Bromley ICT Forum Blog

Reprinted from the NAACE Newsletter

There are two objectives for this article: describing the podcasting project we have established in Halton and inviting your participation. This principle of participation and collaboration lies at the heart of the project.

We decided that any project aimed at producing teaching and learning outcomes through podcasting needed to acknowledge the following key factors

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Since Bob Usher’s  course in January, many of our schools are now beginning to incoporate Podcasting as a strategy in the delivery of engaging curriculum activities.

We have  examples of teachers using podcasts as a strategy for supporting children with their homework such as teacher,  Karen Easterling’s ‘Division using Chunking’ podcast at Farnborough Primary School. We can also see examples of  students recreating and processing their learning in the form of their own podcasts such as the Year 6 Flashback at Darrick Wood  Junior Primary School. Churchfields Primary School (Christmas in Argentina ) and Warren Road Primary School  have also been very active in using podcasts to supplement their curriculum program.

Podcasts are not hard to do and they can offer  great value to the school’s curriculum program. They can be used successfully from Reception to Key Stage 4.

The LGFL offer a site for hosting podcasts produced by teachers and children. Schools can set up their accounts and load their podcasts to be shared with other schoools. The site also has some great suggestions for incorporating podcasts into currioculum planning along with tools to help you get started (and most of those tools are free). Visit Podcast Central for more information. (Use your LGFL login and password to get cracking…).

If you are interested in having your class participate in a podcast ICT Project Adventure please email me. If any other Bromley Schools (or from any other borough for that matter) are using podcasting, please share your thoughts with us on the blogsite. I would be really keen to hear from your, especially any secondary schools)

Message from Brian Durrant (LGFL Director)

Following the success of this event in earlier years, the London ICT Technicians’ Conference is this year being held in two sittings, morning and afternoon.  The very comfortable seats at the high-tech Auditorium within the BT national HQ are being quickly taken up, but as yet about 100 seats remain

The programme which is aimed at school network managers and details of venue and how to book are attached.  In previous years this event has been greatly appreciated and the preparations for this year will not disappoint.
We are particularly grateful to Penny Patterson and members of L2ICT Environment Group for all the thought and preparation they have put into arranging this conference.

We are also grateful to Atomwide which has agreed to sponsor the lunch for both the morning and afternoon conferences.

We look forward to seeing many of you there.Click here to download the program

Enclosed is a message from Lyn Whitford (IEARN UK)

A great opportunity has arisen with our colleagues in iEARN in Thailand as 2 schools are looking for UK partner schools with which to exchange a Teddy Bear.

Ideally, we’d like a class from Year 4 and another from Year 7.

This is an ideal first project and also one of our most popular! Why? It’s relatively simple to start; the bear is involved in all of your school activities; the pupils learn about another culture and new technologies….and it’s fun!!!

Pupils often exchange clothes, books, sweets etc for the Teddy and like to stay in touch.

The schools in Thailand are very keen, so if you would like to take part then please email me by return with the following details:-

Name of Teacher

Name of School

Address of School

Teacher email

Year of Pupils

Number of Pupils

If you are interested in an exchange with schools in a different country, then please let me know and I can try to match your request.

Best Wishes

Lynne Whitford
Administrator

iEARN UK
Technology House
Rhewl
Ruthin
LL15 1TN

01824 708772
www.iearn.org
Registered Charity No. 1109069

The NAACE Primary on line activities, reviews and resources remain available here

This wide ranging collection includes primary curriculum support materials, primary on line resources, software applications and curriculum activities covering all Primary education including Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

Popular software titles include Big Book Maker, Find the Pairs, Jumbo, History Photo Quiz, Number Board and Sorting Games.

There are also reviews of books, software and hardware with a focus on embedding ICT in Primary Education.

The Direct2U service was a weekly email service produced by Becta in partnership with NAACE. The service was for primary teachers and offfered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service is now discontinued but you can view the lesson plans in this archive

To get the latest update on what’s available in the LGFL content are check out this pdf document.

17th March 2008

BT Centre, 81 Newgate Street. London EC1A 7AJ

The last conference was highly oversubscribed, so in order to offer this opportunity to as many technical colleagues as possible we will be running this conference twice, using the morning and afternoon slots.   Sessions so far will include: Sophos update, e-safety – technical solutions, MLE update, equipment security.

Click here to book

Gigajam Junior
New on LGfL for music is Gigajam Junior. Gigabot takes you through lessons, video clips, and a Gigapedia glossary section, to give you all you need to introduce the young learner to the world of drumming. Start by going to the Exploring the Drums section to discover what each part of a kit is called and what it does and to build you own drum-kit. www.gigafun.lgfl.net

Newham ICT Scheme of Work

In addition to their foundation stage materials, Newham have now launched their entire ICT scheme of work (covering years 1 - 6). Featuring active flip chart resources and tutorial videos there is a wealth of resources on offer. Importantly every unit contains a challenge lesson which gives the children an opportunity to develop their independent ICT capability. http://www.itass.newham.gov.uk/curriculum/sow.aspx

New Voices, Old Vic

Under Kevin Spacey’s direction, the Old Vic Education section has employed professional directors, writers and actors to work with pupils and students from South London schools on a variety of projects to encourage them to think about the creative use of drama in other subjects. The first project was a joint collaboration with the Imperial War Museum around the theme of the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916.

LGfL has agreed to host this and subsequent OVNV projects to make them available permanently as an anytime, anywhere resource for the National Education Network. Each project comes with full lesson plans and videos to help teachers and students create their own version of the project in their school.

Find this in the KS3/4 English and History menus or directly at www.ovnv.lgfl.net