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Here is my 1min introduction to Kodu, that I played at the Shropshire ICT Conference…

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.

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

GCSEs and functional skills from 2010

Ofqual published the criteria for GCSEs in English, ICT and mathematics specifications for teaching from September 2010 at the start of April. As a result of Ofqual’s advice to DCSF, learners will not be required to pass level 2 functional skills assessments to achieve A*-C grades in these subjects.

Awarding bodies are developing GCSE specifications against these criteria for accreditation by the regulators. These specifications are scheduled to be available in schools in autumn 2009. They will extensively test functionality, particularly as functional skills are already being delivered as part of the key stage 3 curriculum and will be embedded in programmes of study for key stage 4 in 2010.

Functional skills remain central to the reform of education for 14- to 19-year-olds and schools and colleges will be strongly encouraged to give young people opportunities to enter and achieve free-standing functional skills qualifications. Functional skills remain an important part of every Diploma qualification and their place within the foundation learning tier and apprenticeships remains unchanged.

Details about GCSE criteria development and consultation

QCA’s consultation on functional skill qualifications

We are planning to consult on the criteria that will form the basis of the next generation of functional skills qualifications from 1 June until the end of August.

This consultation is an important stage in the development and introduction of functional skills qualifications. The results of the consultation, together with the lessons learnt from the functional skills pilot, will inform the regulatory criteria for these qualifications for national roll-out in September 2010.

We want to hear from everyone with an interest in functional skills, from employers, schools, further education colleges, sector skills councils and universities.

Information about this consultation will be available from our functional skills pages.

For more information on functional skills qualifications, visit our functional skills pages and subscribe to our functional skills email newsletter.
Joining the functional skills qualifications pilot

Functional skills qualifications will be fully implemented from September 2010 following a three-year pilot. More than 2,000 centres are already involved in the pilot, but we are looking for more centres wishing to join the final year of the pilot.

Places on the pilot are restricted, but centres can join from September 2009 if they are:

• registering learners for the Diploma from September 2009
• offering the Advanced Diploma in September 2010
• a further education college or training provider that can offer apprenticeships
• a centre or provider with contracts offering learning in the custodial sector or probation service
• a centre or provider of adult education.

To establish your eligibility to join the pilot, please email functionalskills@qca.org.uk with details of your centre and the relevant category. We will contact you with details of the next steps once your eligibility has been established.

Lessons learnt from the functional skills qualification pilot

We have produced a case study booklet and video to highlight some of the lessons learnt from the first year of this pilot. They illustrate some of the approaches centres participating in the pilot have taken to introducing functional skills.

The booklet and the video are both available from our website.

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.