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.

helpful sites

http://ecs.lewisham.gov.uk/talent/pricor/sen.html#How

I found this website very helpful. It gave me information on how ICT could help assist children with special educational needs in the classroom. This included physical impairments, behavioural difficulties etc. There are also sections about how to use ICT in various subjects and a few lesson ideas are given. Furthermore, the website provides links to other useful sites, one of which was the pns website.


http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/ict/ict.htm

primary resources is a website which has helped me out a fair few times on teaching practice! The resources may not completely suit the lesson you want to teach but they are at least a starting point and often help prompt ideas.



www.crickweb.co.uk

This website provides great games for all subjects to be used on the interactive white board. I found these especially useful for mental starters for maths lessons, consolidation or as a reward for good work at the end!

Podcasts

I really enjoyed making a podcast and found it was surprisingly easy to do. It could be used for virtually any lesson or topic and for a variety of puroses and audiences. For example, it could be part of a school radio show or as a presentation of what the children have learnt to be viewed by parents. Podcasts are fun, can give purpose to a lesson and can be used for assessment!

Once children have grasped the basics of making a podcast, they are likely to extend their own learning by discovering new things they can add and ways of improving it. I think the children will learn far more by being interested and investigating than just following teachers instructions. Of course the teacher in most cases will need to introduce the basics but if children take control of their own learning, they can go at their own pace and find out about what interests them personally.

Home access

Jim Knight said: “Many families are having to tighten their belts in the current economic climate – so it is right that we help those that need the most support. But bridging the digital divide is not just about giving parents who cannot afford home IT a financial leg-up – it is about selling the educational benefits of home computer and internet access far better to those that can afford it.”

Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta said: “There’s no question that technology plays an increasing part of our everyday life at home and school. What we need to ensure is that every learner has an equal chance to tap into the benefits of the internet to enhance their learning – and the Home Access programme seeks to do just that, by offering this opportunity to all learners.

I took these quotes from http://www.nextgenerationlearning.org.uk/en/MediaCentre/News/Home-access-is-coming-to-a-town-near-you/


The article is about the government programme, funded with £300m, which is intended to ensure all families have access to internet, understand the value of it and that it is being used to benefit the children's education. I think this is a great initiative as it means less children will be disadvantaged when it comes to their knowledge of ICT. It also helps with personalised learning and allows children to take control of their own learning at home.

Some schools, though more often universities, encourage their students to submit homework or coursework by email This system makes it much harder for students to use the excuse of forgetting their homework! Another value of having every child able to access the internet at home is that they can contact their teacher if they have a problem with homework etc. This would have to be carefully regulated as you wouldnt want teachers being swamped with junk emails! A school in London submits homework by email and the teachers check their email at 8pm so they can respond to any problems with pupils have. This sounds great in theory but I am unsure about how time consuming it would be in practise.

Visualisers

Last teaching practice I attended an INSET about visualisers. My first impression was that it looked like an updated overhead projector but it I found it is so much more than that! It has a variety of functions and it can be connected to your interactive white board. It can be used as a video camera, to show childrens work on the big screen, to zoom in detail on 3d objects and it also has a freeze button among many others! We found it was fun to use and I felt it would enhance lessons by widening the variety of activites you could do, the resources you could use and it could also increase efficiency and make lessons more engaging. The downside is that the visualisers are still expensive. I havent seen anyone use a visualiser in the classroom yet. has anyone seem one in action? If so what did you think of it?

super duper music looper take 2!

Since using super duper music looper in our ICT session my opinion is much changed. I found it very simple to use and it was easy to make a tune that sounded good even by just pressing random buttons. This would mean that even children who felt they were not particularly gifted in music could create an effective tune. I also have been frustrated by music because I am a perfectioninst and never felt I could get it right. Also I find it hard to know where to start when composing a piece of music. SDML solves my problems and makes music much more enjoyable and less frustrating for me! I am sure that the programme would have the same impact on children who have had less positive experiences of music lessons.

Music and ICT

Following the lecture about using ICT to teach music, I feel far more confident in being able to teach singing. I am of the view, as many are, that I can not sing! Teaching singing through ICT makes it more engaging and helps distract the teacher and pupils from their anxieties about singing in front of others.


I have experimented with using super duper music looper and found it simple to use and effective in creating a satisfying tune. I did find a few flaws in the programme; it took a long time to find a version I could download and when I did, it did not work. I also thought the tracks it allows you to make were very short. I searched the internet for alternative programmes and found jamstudio. This programme is slightly more complex but still relatively easy to use. It allows you to be more creative with tunes and introduces the idea of notes. Jamstudio would be best suited to yr 4-6 .

http://www.jamstudio.com/