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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OCR is hosting the above free conference (see conference program) to showcase the ICT Nationals to interested schools/colleges that are not delivering this qualification at the moment. For more information about this exciting conference please see the attached invitation, which has been sent to many schools/colleges in the South East. We are inviting you (the local ICT consultants and advisors) to this confierence and we would be grateful if you would:

- Make your local schools/colleges aware of this conference via email and/or in person.
- Ask interested centres to book onto the conference by the end of term.
- Feedback to me anything else you think we should be doing as part of this conference.

To book your place at the conference please contact Melissa Hasprey, using the details below:

- By email - melissa.hasprey@ocr.org.uk
- By telephone - 02476 856 163
- By fax - 02476 851 604

12,00 high quality music files are available from the LGFL web site.

These files have been created from a cooperative of professional British composers. This is a ’paid for’ resource provided by the NEN RBC’s , saving schools up to £95 every time they download a clip for use in teachers adn pupils work.

The Audio Network Licence has been extended for another three years with lots of additional files to download. Great for podcasting

FREE Event at Friends House Meeting Rooms, 173 - 177 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ

Want to be an expert ICT Co-ordinator at your organisation?

Did you know that Naace supplies the only course in the whole of the UK that offers an ICT Co-ordinator’s course covering vision, planning, staffing and much more, plus you can achieve 30 credit points at level 3 which could be counted towards a Masters degree. This is a one day event aimed at those who may consider providing this course as part of their Portfolio next year. During the day you will receive tuition and further details of what the course covers and how to teach the course.

Look on the Naace website for further information www.naace.co.uk/252 or to book contact Pippa on 0115 848 3326, pippa@naace.org.

“Teachers here in the UK have the job of ensuring that children grow up with an understanding of the interconnectedness of the world and the positive role that they can play in today’s global society.”    Department for International Development/DCSF Bringing the World into the Classroom 2008

 London’s Development Education Centre, the Humanities Education Centre (HEC), based in Tower Hamlets, is working with London Grid for Learning to promote the global dimension and poverty reduction agendas in our schools. It aims to support all groups and providers working in or with schools to frame what they are doing within the global dimension. HEC has been working with Tower Hamlets City Learning Centre and e-Learning Team over the past few years exploring ways of using ICT to deliver the global dimension.

It has now launched a global portal that has areas for teachers and their students to start exploring, across the curriculum issues such as water, gender, health, transport, food, trade, tourism etc, and there are webquests exploring how the DfID works, what is sustainability, how to be a UN Special Rapporteur for human rights…

Visit the Global Portal; book HEC to run a free session for your CLC or PDC or conference or professional development day; or for advice and support contact: e-mail: hec@gn.apc.org  global portal: www.global.lgfl.net

tel: 020 7364 6405                     fax: 020 7364 6422 

website: www.citizenship-pieces.org.uk

http://www.globaldimension.org.uk 

On behalf of

Michael Newman

Global Citizenship Project Worker

Humanities Education Centre and City Learning Centre

Tower Hamlets Professional Development Centre

The Renewed Framework for Numeracy on the London Grid for Learning

I-Board Maths for KS1 joins KS2 Multemaths from Cambridge-Hitachi and BEAM’s Maths Raps to provide London’s Primary schools with a really comprehensive coverage of the renewed Framework for Numeracy.
Working together through LGfL, the London local authorities have purchased these resources for their schools at a fraction of the cost per individual school. By making them available online on the Grid, this saves each individual ICT co-ordinator the time and bother of installing the software on each school machine, LGfL can deal with technical problems centrally and teachers can access the resources at home by using their LGfL username and password.

I-Board Numeracy is organised into the seven new strands across each year group
It has hundreds of interactive maths activities to strengthen pedagogy and employ whiteboards as an effective resource.

At every level, the user can
• launch the activity
• check the Help button for the selected activity to find out how the activity works
• send feedback on the activity (or suggestions for new ones) back to the developers at I-Board

Find this in the KS1 Maths menu or directly at www.iboardmaths.lgfl.net

(from Neil Adams NAACE)

Climate change is very much in the minds of many young people, but how do we know that the dire predictions are true? It’s all about the application of silicon chips rather than crystal balls and gives ICT teachers a route into discussing models, at least with brighter students or as a summary of the principles that have already been taught.

Models are based on variables and rules designed to represent a real world situation, whether of the travel of a roller coaster, the flight of a moon rocket or changes to the environment. The variables represent known quantities like the global temperature and levels of carbon dioxide, whereas rules are mathematical statements of the assumed linkages between the parts of the system. A simple rule may state that if the level of carbon dioxide doubles the global temperature will rise by 2C. Of course it is not so simple, since a further doubling of carbon dioxide would be expected to raise the temperature rather more.

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Hi Folks

I have returned after a refreshing three weeks in Australia, ready and keen to work on the blogsite (just as you are about to take a break!) The first piece of news you may want to consider is the following offer from Steljes which is reprinted below:

The SMART seminars are full day events aimed at providing teachers with information and guidance on how to use their SMARTboard as an effective tool for planning, teaching and assessment. Topics will include Assessment for Learning using the Senteo pupil response system from SMART, and how it facilitates interaction, engagement and personalised learning.

The attached flyer provides more information, including the two closest events to you in the South of England:

29th April - Cambridgeshire 

30th April - Surrey 

Please feel free to circulate to schools or to interested colleagues who may be able to travel to Cambridge or Surrey to attend.

Alternatively, visit the website where you can also book you place to attend either day:

www.smartseminars.org.uk

I will be attending and I would urge you to take advantage of the offer.

In the meantime have a great break!

Churchfields Primary and Nursery School are hosting an Interactive Whiteboard Cluster Meeting on Tuesday 10th June commencing at 3:45pm

Come along to:

• Find out some free training tips
• Share flipcharts and resources
• Update yourself on new developments in IWB resources including the pupil response systems.
• See a range of new available software
• Take away some free resources
• Have free refreshments

This event is run in conjunction with Promethean Technologies but is suitable for users of all IWB software and hardware.

Don’t forget to bring along your memory  key!

If you would like the chance to attend please email: pennyj.churchfields.bromley@lgfl.net

If you would like to take the opportunity to share your own good practice and demonstrate any work you have done using IWB’s please let us know, we can definitely fit you in.

Penny Jones (DHT) and Caroline Greenall (ICT SL)

Churchfields Primary and Nursery Schools

Churchfields Road

Beckenham BR3 4QY 0208650 5247