Old skl podcast

http://www.esnips.com/doc/5b3ff7d7-5daf-4b13-865a-40e51978d9ed/old_skool_news

WEBPLAY

Webplay is a programme which enables primary school classes to create plays by collaborating online with a professional theatre company and partner classes from different countries and regions. The programme integrates ICT and drama across the whole curriculum and takes up two 45 minutes slots per week. The class teacher is given three days of training, week by week lesson guides and extension activities. At the end of the unit of work the children perform their play in a local theatre or venue.

All reviews I have read have been extremely positive from both pupils and teachers. It appears to be an extremely motivating and exciting programme which has been successful in engaging pupils of all ability levels. It "promotes creativity, encourages group work, raises self esteem and develops both academic and personal/social skills".

It supports UK National Strategies, including the Primary Strategy; Excellence and Enjoyment; E-schools; Personalised Learning; Creative Partnerships; Community Cohesion; Every Child Matters.

Webplay is curently working in London, Birmingham, Leicester, Shropshire, Nottinghamshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, and Sussex and in the US. I would like to find out more about this programme as it sounds like it can do a great deal to enhance children's learning.

www.webplay.org/index.php

http://www.mrjennings.co.uk/

This website was created by a teacher in a school in Mapperly. It is split into three sections: one for pupils; one containing planning and the final section is full of resources. The pupils section contains the weekly learning objectives for each subject, homework with support and a section for pupils to contribute to. They are given a challenge such as writing the title of their favourite book and saying why they liked it.

I think this is an excellent idea for several reasons. Here are a few:
1) Parents can easily find out about what their children are learning
2) Pupils are aware of the weekly learning goals
3) Learning continues outside of the classroom
4) Pupils' own blog gives them independance and allows them to make further use of ICT.

I am sure there are many more benefits. please feel free to add any I have missed!

Interactive maps

I created an interactive map of exmouth including pictures, sounds, video and web links. I think this would be an excellent way for pupils to present work from project. It allows them to show a wider variety of work than could be presented on a classroom wall including any films, animations, photos of audio recordings.

I did not find it overly complicated but I did have difficulty finding the invisible links to click on when testing my presentation. This was because the link would shrink to a very small spot in the middle of the box I had placed. With children I would probably stick to visible links to sounds and pictures etc.

I can now use what I have learnt to make better interactive presentations and games for my own lessons!

Flowol

My last post is a picture of the flow diagram I created in Flowol. I found the softward easy to use although I know some people had more difficulty with the traffic lights. This was because it involved controlling two inputs so that the different lights showed at exactly the right times. The ferris wheel was much easier as you only had to worry about one input and timing didnt matter. This allows for differentiation when working with children.

I remember writing flow diagrams in secondary school but it was in a much more abstract context. Flowol shows clearly how a flow diagram works and allows children to learn more through trial and error. This use of ICT enhances the learning for the pupils.