Bromley ICT Forum Blog

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

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.

There is an exciting new feature for schools and colleges on the JANET Collaborate site - “VC Partners”.

JANET Collaborate VC Partners enables schools and colleges to find another partner school or college to videoconference with. The JANET Collaborate VC Partner opportunities are open to all schools and colleges in the UK and abroad. The first partnership has already been formed between Year 1 classes from schools in Wigan and Exeter.

To find out more about how you can find a videoconference partner, read the full news story on JANET Collaborate.

Link to the full VC Partners news story here or copy and paste the URL below into your browser:

Tim Boundy, JANET Collaborate Project Manager. collaborate@ja.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

Reprinted from the NAACE Newsletter

There are two objectives for this article: describing the podcasting project we have established in Halton and inviting your participation. This principle of participation and collaboration lies at the heart of the project.

We decided that any project aimed at producing teaching and learning outcomes through podcasting needed to acknowledge the following key factors

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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

Enclosed is an article from the NAACE web site  describing the impact of the Fronter VLE upon Ranville Infant School. It highlights the background, key features and the impact upin the teaching and learning program.

It also provides useful advice in helping schools ‘get started’

Click here to read more

(reprinted from NAACE Newsletter)

Please note that these publications are only available to NAACE Members

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