Developing a UniServity Life course ICT150612 - The course is intended for all schools currently using the UniServity CLC who would like to do a small scale trial in their school of the new Life product.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
30 Jan 2012 16:56
As part of its activities for Safer Internet Day, CEOP is launching 'Keeping up with the Joneses', a short 50's style trailer that aims to get parents and carers thinking about their children's online lives. On 7th February this will be followed by the release of 'The Parents and Carers Guide to the Internet', an entertaining and light-hearted TV-style show that aims to answer all the tricky questions about what it takes to be a good online parent! For further information please visit: http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
16 Jan 2012 12:14
ICTEvents and Training
Please book online via the Professional Development pages on the Wokingham hub at http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=1090488(click on the event title below to go directly to the event description) then use the Book Now link in the relevant course description.All events are at Keep Hatch ICT Centre unless otherwise stated below.
If anyone is blogging with their class, http://quadblogging.net/ allows you to join up with three other schools to take it in turns to read and comment on blog posts.
On Thursday 24th November at Microsoft in Reading there is a free event for educators and teachers. With a STEM focus the theme is 'Teach More, Learn More,Inspire More'.
With a range of speakers and break-out sessions it looks like it will be an inspiring and informative day - for further details visit:
We are now ready to release the Wokingham Primary ICT Self Assessment tool and would like to invite you to a course on the 27th September to brief you on its place within primary ICT assessment but also to give you an opportunity to “have a go” and see how to use it in your own school.
I would love to claim that I have done all the hard work researching these but the recommendations come from Danny Nicholson's superb Whiteboard Blog. If you haven’t got a link to his blog for teachers thoroughly recommend you do! a font of knowledge and ideas. Danny is fellow ICT consultant and friend.
Anyway 8 Online tools: You might have played with Wallwisher before - an online space where you can post stickies on a shared noticeboard. A neat shared space to post resources, collect ideas, brainstorm etc. Now there are many more similar types of tools being created - I won’t steal Danny’s reviews so if you want to know more - read on here: http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2011/09/8-online-noticeboards-wallwisher-and-more/
Remember to link to the Whiteboard Blog for your all of staff!
The Microsoft Schools Blog has recently announced two free one-day ICT events that are being held in June at the Microsoft Headquarteres in Thames Valley Park, :
In addition to this there is a free conference being run by the ICT for Education magazine on the 1st July at the Madejski Stadium. Click here for more details - POSTPONED!
NEW EVENT - Microsoft are also sponsoring an event for NAACE at the Microsoft HQ on 1st July - NAACE Fun Free Friday on 1st July - click here for more details
On March 27th 2011 the great census was taken and schools connected to the National Education Network are now invited to join a project where they can compare the present with the census of 1911, undertaking their own research with online support and guidance. This is a great opportunity for schools to join in this census based research project, that encourages schools to look not just at the census for 1911 but at their own communities in 2011. Free access for schools to the 1911 census online database is kindly provided by findmypast.co.uk until the 31st July, 2011.
Findmypast, The National Archives, BFI, English Heritage and SEGfL will officially launch the Census2011 project on May 5th.
The website and links to free downloads from the 1911 census are in place for schools to start using immediately.
The Census2011 website http://census.segfl.org.uk contains detailed guidance on how NEN registered schools are able to search for and access 1911 census records for England and Wales from findmypast. Downloads of scanned census returns would normally be charged at £3 per image but are free for NEN users until 31st July 2011. The census.segfl.org.uk website provides examples of the SEGfL welcome screen and essential help-sheets to aid searching. The website contains more than 20 sections of support materials, selected resource links and classroom exemplars developed by Ian Coulson and project partners. Go To http://census.segfl.org.uk/teachers-notes/sample-findmypast-welcome to find out more.
Walter: Just to let you know that following the Easter holidays we found a blue tit had made a nest and laid 7 eggs in our camera nestbox. The live stream of the nest is available HERE. Please use and enjoy!
Update - 3rd May - The eggs have started to hatch into chicks today - 4 so far Update - 4th May - All 7 eggs have hatched successfully
Westende: Also have a nest cam broadcasting with a blue tit nest HERE
SEGfL 'Royal Wedding Project', an opportunity for schools to join in the celebrations online.
This all takes place at a very quiet part of term and capitalises on some of our best online publishing tools.
Please consider publicising to schools or embedding links in your own websites. There is a short window of opportunity for you to sign up for some of the interactive elements.
Foundation at Walter are currently enjoying watching their chicks from Living Eggs develop after they hatched last week. The school has set up a high definition streaming webcam so that other schools can enjoy watching them too - this will be available for the next week or so - click HERE to view it. The live stream was very easy to set up using the SEGFL Birdbox Project - just register for a microsite and follow the instructions to add a normal webcam stream or the HD version if you are using a suitable camera - we used a Sony Handycam and an EasyCAM video capture dongle. If you would like to do the same and feel you need a little help or advice feel free to contact diane.cox@wokingham.gov.uk
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
03 Mar 2011 10:14
Have you seen Google Art Project?
It's an amazing collaboration between Google and some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums. You can view over a thousand artworks online in incredible detail.
It combines the technology of Google Street view allowing you to wander around a number of art museums. Whilst also being able to zoom into the paintings and seem them in the most extrodinary detail.
Google has worked with 17 art museums including, Altes Nationalgalerie, The Freer Gallery of Art Smithsonian, National Gallery (London), The Frick Collection, Gemäldegalerie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Museo Reina Sofia, Museo Thyseen – Bornemisza, Museum Kampa, Palace of Versailles, Rijksmuseum, The State Hermitage Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, Tate, Uffizi and Van Gogh Museum. The results of this partnership, which can be explored at www.googleartproject.com
You are also able to learn about the history and artists behind a huge number of works.
This is a fantastic resource for all teachers. Enabling you to see inside the the museums and explore works of art you may never see.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
15 Feb 2011 10:10
The 'Bolton Bloggers'
Do go and look at the children's blogs at Heathfield Primary School in Bolton. They have used Blogging to improve the children's writing standards across the school. Their achievements are being recognised all over the press and have been broadcast nationally on BBC Breakfast , see below
Tuesday February 8th 2011 is Safer Internet day. Go to www.saferinternet.org.uk to access useful resources. You can also download further useful resources from this site
This is a post for those of you who may not yet have discovered or thought of using Google Maps at school. When you are teaching geography about the local area or routes to school or indeed anywhere in the world can I suggest you take a look at the features in Google maps and StreetView? All available with no extra software to be installed on any PC at school or at home.
Here’s a quick ‘how to’ of things that might be useful:
Type in the school postcode – it will show a street map view of the area around school
To maximise the map area use F11
Use the slider and + and – buttons on the left to zoom in and out
Click on the Satellite button to overlay the streetmap onto a satellite view.
To move the map click and drag the mouse.
Use Get Directions to show the route from home to school – type in the home postcode and it will show a recommended route on the map, and a printed itinerary on the left.
To hide the directions pane click on the << at the top right of the pane.
You can also use StreetView to take a virtual tour of the area or follow the route from home to school:
Drag the little man above the slider on to the map where you want to start from. The view changes to a street view.
Drag the N on the compass around to point the view in the direction you want to see/go
To move forward click on the Up Arrow , backwards on the Down Arrow.
To view a map as well as street view on the same screen click on the two arrows symbol at top left of the inset of the little man in the bottom right corner.
To exit street view click on the – sign on the left under the compass.
This is a fantastic (and free!) tool for geography and local area studies. It can be taken further if you can install the google Earth plugin into your browser, but this can be heavy on resources and may not be well supported by your school PCs if they are not the latest model.
Diane Cox
ps Click on the comments link below to see more useful links related to Google Maps and their use in class from Kathy.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
02 Dec 2010 09:41
As the Snow begins to fall and schools close - how do we ensure our childrens education is not interrupted?
Effective use of a school learning platforms can keep much of the normal school activity going. Teachers can set work online and post resources so that parents can more easily support homework. Pupils can upload work to their teachers and use messaging and forum tools to ask them questions. The forum tools and messagingfacilities enablea class or the whole school todiscuss and collaborate on different together. Many of the schools also use their platforms to set for extra-curricular activity and fun learning challenges. Many of our schools also use online subscription services to suport creative leraning and provide challenging activties. Ask your school what is available for pupils at home.
There are a few Key questions you need to consider:
· Are parents aware of the schools learning platform and can find it easily?
· Are parents aware that school work as well notices will be posted?
· Do all pupils have logins? – And do parents know this?
· Have teachers set expectations with pupils to log in and use pre prepared activities ( have you shown them at school how to access it?)
· Do Teachers have logins to post work home learning ideas or links to activities on web sites?
· Do teachers set specific work for pupils to complete at home:
o Set up a forums to post snow activities, support a literacy activity, share poems, descriptions, story openings or setting science investigations or maths activities,
o Create a fun quiz to assess this terms learning in science or maths or do an internet treasure hunt to support their work
o All Primary schools have 2Simple Purple Mash: Suggest an aptivity in Purple Mash- can you guide them to a specific task? http://clc2.uniservity.com/Grouphomepage.asp?GroupId=153269here is a great video guide to on how access it from a school in Warrington
o Most Primary schools have Education City – suggest activities or create a My City to give them specific tasks related to current curriculum.
I have found a great site with LOADs of videos about phonics, created by a UK teacher – his videos have been on Youtube for ages but of course that is blocked at school.
Recently he and another teacher have copied all the videos on to a new site so that UK schools can now use them.
Take a look and see how you could use it in class, and at home by linking to the videos on the learning platform, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
09 Nov 2010 11:48
Are you developing your use of sound recording in the classroom?
We are running a training course after school today - from simply recording using the LP tools in a forum to creating a broadcast using audacity to add voice, sound effects and backing tracks.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
09 Nov 2010 11:37
I have just read an excellent article on Diane Cox blog Re printing costs http://dianecox.me/ really makes you think and well worth a read!
An extract below ...
"I sat down and worked out the comparative costs of various common types of printing (an 8 page document at 10% ink coverage, 8 pages of photos at 80% ink coverage, 30 worksheets at 10% coverage) using the two colour lasers and the monochrome photocopier that we have, and based on the average page counts per toner cartridge quoted by the ink manufacturers.
The difference in costs between the methods of printing was staggering:
0.65p per standard 10% covered text page on the photocopier vs. 8p or 12.5p on the two different lasers.
At 80% ink coverage I calculated the costs as 8 times as much – so for a page of photos the costs go up to 64p or £1!"
Autumn Term courses now available on the Wokingham Learning Hub
Professional Development aopportunties are now avilable in Workforce Learning and Development
Course and network programme
Click here to find details of forthcoming courses. Each attachment contains information on all courses relating to a subject. An application form is also available to download, along with details of application and cancellation procedures.
There are also some information documents, which contain details of training offered by services other than Learning and Development.
We have now been using these ICT schemes of work in Wokingham for the last 2 years. Our schools have scrapped the QCA and have found these schemes easier to integrate and teach in a fun, rigorous, cross curricular way.
We know we need to embrace new technologies, new software and new skills our pupils are challenging us with. So from time to time we update the schemes.
This is our 2010 Version ...... available to download Here:
Kathy and I attended a stimulating Parental Engagement Seminar at the end of June which was put on by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, Microsoft, and UniServity. It was well worth attending with many good ideas and good practice examples from schools, and the opportunity to reflect on and discuss current practice in engaging parents. When they run the seminar again I would encourage you to attend in person if you can.
In the meantime, my personal notes from the seminar, with hyperlinks to the relevant schools and supporting information, may be found here. I hope they will be useful to you.
We all know that Summer Learning loss is big issue. 6 weeks is a long time for children and parents to do no learning or practicing basic skills. So how can you use the learning platform to support and engage yuor pupils and parents?
Can we build on the great work that schools developed during school closures during snow week and provide them access to the learning platform and the online tools and community that provides?
Things to consider: These could be set for whole school , a class or for year groups - remember to inspire your parents to support their children
Set challenges for children to complete – on and off the learning platform
Reading challenges ( how many books can you read? Can you join a library?)
Link to good web sites for phonics, spelling, reading or maths games,
Set science in the garden problems or maths in the garden challenges,
Word hunt around the house - supermarket- swimming pool
Provide them with Web links or Education City to maths games or literacy activities
Give the opportunity for children to write and share their ideas via forum or Blog
Give them links to creative online tools – purple Mash or web 2.0 tools
Challenge them to learn to type! Younger ones can use the 2simple 2type - in Purple mash older pupils could use BBC Dance mat http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/
Use a forum to set challenges for each other –
Why don’t you .... share ideas games and activities indoors and outdoors away from computers or TV! – recipes, treasure hunts, garden art, bug hunt, plant identifier how many trees do you know?,
Art in the garden or sandcastle art – They could upload their pics
Set photography competitions - funniest pet ask them to writecaptions - ask them to uplaod the results ( great links to help children with image resizing on Radstock's site here)
Get the children to set each other maths, literacy challenges or curriculum questions
Get them using the creative 2simple tools - set challenges or aptivities ( Purple Mash activities)
I am sure you can think of more: Remember you can use the date feature to switch on activities at different times during the holidays
A good Tip from Fiona at Willow Bank Infants – and Lara at Gorse Ride: set activities that don’t need necessarily need marking or comments – offer house points for taking part or hand out certificates you can use your stats to see who has logged in.
Transferring classes.
It can daunting moving class or school Can you help to ease that transition process - do they have access to a welcome to their new class and teacher - through pictures new class , reminders about what to bring on first day, when they might do PE, whether they need art aprons. You might even tell them about what they might be learning or how they might practice basic skills to help them. Links to maths and literacy games in Education City or on the web might help support that transition.
Remember roll over ( see below) will effect pupil access to pages and activities and collaborative tools think carefully about how you set up access to any of the above and when roll over is most convenient
There are video clips and an AST powerpoint presentation. Although they are pre-coalition government, they are still very relevant and powerful - worth a look!
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
17 Jun 2010 10:36
A new wave of home grown CPD is being devloped around the UK and beyond. Teachmeets are opportunties for teachers to meet, share and network. There was arecent event in Hampshire where a wealth of ideas were shared by teachers for teachers.
Here is a link to some of the free web apps shared at the conference:
There will be another one soon in Basingstoke keep an eye out for your teachmeet go along or get involved
Looking for ways to inject something different into your school pages? Here are a few ideas:
Create an image with hotspots hyperlinked to different activities using a free tool at www.image-map.com - upload an image (map of school?), define the hotspots, and the links they go to, then collect the HTML code and embed in your platform page using code view. You will need to edit the code slightly to refer to your image locally rather than on image-maps servers since they don't hold your images long-term.
Embed a google map with many locations highlighted on it by pins - you could do this the hard way and add each pin manually but there is a better way if you have a large set of locations to map (Barnaby Bear's travels/World Cup locations?) Create the location data in a google spreadsheet stored online, and then use www.mapalist.com . This site generates the HTML embed code for the map which you can then insert into UniServity using the code view. See an example here. You can include text and even photos to appear when you click on the pins.
There are many sites with colourful and educational activities that you can link to or embed on your site to ring the changes. Here are a couple of sites with embeddable and linkable activities:
If you know of some more cool resources please let us know in the comments. For assistance with the above please get in touch - diane.cox@wokingham.gov.uk
World wide telescope: Worldwide Telescope is a free download that enables you to access a huge collection of stunning images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope and many other space and earth observatories
Songsmith:a quick & easy way of creating songs, raps, rhymes and tunes
Autocollage: create a collage for your learning platform , merges images to create one collage
Kodu: remember Magic Forest? A games visual creator up to date and looks relativeley easy to use.
PPTPlex: A new way of creating non linear powerpoint slides
This support guidance comes from Yorkshire & Humber Grid for Learning. It sets out clearly how to make Face Book settings secure. If you have any concerns regarding Face Book use this will provide you with essential knowledge. Click here.
This is a freely available self evaluation system for e-safety. Click here
Dan Pearman, ICT Subject Leader at Hillside Primary School has used this self evaluation system. If you contact him at school he is very prepared to talk about how useful he found it.
This free download works when you press the PrtScn key. Install the software then on pressing this key the screen is "grabbed" and you can then define what area of the screen you wish to copy/save. Really useful for capturing learning resources or collecting screen menus for help sheets.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
11 Feb 2010 09:24
Do you want to know what other people across UK ( Mostly) are doing on their learning platforms or ask questions about how best to use your Learning platform
This site,http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/ has been put together by a New Zealand teacher. She has pulled together much Web 2 material and provides many ideas and examples of classroom use. Most Web 2 applications are freely available. Use the navigation bar down the left hand side to access all her links.
Google earth has a measuring tool on the toolbar at the top of the screen - the Ruler icon tool. Click on this to bring up the Ruler window:
Choose your unit of measurement, from miles to centimeters, kilometers to inches! If you are going to measure a wiggly line such as the perimeter of your school playground choose the Path option. If you are just measuring a single line then choose the Line option. The screen pointer becomes a hairline-type then click to start/stop measuring. The length is displayed in the Ruler window. This is the length of the swimming pool at All Saints Primary School:
How long are journeys to school, how wide are gardens, what is the shortest distance across the Channel, how wide is the Nile delta? . . . . some wonderful opportunities to involve our children with big numbers and to think about units of measurement - all in the "real" world.
This website, http://taggalaxy.de/ allows you to choose a category of photos that are then displayed onto a sphere. The photos all come from Flickr, the website that archives millions of photos. The first example here is showing photos when the tag "frog" was used and illustrates how the photos are placed onto the sphere. It is mesmerising! By using the PrintScren key on your keyboard you can grab any of the images for classroom use. These images are not filtered so take care.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
28 Jan 2010 09:52
I just wanted to highlight a few very interesting, Innovative Educational bloggers out there ...
Tom Barrett : Tom is a Deputy head in Nottingham http://edte.ch/blog/ - Inspiring and engaging learners with (and without) great educational technology.Twitter tombarrett
Also Chris Leach in Brackley, Northantshttp://chrisleach78.wordpress.com/Head of ICT - Winchester House School all agae EY - 16 innovative use of ICT across the Curriculum Twitter chrisleach78
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
28 Jan 2010 09:31
Have a look at this great document: Jan Web, Weston Point Primary, Cheshire has written about the range of web 2.0 tools that she uses in her Uniservity Learning platform.
She demonstrates how easy it is to use the tools to motivate her class.
Following consultation from schools, Becta is developing a new SRF. Basically it is a slightly cut-down version of the original, there was felt to be too much repetition in the present version and the process was too long.
The New SRF will enable schools to monitor accurately the provision and effectiveness of ICT through a three phase process:
Phase 1 ‘Seeing the big picture’ using the Ten Questions
Phase 2 ‘Exploring the detail’
Phase 3 ‘Taking stock’
Schools not aiming for the ICT Mark would only concern themselves with Phase 1 and 2. The Ten Questions are available here as a Word document and a short PowerPoint provides details concerning the roll-out of the New SRF. Schools engaged with the "old system" and working towards the ICT Mark will keep on the old version and all their details will be carried over to the new system in time.
If it is below freezing outside and snowing chunky flakes you may be lucky enough to catch a snow crystal. Catch it on a scrap of dark fabric. It needs to be kept at below freezing so the best way would be to have a laptop under cover outside and connect a PC microscope to it. Make sure snow doesn't fall directly onto the laptop! Provided the crystal stays at below freezing it should last for some time. No two snow crystals are the same. The best microscope to use would be the Easi-Scope as it has a cold light source.
There are some wonderful snow crystal photographs - click here
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
07 Jan 2010 10:19
The EasySense datalogger was wrapped in a polythene bag and buried under 30cms of snow with an external probe out in the open air. Logging was made during the night over twelve hours, 8.30pm - 8.30am next day.
Looking at the graph, the red trace is the outside air temperature. The blue trace is the datalogger's internal temperature sensor. At times there is up to 6 degrees C difference between the outside air and the snugly wrapped datalogger under the snow!
How about adding advice on looking after the birds in winter, especially when there is snow on the ground. Putting out food also gives an opportunity for some great photos as well. Here's a link to the RSPB
Mrs Carol Cooke
(CCEP1_carol.cooke)
06 Jan 2010 22:02
The freezing weather provides a great opportunity for making ice sculptures.
To make a hanging, fill a shallow dish with water. Collect leaves and small cones and berries to add to the water and insert a length of string to make a hanging loop. Place the dish outsideand after a freezing night,
the sculpture can be removed and hung from a tree.
To make a frozen night light holder, use a plastic bowl to contain the water and plant material . Fill a plastic cup with sand and place this in the middle of the bowl to form the space for the night light.
Kathy Smedley
(WBC_kathy.smedley)
06 Jan 2010 17:46
Snow has affected many of the schools in Wokingham.
Schools have used different forms of technology to inform parents of the closures. Many schools have used their VLE to infom parents of closures. Many schools have set up exciting activities for pupils to contribute to whilst at home.
We have seen snowman competitions, instructions for snow angels, snow poems, ideas for various snow vehicles, snow maths problems. Its great to see so many schools use the tools to encourage pupils to get creative and share their experiences and adventures in the snow.
And when the fun has stopped, schools have also used it to encourage students to continue with their studies with revision prompts, links to web sites and course work.
If you need support with your VLE and Snow schools please get in touch email me
