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.

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 Caroline Greenall and Penny Jones) 

Free Interactive Whiteboard Training Event
LAST CHANCE

Churchfields Primary and Nursery School are excited to be hosting an Interactive Whiteboard users cluster meeting on Tuesday 10th June
3.45 (for refreshments)
4.00pm – 5.00pm
Come along to:

• Find out some free training tips
• Share flipcharts and resources
• Update yourself on the new developments in IWB technology including pupil response systems
• See a range of new available software
• Every attendee will receive a free goodie bag of ready to use resources
• Lots of great competitions with fantastic prizes
• Have free refreshments

Everyone Welcome

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 to attend please email:
pennyj.churchfields.bromley@lgfl.net

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

Penny Jones (DHT) & Caroline Greenall (ICT SL)
Churchfields Primary and Nursery School
Churchfields Road
Beckenham
BR3 4QY
0208 650 5247

(Message from Alison Tanner and Seld Ziya)

 Venue:Darrick
Wood
Junior
School BR6 8ERDate:  Wednesday 11^th June

I am writing to invite you to an event which we are holding at Darrick Wood Junior school on Wednesday 11^th June at 4pm.

The purpose of the event is to bring teaching practitioners together to learn new interactive teaching techniques as well as sharing their experience with others. 

 Using an interactive whiteboard and voting devices we shall share flipcharts and other downloadable curriculum based resources as well as showing you other resources which are free such as Top Tips, Love you Whiteboard and research into learner response devices – the Reveal project.

You will be pleased to know that whatever your interactive whiteboard type is you will benefit from the session as tips and software are not manufacturer specific. 

At the end of the session you will have the chance to take away 60 day trials of either Activprimary or Activstudio software as well as other useful resources.I very much hope you can join us, and look forward to meeting you and helping you to maximise your impact in class.

If you would be interested in attending please could you let us know numbers by ringing 01689 85730 or emailing tanner.darrickwood-jnr.bromley@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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(from Pippa Grayson NAACE)

The vast majority of the teaching force still do not use web 2.0 and distributed resources on the internet.

What are the barriers to them doing this at the present time? At present the main barrier to even becoming aware of such facilities is probably time and institutional buy-in to the whole process. Whereas their students are happily at home with social networking sites and the process of friendship groups and online communities, their mentors do not have the time or the facility to start learning about these processes.

One of the main barriers to enabling teachers to engage and risk take using web 2.0 is the fact that they are working within an outmoded system of institutional pedagogies based on the shifting sands of rapid reforms, which have left everyone punch drunk at the scale and speed of tweaking the system. There needs to be a rapid overhaul of professional development based on action research and communities of practice within the teaching community, with new roles and practices based more on the models used in current business practice rather than an outmoded curriculum.

Interested in thinking about Naace’s role as an innovative community? Come to this FREE to members event and contribute towards the future direction of Naace. Taking place at Harrow Teachers’ Centre on the morning of 17th May, you can find the full programme and booking instructions at: www.naace.co.uk/618