Bromley ICT Forum Blog

 [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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(from Brian Durrant) 

Start the new term with Video Conferencing - act before 30th June!

Video Conferencing is a powerful medium for communication, collaboration, teaching and learning. The London Grid for Learning offers a number of packages to suit your school, as well as a programme of activity throughout the year to enhance your video conferencing participation.   However, we regret to inform you that increased manufacturing and delivery costs, and unfavourable changes in the Euro exchange rate, will subject the provision of video conferencing equipment, hardware warranties and software updates, to an increase of up to £1000 per unit beginning 1st July 2008.  

If you are interested in purchasing Video Conferencing equipment to use in September, we strongly recommend placing orders before the 30th of June. Orders placed by 30th June will be priced at existing rates.  

We regret this unavoidable change in prices and the short notice available, and hope this does not exclude you from including video conferencing into your school’s curriculum.  Please contact the Synetrix LGfL sales team on 01252 405 600 or write to salesadmin@synetrix.co.uk

London Grid for Learning would like to promote an opportunity for Primary and Secondary Schools in the new school year.

National Poetry Day Competition and Video Conference - October 9th 2008

London Grid for Learning partnering with Havering LA would like to invite you to take part in this National Competition. The theme for this years National Poetry Day is `Work`. In order to celebrate this we would like children to write poems about different jobs. We have lined up Alan Peat and Gervase Phinn to judge the finalists.

We would also like to invite you to take part in a videoconference for primary and secondary schools during National Poetry Day, on October 9th 2008, hosted from Engayne Primary School, starting at 8.50 am and ending at 3.30pm.

Opportunity: National Poetry Day

Organiser’s Profile: Mina Patel at London Grid for Learning

Visit the National Poetry Day site find out about the rules, prizes, programme details and how you can take part www.poetryday.lgfl.net

1.Vamos from Espresso

Module 1 of Espresso’s resource for KS2 Spanish, covering Greetings,In School, the Alphabet, Numbers, days of the week, Festivals and Weather.

Lost of video of native speakers, support activities along with Espresso’s commitment to high quality multimedia.

2. RM Sonica Spanish

Sonica Spanish is an innovative software product commissioned by the DfES. Sonica Spanish is designed to help teachers including modern foreign language (MFL) specialists bring Spanish language into the classroom.

LGFL is hosting 24 of its 240 activities as an online resource for school and home

Like the real world, the online world has good and bad in it. And going online is like going out in the real world. We need to take care. London Grid’s unit on e-safety gives practical advice and activities to help you use the internet safely. Find US Online either through the LGFL Content Grid for ICT (KS2) or go directly to www.usonline.lgfl.net

Now available in the KS2 and 3 ICT menus. www.ict.lgfl.net

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

Hold on to your hats folks…it might be a bumpy ride next week 

Update 23/4/2008 

The Synetrix / LGFL Web Hosting upgrade scheduled for Thursday 24th April 2008, has been postponed in light of the pending National teachers strike, along with the current Email Hosting issue. Schools are reporting to us that they wish to communicate to parents, the affect of such a strike on their school, via this LGFL hosted service. Access will therefore be restored within the next 30 minutes. This upgrade has been re-scheduled to take place the following week, starting Tuesday 29th April, with a targeted completion date of Friday 2nd May. I hope that you agree that this is a sensible approach. Should you wish to discuss this further then please do not hesitate in contacting the Synetrix support team on 0870 300 4010

Bromley Schools

Update

Latest information update.

It is my melancholy duty to report that there is a major problem with Synetrix’s email exchange server which has resulted in the following message from the Talk2Synetrix web site

We are investigating issues with the Email platform whereby users will be experiencing slow connectivity and connection errors.  Engineers are working on the issues and we hope to have this resolved very soon. The lead call for this issue is 138116.

For further information please contact the CSC on: 0870 300 4010

I share your irritation  and I can assure you that the issue will be raised at the next LGFL Director’s meeting.

In the meantime you can track the progress of the job by visiting the Customer service site (http://www.talk2synetrix.com ) logging in with your name and password.

If you are unsure about login names and passwords please email me.

Unfortunately the only way I can share this information with our schools is through the ictbromley blog site which is thankfully a Synetrix free zone.

In the meantime if you want to express your opinions about the service please feel free to use the comments area.

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