be held by November, and those selected will be announced on the 22nd September at a launch event in London. The top three entries will receive an Attorney General award. This is the chance to be recognised and to make a real difference. The Attorney General will write to those selected for the Attorney General Youth Advisory Council, their head teachers and local MP’s congratulating them on their achievement.

http://www.youtube.com/agyouthnet

Just a quick reminder that over the last year or so Shropshire LA have purchased the following software for all schools in Shropshire:

• Comic Life
• Podium
• SMART Notebook 10

If you are a Shropshire School you can download all these titles for FREE from the resources area of the Learning Gateway.  If you would like any support in using the software contact Andrea Dunn [primary] or Steve Beard [secondary].

QCA are going out to consultation about proposed changes to the level descriptors for ICT (amongst other subjects) along with a variety of other changes (http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_22256.aspx).

‘Proposed revisions to information and communication technology reflect the raised expectations of pupil achievement in the new primary curriculum.’ http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_22260.aspx

The proposed changes for ICT can be downloaded as a pdf file from here.

The consultation will run until 24th July 2009.

The following details the timeline for this year’s Create It! Awards:

• 6^th March – New Deadline for submissions
• 10^th March – Judging entries
• 13^th March – Schools will be informed of short listed entries
• 20^th March – Confirmation from schools of those people attending on the night
• 23^rd March – Post tickets out to schools, or schools collect from STDC/Shirehall
• 26^th March – Create It! Awards evening at Albrighton Hall Hotel