Bromley ICT Forum Blog

 [Welsh Assembly report] Courtesy of NAACE Newsletter

The Welsh have been at it too! This report (published in April) contains a useful overview of the current situation, including summaries of success factors in implementation and barriers to successful use of ICT, and specific
recommendations to the Welsh Assembly. Extracts:

This report is the product of a year long series of meetings of the task group established by the Welsh Assembly Government to consider how to take forward the use of ICT in schools. [Hugh Knight (Chair), Schools ICT Strategy
Working Group.] 
 
It is now seventeen years since the invention of the World Wide Web… Yet when we asked a group of young people , through the Welsh Assembly Government’s Model Assembly programme, for their views on developing the use
of ICT in school, they responded:

 ’there’s too much technology in classrooms’
 ’teachers don’t use it as well as we do’
 ’we should be trusted to manage our own use of the Internet’.

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 [Extracts from Becta press release.]

 The revised strategy sets out a commitment to ensuring every school, college, university or training provider is ‘technology confident’, placing particular emphasis on achieving this through engagement with learners and parents and the professional development of teachers and trainers. Becta is now tasked with leading and working with education and skills providers, Government and national partners to ensure this ambitious strategy is delivered by 2014.

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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

Becta has launched a free guidance toolkit to help Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) ensure the online safety of all children and learners.

The new e-safety strategy toolkit is the result of major collaboration work between Becta and 38 local authorities, five Regional Broadband Consortia and representatives from Scotland, Wales and the European Union. It has been developed to allow local authorities to share best practice, and to offer support and guidance to all local authorities to ensure the online safety of children and learners.

The e-safety strategy toolkit includes advice in the following areas:

• Developing an e-safety subgroup of the LSCB
• Developing a safe and secure infrastructure
• Developing an e-safety training strategy
• Monitoring and reporting on e-safety incidents
• Monitoring the impact of the e-safety strategy

Download from http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=35446

As part of Becta and the LGFL’s strategy to support school improvement, a school conference was held at the Bromley EDC . The purpose of the conference was to demonstrate how  Becta Self Review Framework  tool can play an important role in helping schools to understand and manage their ICT strategic program and policies.

The session was presented by Simon Shaw (Accreditation Manager, Becta) and John Duffield  (London Learning through ICT). 

A wide range of Bromley schools were represented. They  included Bishop Justus, Langley Park School for Girls, Chislehurst (St Nicholas) CE  Aided, Edgebury Primary School, Grays Farm,Highfield Infant School, Malcolm School Perry Hall School, Pickhurst Infant School, Pickhurst  Junior School, Poverest Primary School, Raglan Primary School, ST Philomenas, St Vincents  Catholic Primary School, and The Highway School.

A copy of the days program can be downloaded here.

Other downloads include

Action Plan

Guidance Notes for Element 7