Kent ICT Blog

Have you seen the Maths problem solving starts on Teachers TV?

There are  eight lesson starts for KS2 maths pupils each presenting a dramatised situation that highlights a mathematical problem.

Bring your maths lessons to life with the following:

1. Using angles to find Pirate Kate's lost treasure
2. Using fractions and percentage to help Nateisha with her packed lunch survey
3. Using division in both The Thief's Problem and The Puppy Problem
4. Exploring volume and division in Mrs Hanson's Problem
5. Using multiplication in both Piggy's Problem and The Train Problem
6. Using percentages in The Cake Problem

 http://www.teachers.tv/video/23315

As you may know, Kent is running a Weather Watch project this year.
http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/weatherwatch/

We are now looking forward to our first ever Weather around the World Day on Wednesday 21st May 2008

Colette Cotton (Leading ICT Teacher – Shepway 1) last term invited the overseas schools listed below to join “The Weather Watch” project. Since then the schools have each week been adding their weather data to the project “Google” spreadsheet.

1. Peponi House School, Nairobi Kenya   
2. ZS Rudna School, Czech Republic 
3. Skola 707, Poland
4. Salorno BZ, Italy

We also hope that Faith Lutheran College, Australia will also be taking part in this project.

This term the pupils in each of the schools plan to publish on the internet information about:

• climate,
• farming,
• tourism,
• lifestyle and
• the local geography of their area.

  The children’s work will be available for others to read by Monday 19th May.

Is your school (home school)  interested in taking part?

This is a wonderful opportunity for project schools to establish a link (short-term or permanent) with a school overseas.

 If you are interested in taking part in the “Weather around the World Day”  please contact Philip

Philip.bracegirdle@kent.gov.uk

SMART Technologies have released Notebook Version 10  for Smartboards

Here is the link to download it  Notebook 10. 

Please note you will need your Smartboard serial number and product key.

1. Enter hardware product serial number
2. Complete customer information form
3. Download Notebook software 10
4. Enter product key to activate the software

Have fun exploring all of the GREAT new features!

Here are some useful websites on Kent

Kent TV
Contains historical videos as we as other Kent interests
http://www.kenttv.com

Heres Hstory Kent
An archive of historical material relating to Kent Parishes and Towns. Contains old photographs and maps which can be used for educational use.
http://www.hereshistorykent.org.uk/ 

Coalfields Heritage Initiative Kent
East Kent's mining heritage.
http://www.dover.gov.uk/kentcoal/intro.asp

Hopping down in Kent
A scheme of work and a series of worksheets outlining how "Hopping down in Kent" addresses History QCA Unit 18 What was it like to live here in the past?
http://www.hoppingdowninkent.org.uk/

Remains of a Stone Age Elephant found in Kent
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/

Childnet has produced a 54 slide PowerPoint presentation which can usefully be shown at parents' evening.  This is available at: www.childnet-int.org/safety/parents.aspx

The popularity of social networking sites is remarkable.  However, teachers need to be aware these are public spaces and published content can be seen by a worldwide audience, by both adults and young people.  The TES reports the following:

“Teachers are facing disciplinary action for posting compromising pictures of themselves on social networking websites …. Even teachers without accounts on social networking sites are at risk if they appear in photographs posted by other people.

In many cases pictures are first discovered by pupils on social websites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or YouTube.

Andy Peart, deputy head of legal services for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said that when heads found such pictures, punishments for teachers could range from a warning to dismissal.

Mr Peart has dealt with several such cases, where teachers did not realise that the comments they made and pictures they posted became, in effect, public documents.

Lewd stag or hen night pictures were typical examples, he said.”

Del.icio.us is a free social bookmarking service. Rather than saving your favourites in your browser and only being able to access them on the one computer, you save them to an online account. The social part comes in when you add other people’s accounts to your network. One of the great thing about Del.icio.us is that you can see who is bookmarking the same sites as you, and so then you can check out their links and find even more fantastic resources.

Another handy feature is the two icons you can add to your browser.http://del.icio.us/help/buttons

Whenever you come across a website you can quickly and easily add it to your Del.icio.us account by clicking on the TaG icon. Everytime you save a website you Tag it by entering words that describe the type of website it is eg. ICT animation

Have a look at the kented account to see what I mean about Tagging. http://del.icio.us/kented 

I am using  Del.icio.us to gather more great websites to add to the Kent NGfL website and to highlight on our Website of the Week page and on here the Kent Teachers Blog.

Click here for a how to video tutorial for Del.icio.us

If you do decide to join Del.icio.us make sure you add kented, to your network, so that you can see and follow all the fantastic websites I am discovering.

I am kented on del.icio.us
Add me to your network

Mark Warner from Teaching Ideas and  The Downs Primary School in Kent, is also has a Del.icio.us account.
http://del.icio.us/markjwarner  Why not add him to your network too?

If anyone else uses Delicious, let me know... it would be great to have a network of teachers sharing their website discoveries on Del.icio.us.

The Top 100 Tools for Learning Spring 2008 list has now been finalised from the contributions of 155 learning professionals from education, workplace learning and continuing professional development.

http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

Becta has launched the 2008 ICT Excellence Awards, to seek out the best and brightest schools that are using technology to help learners achieve.

The ICT Excellence Awards aims to identify and reward those schools throughout the UK who are leading the way in their outstanding and innovative use of ICT, benefiting their whole community both inside and outside the school building.

This year there will be 8 national awards, across 5 categories, with winners receiving a cash prize to spend on ICT equipment, provision or training. 

The deadline for entries is 30 April 2008. Schools and organisations that are shortlisted for an ICT Excellence Award 2008 will be visited by judges during June, July and September 2008. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in November 2008.

Entry forms and details about the ICT Excellence Awards can be obtained from www.becta.org.uk/excellenceawards

What does each of these national strategies tell you about the country's educational philosophy?
 
US - No Child Left Behind
UK - Every Child Matters
Singapore - Teach Less, Learn More

From the blog of Mike Fleetham, Thinking Classroom,

For more information on "Teach Less, Learn More" visit the Singapore's Ministry of Education website.

Today, we had fun playing the Space Germ game on the IWB as an end of term treat. Space Germs got a HUGE thumbs-up from the Year 4 class - they LOVED the challenge of trying to touch the aliens as they flew across the whiteboard (great for eye/hand coordination).

Space Germs is part of the Little Fingers Software website.
http://www.little-g.com/shockwave/games.html

Please note Shockwave plug-in is needed to view these games.

Enjoy!

The West Sussex 'Learn about the Victorians' website  provides 'classroom-ready' learning activities for teachers of History Key Stage 2 based on two QCA Schemes of Work:

Unit 11 'What Was it like for children living in Victorian times?'
Unit 12 'How did life change in our locality in Victorian times?'.

Each Unit has 5 Topics and each Topic includes several learning activities. Each activity contains local history sources, plus Starter, Main & Plenary Activities, Children's Activity Sheets and Teachers' Notes.

The Source Gallery has around 400 local photographs, pictures, newspaper articles, posters, book extracts, charts, data tables etc which can be used independently of the activities. All the sources and resources may be downloaded, saved and printed for educational or private use free of charge*.

The project has been organised and researched by staff at West Sussex County Council Library Service and local teachers, and the website is hosted by the West Sussex Grid for Learning.

Click here to visit the West Sussex 'Learn about the Victorians' website...

Update:  Penpals have now been found for this school.

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 Do you have a class who would like to exchange letters/emails with a school in Italy?

My name's Mercedes, I'm a primary school teacher. My school is Istituto F.Denza and it is located in Naples, Italy.

This year my colleagues and I are developing a project called "There's a letter for you" in order to foster pupils' ability to talk about about themselves, to express feelings, and so on.

I'm responsible for foreign languages, English in particular, and I'm searching for pen friends my pupils can exchange letters with. I found many web sites surfing the Internet, but generally the age of those who are searching for pen friends is too high for my pupils who are 8-10 years old.

Would some of your pupils be interested in becoming our pen friends? We would be very glad!
Please, let me know as soon as possible
thank you very much for your kind collaboration
Mercedes

A workshop with contributions from Helen MacGregor ASK Music Advisor, Michele Gregson ASK Art Advisory Teacher and Kent Leading ICT Teachers

Schools taking part in Weather Watch 2008 are invited to attend a Music and ICT workshop at Oaktree Primary School, Ashford  on Friday 9th May 2008.

During the session teachers will be shown how children can use:

• Audacity to record and edit their own musical compositions
• FlashMeeting (video conferencing) to perform their work “life” for other schools to view and listen to
•  “Making the News” to evaluate their own and others musical compositions
• itunes to create their own music folders
• ICT to create a CD of their favourite Weather songs from the project

For more information visit

http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/weatherwatch/music/

Short film clips that can be used to support the teaching and learning of maths.

The first site contains a list of films to use plus a supporting worksheet.
http://mathbits.com/MathBits/MathMovies/ResourceList.htm

The following site contains a selection of films
http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies/

Stonehenge a hospital?

A team for the BBC series Timewatch has begun the first excavation inside the ring at Stonehenge for more than forty years. You can follow the once-in-a-lifetime archaeological dig on the BBC website right now.

www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/stonehenge/