Bromley ICT Forum Blog

Southborough Primary School becomes the latest addition to the growing list of Bromley Schools  recognised under the national Becta/NAACE ICT Mark Awards for excellence.

The  school’s ICT Mark award was presented by the Bromley Assistant Director for  School Improvement, Mrs Merril Hauesler to the Head Teacher Mrs Doreen Fellingham  today.

The ICT Mark award paid particular tribute to the innovative work and leadership in ICT with particular reference to the use of video conferencing within the curriculum by the school’s ICT Curriculum leader Mr Ben Beale and the ICT Technical Manager  Mrs Mandy Fathers. The school has also been successful in developing curriculum links with schools in China as well as enhancing curriculum activities through virtual ‘educational excursions’.

The ICT Mark also recognises the school’s strengths in pupil assessment using the Systems Integrated Resources (SIR) Learning Activity bank which has provided meaningful data on pupil progress.

“Southborough’s ICT Mark award nationally recognises the excellence of the school’s ICT program delivery for which all the teachers and pupils should be proud” commented Mrs Haeusler.

 [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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Tricia Neal has started an ‘ICT in the early years’ community and that her first community blog entry asks people to talk about what ICT is happening in their foundation stage classrooms.

So stop by and make a contribution, where are we now with early years ICT? Either add a comment to the original post or join the community and add your own entry.

To see what’s happening and contribute:

• Click the link below
• Log in (using the bar across the top of the page) using your normal Naace username and password
• Use the Back button on your browser to return to the ‘ICT in the early years’ community

There’s a link on the right to request community membership or scroll to the bottom of the list and add a comment.

http://communities.naace.co.uk/eyict

ICT in Schools 2004-7

Reprinted from NAACE Newsletter

HMI David Anstead presented Ofsted’s findings about ICT during a conference seminar. These “long reports”, based on a sample of schools, supplement the Section 5 inspections, which no longer directly report on subjects. He was unable to say anything about the content of the next 3-yearly report, due out in autumn this year, but David’s presentation was drawn from the same evidence base that will be used for that report. Caution must also be exercised regards the accuracy of your editor’s notes! Given that the report will be based on survey visits made between 2004 and 2007, it is effectively monitoring the impact of policy implemented to 2003.

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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

Reprinted from the NAACE Newsletter

JISC initiated a study involving a combination of examination of data from longitudinal studies and new research to see whether the “Google Generation” (post-1993) approached research tasks in a significantly different way to people from previous cohorts.

They define six types of behaviour:

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Repurpose, Create and Share 

Becta and the National Education Network are inviting your school to submit a proposal to create engaging and innovative projects that exploit online digital resources for effective learning. Any materials created by participating schools will be then made available nationally for sharing with other schools.

This is a great opportunity for your school to

• Exploit online digital resources
• Create new materials to support learning and teaching for secondary aged students using these resources
• Work with the LGFL and the LA in the production and dissemination of these materials across the NEN

Becta and the NEN will provide up to £25,000 to support the development of these school projects .

The deadlines for these bids is 12 noon on Friday 22 February 2008Enclosed is a copy of the Call for bids paper with further information.

If you are interested and would like assistance in preparing a bid please let me know

(reprinted from NAACE Newsletter)

Please note that these publications are only available to NAACE Members

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(Reprinted from NAACE News)

Leading change in ICT in support of pupil learning - a NCSL Research Associate Summary Report by Ann Gill. (6 pages, although only 3 contain the main text!)

The guide offers advice on what headteachers need to do to secure funding to support the time and money needed to develop ICT in schools.

• Stay in touch with how children learn to see the value of what is available.
• Understand the demands on teachers, and work within an appropriate timeframe, properly resourced and with suitable training.
• Be adaptable. If something does not live up to expectations, have a rethink.
• Keep parents and governors involved and informed of new developments.
• Take as many opportunities as possible to look at what is going on in other schools.

The report also talks about leadership characteristics and strategies. See:
www.ncsl.org.uk/media/895/BD/one-step-ahead-of-the-game-gill.pdf