Kent ICT Blog

Home Access is a government drive which will help low-income families to get access to a computer and the internet to get online at home.  Families who are on a low income in receipt of certain benefits could qualify for a grant to buy a computer and/or a minimum of one years’ internet access. The programme is aimed at those that need it most and targets families that do not have access to a computer or the internet at home.  More information is available at www.homeaccess.org.uk

Parents can call the Home Access Grant Helpline on 0333 200 1004 for an application form.

Heidi

The new e-safety resources created by CEOP are now available to download (with the exception of 2 downloads). Lee and Kim's Magical Adventures are aimed at pupils aged 4-7. The pack contains an animated cartoon, song, set of lesson plans and resources and a range of fun activities including making masks. So why not join in and use these resources to help spread the e-safety message with our youngest children.

You need to be registered with Thinkuknow to download the resources. If you haven't yet registered then visit the thinkuknow website www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers

The I-Board interactive whiteboard resources will now be free to all. 

You can use the full i-board collection for free now, at http://www.tes.iboard.co.uk.  I-board resources can also be found on TES Connect by searching or browsing the TES Resources site at http://www.tes.co.uk or by going direct to this link http://www.tes.co.uk/tes-iboard

TES Resources will continue to grow the collection as TES iboard, with new KS1 Literacy and Phonics activities being added through February 2010 and KS2 development commencing soon after with staged releases continuing throughout 2010.

Carolyn

I've just heard that Sebastian has been receiving quite a few emails recently. Lots of people writing about the changing seasons. Why not try Sebastian's Waddle, it's a good introduction for talking about changes in the Spring and also encouraging children to go outside and look for signs.

 (Neat trick: why not look in the bottom RHS of your browser window and zoom in to make the book even larger).

There's also the Sebastian's Search resource with three types of searches.

 (Along the lines of Research, see also the Rivers Keyword Search for KS2).

:) James and Jo Rickards

Chinese New Year is fast approaching, 14th February, (the first weekend of the holiday). The Kent ICT Chinese New Year pages have been updated for 2010.

The Hong Bow is now available in a low ink use version.

The old red background version is still available.

:) James

Students equipped with their own laptop demonstrate higher achievement and increased engagement, according to the findings of studies published in the Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment.  All of the studies found that students in the 1:1 settings outperformed their traditional classroom peers on English/Language Arts standardized tests by a statistically significant margin. Study authors also reported on evidence of increased student motivation and engagement, as well as changes in teachers' instructional practices.  See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121171415.htm?sms_ss=twitter for the full article.

 Heidi

Visualisers have been around for quite sometime now, but with the recent drop in price, many schools and Partnerships are now buying them to compliment the use of interactive whiteboards.

A visualiser, at its simplest, is a video camera mounted on a stand that connects to a data projector. Objects can be placed under the camera and the image projected onto an interactive whiteboard. It is great for showing 3D objects, sharing books, children’s work, photographs and  Blue Peter style “how tos”.

Please add a comment below with your thoughts and ideas on how you are using your visualiser in the classroom. Mandy :)

For those of you who able to attend Bett this year you may have seen exciting things happening. This years Bett was less about how many freebies one could stuff in a bag and more about how many good ideas one could gleam to use in class on Monday morning. Throughout the four days, passionate and inspiring teachers from all over the country took over suppliers stands to share with us how they are using ICT creatively in their classrooms. For many teachers attending Bett this year, it was these presentation that inspired them most.

Another inspirational event was the TeachMeet, held during Friday evening, run by teachers for teachers. I learned loads from watching the event, I am sure you will too.
You can view a video recording of the TeachMeet presentations here http://bit.ly/8QeQeM and here http://bit.ly/6ednzR 

 To read more about TeachTakeOver and TeachMeet, here are a few of the many blogs about the experience:

Tom Barrett

Dawn Hallybone

Stuart Ridout

Mark Warner

Leon Cych - includes many videos

 Doughall McCormick 

 Ian Usher

Mandy :)

Having been to BETT and seen the new Elmo L-1ex Visualiser, with a remote control feature, I discovered that new software has been released for capturing and editing pictures and video. It also allows time-lapse photography. The download is free (27Mb) and you will need to uninstall the original software that came with the L-1N first.

Get it here from the US website where it goes by the American model name of TT-02-RX, rather than L-1ex http://www.elmousa.com/download-archive.php scroll down to Document Cameras - Digital and look for the Windows flag to download the zip file. Then unzip the setup program to install it. (Mac users download the Mac file instead)

For those who found the original Elmo software old fashioned, I found the new version is much smoother and easier to use, and the time-lapse great for science if you set the settings to .avi, and choose a suitable interval between photos.

Carolyn

The new Facts of the Day calendar is  like an advent calendar,with an educational twist for each day of the year!   Each date on this pictorial calendar contains a short article about a special event, famous person or interesting fact related to the day. It’s great way to encourage interesting registration discussions and gives students ideas for topics they can research themselves. It is also a very handy assembly planner


http://www.projectbritain.com/calendar/

How would you use this calendar in the classroom. Please share your ideas here

Here's a useful BBC News article about healthy lunch boxes. Includes images and a pie chart for anyone running a Healthy Eating topic:

(Thanks to Simon Haughton for this one : Twitter: @simonhaughton)

James:)

The FlashMeeting Presenter Board enables staff and pupils to use the classroom interactive Whiteboard to display images and record messages during a live web conference.

Identifying and classifying common birds by observable features
                     
18th January - 1st February 2010

Is your school planning to take part in The Kent and RSPB Bird Watch Surveys?

To identify common birds Heather Chanter (RSPB Lifelong Education Officer) has created a short video for staff and pupils to view.

To view this excellent learning resource click on the image below. Duration 12 minutes

To read the full article click here 

For more information about using The Flashboard click on the link below or contact:

FlashMeeting Presenter Board Starter Guide (pdf)

philip.bracegirdle@kent.gov.uk

Rob Slight - Canterbury City and Country ICT AST
E-mail: rob.slight@kent.gov.uk

The following post is from the Kent e-safety blog 

It has been bought to Kent County Council's attention that many Local Authorities are blocking a teaching resource website: sparklebox.co.uk. Although this website is popular with schools, CEOP has issued a statement supporting both this action and the following statement from South West Grid for Learning:

“It is understood that a person who is on the record as an owner and director of Sparklebox Teacher Resources Limited (which appears to claim ownership of the SparkleBox web site and children’s learning materials) is a registered sex offender who has recently admitted a second offence, is on remand in prison and is awaiting sentence in January.”

For this reason we feel it right to block the site centrally until more information is available and review whether this site should be blocked permanently after consulting schools and other sources. Failure to block this site may place Schools or Kent County Council in a difficult position regarding duty of care. Should staff wish to continue using the website there is nothing to stop its use from home.

Please lets us have your view
We invite discussion from staff who may be concerned about this decision to discuss this on the Kent e-Safety Blog .

Sparklebox creator jailed after paedophile verdict - TES

How to Completely Remove Sparklebox Toolbar by Mike McSharry

Many schools in the Kent Birdwatch 2010 project will be using "I-Got-U 120" GPS data loggers to create and publish "Bird Trails" on Google maps. To illustrate how effectively this technology can be used to share information click on the links below.  

Route 1 - Dungeness RSPB Nature Reserve Created by Gill Hollamby (ARC Leading ICT Teacher) and Heather Chantler (RSPB Education Officer)

Click here to view Dungeness Bird Walk

Route 2 - A stroll along the River Medway Created by Lucy Henderson (Maidstone 1 Leading ICT Teacher)

The map is a photographic record of the journey along the Eastern bank of the River Medway from the Malta Inn to The Millennium Park. Schools considering visiting the site should allow between 75 - 90 minutes for pupils to complete the walk.

Click here to view The River Medway Bird Walk

For further information about using GPS technology to publish and share maps contact:

Phil Bracegirdle (ASK ICT Hands on Support Consultant)

Philip.bracegirdle@kent.gov.uk

Fiona Aubrey-Smith, Head of Educational Development, UniServity has the following suggestions for using your learning platform effectively and making parental engagement meaningful which go beyond the sharing of pupil attainment and attendance data:
• Provide continuity of resources, support and guidance for parents to support their child beyond school
• Collaborate to create home/school ePortfolios showing children’s formal and informal learning
• Provide parents with the opportunity to share their parental expertise with each other
• Scaffold key skills practice and revision by providing resources for children to do this with their parents at home
• Bring parents skills, hobbies and jobs into the classroom for children to learn from
• Encourage parental visibility into their child’s class through active participation in learning activities
• Provide parents with continuity of resources, methods and skills to replicate demonstrations at home
• Encourage purposeful communication between parents about their experiences
• Facilitate after-school dialogue between children and their parents about each day’s learning experiences
• Offer opportunities for parental voice to be heard and acted upon when designing whole school plans and policies

Congratulations to Loose Junior School on achieving the ICT Mark. Well done to all the staff. Only 3% of Primary Schools have achieved this in Kent.

The Editable IWB Dictionary (ictgames.com) lets you store useful words and view them in a 3D scrolling dictionary. This can be really useful when working with Guided Groups in Literacy, making the IWB a powerful spelling resource during the main activity, not just the teaching input.

You can download this resource for free from the ictgames website: www.ictgames.com/IWBdictionary/

All of the words are stored in a text file which comes with the game. If you open this text file you can add words, save the file and they will be sorted into alphabetical order and placed on your dictionary. You can keep as many copies of the resource as you like. In that way you can have a Science, Topic or MFL dictionary too.

Have fun, James :)

What is Nature Watch 2010?

NatureWatch 2010 is an opportunity for pupils to use ICT to investigate and learn more about the wildlife found in their school grounds and local area. Planned activities include visits to beaches, woodlands and wetlands. To support the project pupils will have regular opportunities to web conference online (using FlashMeeting) and the opportunity to "blog" with Local Environmental Experts.

Naturewatch 2010 Online FlashMeeting

Following the very successful project launch in Crawley in October 2009 delegates were invited to take part in a "follow-up" FlashMeeting with Andrew Berry (ASK Primary Science Advisor) and Pauline Patterson (Hampshire Science Advisor.) An opportunity for Teachers, Education Officer and Local Authority staff to share developments and explore in more details matters discussed at the launch.

To replay the "online" web conference click here

For more information about Nature Watch 2010 and The Kent Birdwatch 2010 project contact:

Phil Bracegirdle - ASK ICT Hands on Support Consultant

philip.bracegirdle@kent.gov.uk

Take a digital image and make it talk? Easier than you might think. CrazyTalk 6 is an easy and powerful tool for generating talking characters from an image or photo and facial animation for video, websites and widget. Many schools are using to bring photos alive in projects across Kent.

http://www.taglearning.com/productdetails/Crazy+Talk+6.html

The software retails at £34 per licence but schools can buy it at the special £9.67 per licence. Please note this offer is for the standard version (not the more expensive pro version)

Would you like to buy Crazy Talk this term at the special price of £9.67?
Schools should place their orders by emailing  Matt at  m.williams@blieducation.com

Closing date: Friday 11 December 2009  (This is so we can process the orders before the end of term)

Mandy:)

BUGBEARS( www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bugbears); is a website that helps children communicate their hopes and fears in life with other kids, safely and anonymously. The site allows kids to make richly, animated monsters (Bugbears) that speak with the child's real voice. The issues that are raised can be anything from their worst or most difficult subject at school; their favourite hobbies; parents splitting up to worries about global warming; jokes; aspirations or being bullied . It recently won best children's innovation at the Royal Television Society Awards and is becoming the number one communication forum for young children.  Children can have loads of fun, learn and learn vital communication and sharing skills too.

For every child who makes a Bugbear , thousands can listen to it on the site and show their immediate support with hugs, respect or comments. Children sharing similar concerns learn form the Bugbears, taking comfort and gaining confidence as they realise they aren't alone. Bugbears is all about sharing sincere life experiences and building empathy and support from ordinary children.

Mandy :)

Norad Tracks Santa includes an advent calendar with different activities each day.

Try the Kent ICT Advent Calendar, (does repeat the same four activities through the month I'm afraid).

Woodlands Advent Calendar with fascinating facts about how Christmas is celebrated in differnt cultures.

Build your own snowmen on Kent ICT.

James ;)

PS: Jonathan the Deputy Headteacher from Kings Road Primary (Essex) sent us the link to their advent calendar. Each door has a different piece of ICT work behind it. The calendar includes the names of software used to create each piece of work. What a great idea!

The old Ready Register did not work with all school networks. There were schools who wanted to try the register but could not get it to work. With this in mind I've been working on a simpler version. This revised version works on networked computers, but only if separate copies of the resource are used for each class. It does not include the Risk Rocket yet, but that's coming. Another useful feature apart from the improved name saving is the automatic picture selection. I just need to ask a kind soul to test the new version for me and suggest changes:

To add children:

1. Open the text file that sits next to the Register
2. Type the children's names as a list
3. Save the text document
4. Open the Ready Register 2010 

Download the zipped file here: Ready Register 2010 (Please unzip before using)

James:)

 Mark Warner, teacher at The Downs School  has put together a fantastic search tool for teachers looking for lesson plans, resources and ideas.

http://www.teachrsearch.co.uk/

 Mark also runs several over very useful sites for teachers:

Teaching Ideas – An extremely popular site, with thousands of free ideas, resources and activities for teachers.

Display Photos – Get inspiration for your classroom displays by browsing through this collection of photos

Teaching Forum – Ask for help, share ideas or have a chat in our forum for teachers.

Teachr – A start page for teachers, showing the latest news and ideas. Also has a search engine to help you find ideas and resources easily.

Ideas to Inspire – This site contains a collection of wonderful collaborative presentations, explaining how to use the latest technology in your classroom.

Welcome to the Web – A fun guide to the Internet, helping young and old become more confident in exploring the World Wide Web.

 Mandy:)

A selection of Textease resources with a Christmas theme can be found by following the link below.

You can also find you way there via this pathway:
Software Tab > Textease (LHS navigation) > Christmas Textease Activities

http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/kentict_soft_text_christmas.cfm

 Have fun James ; )

Kent ICT and SEGfL are pleased to announce, effective immediately, the purchase of a new schools' licence for access to the re-vamped British Pathé Archives. Powerful search routines make finding resources from within the 3,500 hours of films or 12 million stills a simple process.

New features include a useful, free workspace to assemble and annotate your own collections, whether at home or school. These can be shared and replayed anywhere, with a neat feature for sharing the url via email or embedding the link in a learning platform. Downloading selected films to a SEGfL connected terminal (Kent schools on the KCN broadband) is now rapid and, as previously, material may be edited and used in school for education purposes. Pupil-generated material using Pathé resources may now be retained in perpetuity.

Seventy-five years of digital history make this an appealing resource for any number of curriculum areas. Why not join the SEGfL SPOT debate at www.segfl.org.uk/spot to share your lesson ideas and find links to support materials and project examples?

Chris Davison, SEGfL
Mandy Barrow Kent ICT

Many thanks to Alexandra Chapman from Hartsdown Technology College, Margate, for producing this excellent end-of-term PowerPoint quiz, and sharing it with us.

The Geography Christmas quiz  takes about an hour to complete, so you may wish to move answer slides to the end of each round if you have shorter lessons and wish to "mark as you go".  Click on the snowman (both on the questions or the answers) to take you back to a menu of the various rounds.

There are 16 rounds: 1.Name the personality  2.Name the movie  3.Entertainment  4.World Capitals  5.Name the country  6.Name the team  7.Sport  8.In the News  9.Geofacts  10.Higher or Lower  11.Bling that Thing  12.Who's who?  13.Christmas round   14.Food  15.Song Lyrics  16.GeoAnagrams

Click here to download the Geography Christmas Quiz PowerPoint

The Primary ICT Team are looking at adding a PE section to the Kent ICT website. Some useful resources have already been identified but if you have any examples of ideas using ICT and PE or websites you use to help plan or teach PE, please let us know and we can add them to the site in the near future.

Also with the World Cup 2010 and 2012 Olympics fast approaching, any resources you have developed and wish to share based around these themes to support Literacy, Maths or any other cross curricular subject would be gratefully received not just by us but also by the thousands of people around the world that use this site. Thank you

Kent Primary ICT Team

World Wide Weather Watch is now taking place until the 20th November.

Why not join in details at..http://microsites2.segfl.org.uk/view_page.php?id=1745

BBC World Class is working with our partners the British Council in the build up to the UN Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen, 7-18 December.
Schools everywhere can share their views with the Climate Change Interactive.
Ask your class to answer four questions:

• Tell us about the extreme weather where you live. If you have been in storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves, or other extreme weather, tell us what happened.
  
  
• Have you ever missed school because of extreme weather? Tell us what happened.
  
  
• Do you think you are affected by climate change? If yes, how?
  
  
• Whose job is it to look after the natural world?

For further details see link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass/projects/climate_change_interactive.shtml

Following the very successful South East Grid for Learning Nature Watch 2010 Conference Teachers and Educational Providers have the opportunity next month to take part in a “live” web conference with the conference presenters.

Two sessions chaired by Andrew Webster (Medway LEA) will be taking place from 09:30 – 10.30 and 11:00 - 12:00 on Tuesday 1^st December 2009. These sessions are an opportunity to ask questions about the Nature Watch projects taking place across the region and specific questions about how teachers and pupils can use ICT to enhance learning outside the classroom.

Interested in taking part? Click here to download booking form.