ICT Subject Leaders Meeting 5.12.07

Merry Christmas and a Happy, Innovative and Multi-Modal New Year to
all Redbridge Primary ICT Subject Leaders

During today's Subject Leader event, we had input from Peter McCarthy, myself and Nicholas Hughes. You can view the PowerPoint slides below. Just above the PowerPoint you will also find a list of the links covered in today's event. Please... please comment on today's session, comments should now be enabled for this and the consultant blog. If you would like to be an author on this blog, then please email me or speak to Nicholas.

Thank you all for your enthusiasm and dedication to ICT this year.

Relevant Video Clips

Links you can use

• Stories 2 Tell- new literacy Resource from 2Simple on London Grid For Learning
• Zamzar file convertor
• BBC Motion Gallery- a vast range of video clips to display on your board
• Keepvid.com- use this to download videos from youtube- remember to save these with a .flv extension.
• Gearies Infant school blog
• Redbridge Podcasting Network Blog
  
  

Powerpoint Slides

ICT Subject Leaders Meeting

We meet again on Wednesday the 5th Of December @ 1:30pm in S4

Comic Life 2

Thanks to Sandra for her post about Comic Life below. I had a go myself tonight and you can see the results below.
I think Comic Life is a a fun application (as all ICT should be), it allows you to combine images and text, as required by the national Curriculum for ICT. The use of comics is also featured in the support document for Literacy Grammar for Writing.

Comic Life

Comic life is a wonderful new title from Plasq. It is a very simple comis strip creator which features a selection of comic strip layouts into which you simply drag and drop your images, speach or thought bubbles, action signs and text. A really simple interface and so quick to create a final product.

I love the fact that the title is available for free 30 day trail download. http://plasq.com/
This allowed me to show it to my staff really quickly at the end of a recent staff meeting. There were wowed and were quick to ask for a school wide purchase. Combine this with a reasonable price ( 25 seat license from £102.26 and 50 seat licence from £153.64 )- Top up licenses are also avaiable very reasonably to make up to the amount of licenses required in school.

We rolled out the software across the school yesterday and I will keep you up to date with our progress.

Personification in Poetry

Luxor Jr
















Having a wonderful time experimenting with personiciation in poetry at the moment with my year 6 class ( never thought I would hear myself say that- poetry is not my thing!). However any excuse you use animation in class - we have been watching Luxor jr (a short animation by Pixar) and we love it.


Please check out my blog for a fuller explanation and further ramblings as well as links

http://sandraict.blogspot.com/

How important is ICT Infrastructure?

Head over to my blog see my top tips.

ICT Room Posters

Is your ICT suite looking a bit drab?
Do you need to badger your teachers into putting their coffees away and collecting their pile of print outs?

Yes !
Then visit http://www.teach-ict.com for a large range of posters for the ICT room

Key Stage 1 Course

There are still places on our Key Stage 1 ICT course on Wednesday 14th November @ the Redbridge Teachers Centre. The course is open to all Redbridge Teachers, Though if you are from Havering, then please contact Dave Smith who can arrange for you to get a place.

So don't forget:

Key Stage 1 ICT Course

Wednesday 14th November 2007- 9:30- 3:30pm

Including free coffee and biscuits and wonderful canteen and toilet facilities

Book by visiting Redbridgepdc

Subject Leader Support Documents

We unfortunately had to cancel the recent course for New Subject Leaders. If you are a new subject leader and you are looking for helpful support documents, you can get updates and network with others at our regular Subject Leaders Meeting. The next event is of course on the5th of December @ the Teachers Centre. Visit RedbridgePDC to book your place on this popular event.

Alongside the updates given @ the Subject Leaders events and on this (and related) blogs, I would recomend joining NAACE, the professional association for all those involved in ICT education. They produce regular weekly newsletters, hold regualr conferences and also provide members with discussion forums. Naace also help to shape ICT education policy, by compiling position papers for government advisers.Teachers and institutions can join NAACE by visiting their website.

A good publication for new ICT coordinators, is Implementing ICT, which though published in 2004, has relevant articles and advice for coordinators. It can be viewed and downloaded here.

A further helpful source of support is of course the LGFL and for anyone putting together Esafety documentation, then their safety section is brilliant, as it contains lesson planning ideas, policy chunk templates and posters.

I must also mention a good book that came out a few months ago by James Wright.'The Primary ICT and E-Learning Coordinator's Manual' is a great book that makes the coordinators tasks more manageable by giving a list of tasks to complete throughout each term. There is some good advice in this book, set out in the format of email conversations between coordinators and an ICT advisor, giving answers to some very common questions.

A good reason (excuse?) for a PS3 in your school

I met with Anthony this morning, to be put through the embarrasment of recording my own voice in preperation for podcasting, and I mentioned to him a game called LittleBigPlanet. I've posted more on the HattonICT blog, but he requested I place the video here too. I like it for modelling, see what you think:

If you want more, youtube is your friend!

SMART vs Activ Again

I am not going to polarise the SMART vs ACTIV debate. I think they both do a good job, when facilitated by a good teacher,particularly this teachers who are keen to innovate with the board and move beyond annotation.

But there are two (of many) good features of Activ-Primary 3

The first is the opportunity to turn an object into a container, with attributes. So that if I add an object a positive or negative reward sound will play. So, I can make simple sorting activities as below.




The most exciting tool in Activ Primary 3 though is the Flip chart Builder. This would save lots of time as it enables the teacher to pull together pages from a range of locations to create a new flip chart. The templates will cut down the time it takes to create pages,while the tool also allows the user to import pages form other flip charts. This cuts down the searching , cutting and pasting. A bit like the slide sorter view in Powerpoint (but souped up)

SMART versus Activ

Nicholas has been learning Activ Primary, he has been a dedicated SMART user for ages, see what he says by clicking here.



I wonder if any other coordinators have tried both, and or have strong preferences towards one platform, if so why.

New 1/2 Term and Fireworks

I am sure you can do better than my effort above

Welcome back after another very short holiday. I know this is perhaps the busiest time in the school year with Diwali, Sukkoth, Halloween, Firework night and eventually Christmas on the Horizon.

There has been some frenzied blogging and comments over on the subject leaders blog about firework pictures. Look at the More Fireworks post and related comments, there you will find examples of firework pictures, thankfully note all of these have been done in a 2Simple package!! Dan from Hatton has left a comment with a link to an on-screen firwork generator. Unlike some of the Firework screen savers on the download scene, this one operates by mouse movements and comes with effective firework bangs. Fireworks and the festivals that use them provide some great contexts for learning with ICT. If you are doing any work with fireworks this week or in the coming weeks, please do share. Even a simple picture done by someone in your class will serve as an inspiration or challenge to another Redbridge teacher or other reader of this blog

Have you seen Val's post by the way- check it out below

Earthcam

Create an account with Earthcam.com and you will have access to live webcams from around the world.

Easy to access and manage.

Once you have viewed your places of interest, create your own Mycam page and this will enable you to add your favourites for fast and easy access next time you want to view them.

What a great way to share places of interest.

http://www.earthcam.com/

Posted by Val Barker

QCA progression documents/ Wokingham pilot Scheme of Work

Today's leading teachers meeting continued to focus on creating planning documents. We have been using a variety of sources of information, but one that we have found invaluable is the Wokingham pilot scheme of work, which is based the QCA primary progression documents. The pilot documents can be found from the link below.

http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=142195

We have been using these to inspire our planning and ensure that our ideas continue to be challenging, exciting and inspirational to all.

New Early Years Scheme of Work for ICT

Newham's ITASS service have been kind enough to put a new ICT EYFS scheme of work online. I have taken a quick look and it seems to be built around the use of computers, peripherals and ICT in the real world/role-play.

Also check out David's post below on E-missions. Isn't blogging great we're up to 3 authors at the moment. I'd love to involve more of you in this process of sharing, collaborating,celebrating and communicating about Primary ICT. Please email me if you'd like to author a post and you lack the skills or permissions.

Best Video Conference ever!

Operation Montserrat is the best use of video conferencing kit for London Schools. Many primary children think this disaster management conference with the National Space Centre is real. The target audience is upper KS 2 and KS 3. You do not even need video conferencing kit. I know a man called Gary who can fix that. Mina (LGFL wonder woman) will support all the video conferences in schools. Go to www.redbridgepdc.org.uk and book on now. You and your year 6s will miss out otherwise. The date of the essential training for operation Montserrat is the 15th of October. Batten down the hatches now! This conference has great curriculum links. For more info click here.

Remember if Carlsberg did Video Conferences.....

Podcasting

Many of you have begun to Podcast, (or at leats to think about it anyway). As a London school you are fortunate to have your Podcasts hosted for free on the LGFL., you can visit http://podcast.lgfl.org.uk/ for free London hosting today.



Before uploading your first Podcast, you will need to login and create a channel, and for this you may need an atom wide account. If you don't have an atomwide account then email Anthony or (for a quicker response Gary Jelks). If all this sounds a little confusing, then don't worry a handy guide has been produced by the LGFL, this can be found in the box widget at the sidebar of this blog, or by clicking here.



To visit a school that has already begun to podcast, you can look @ Parkhill Juniors here, while the Redbridge Podcasting has started a blog to record their work over the coming year, click here for that. John Wix has also been busy with some of his children and the DJ Fanz podcast can be found here

If you have any difficulty listening to any of these pods, then please leave a comment.

Of Course- Don't Miss out!!

There are a number of good ICT courses coming up at the teachers Centre in the next few weeks, if you have not seen these here they are:

Introduction to Leading & Managing Primary ICT -

Tuesday 9th of October

So far this only has 1 delegate booked on, if I don't hear from anyone else by the end of the week I will need to cancel this event.

Using Espresso Effectively For Teaching And Learning -

Friday 12th of October

Please make sure that either yourself or your CPD coordinator books online for these courses, this allows us to photocopy enough notes and prepare coffee and biscuits.

Visit http://www.redbridgepdc.org.uk/ to book

Visualisers - have you tried one?

I have been invited into this blog by Anthony Evans. Anthony and I are currently collaborating on a number of cross-LA ICT projects and ideas between Redbridge and Havering. One of these is video-conferencing, of which I am sure Anthony will tell you more soon.

In Havering, we have been working to develop the use of visualisers in our schools. Above is a recently-created video extolling the virtues of visualisers from the point of view of teachers and pupils.

If you haven't seen a visualiser in action then watch the video above and find out more...

Dave Smith - ICT Consultant
Havering Inspection and Advisory Service

Subject Leaders Evaluations

Thank you for your evaluations of yesterday's meeting. It seemed many of you like the introduction to Bloggging and RSS. We will spend more time on this on December the 5th when we meet again.

I do hope the progressions material and the Renewed Framework skills list documents were helpful to you. Let me know how and if you are using them.

Cyber Bullying News

Two news stories caught my eye this morning:


Firstly this from the Guardian

Ministers are urging schools to involve police in the most serious cases of cyberbullying of pupils and staff in a new crackdown on the "unaccceptable" and "insidious" use of new technology

Read more


There is also further advice from the BBC Click programme on how to use sites like Facebook safely


Read more

Bugs fixed

Anoymous commenting now allowed

September 07 Subject Leaders

Tizzy's First Tools

Tizzy's First Tools

Publisher: Sherston

Age Group: Foundation and KS1

Cross Curricular Some aspects are better than others Decide (better than 2simple) Not particularly user friendly. No implications for classroom or play space layout. No underlying values reflected.
Voice/speaking ability useful for SEN pupils
Graphics are good.

7 Applications in total, which can be used within any subject, similar to Early Essentials and 2simple toolbox

Flobot

Review: Flobot by Sherston Software

Audience:5 to 7 Years Old

Subjects: ICT, Maths and Basic Skills

Main Learning Objectives:
Watch and learn sequence of activities
Choose appropriate responses to overcome obstacles
Control a simulated robot to go back, forward etc.
Test instructions
Plan a sequence
Comparison:

In comparison with Turtle and Beebot it is not as hands on or stimulating. There is a story to follow and the activities link with the story, which puts the sequencing in context, however it cannot be fitted into cross curricular links.
However, it does record individual progress for each pupil and their success at each a
activity and the teacher can set differentiated levels for pupils.

Integration:
Is a stand alone activity although directional instructions could link in with maths or geography lesson

Collaboration:

Mainly individual or paired activity, depending on number of pupils at the computer.

Classroom implications: would need individual pupils to record using the system on the software. Some pupils would need support with the reading content of the story.
SEN : Can be differentiated by pupil controls.

Strongest Features: Adventure story setting, colourful animation with robotic character which might appeal to pupils, particularly boys.

I would not recommend this software, would rather pupils used a hands on robot to program which integrates with other curriculum areas.

At The Cafe

Application Review
By Daniel & Wendy
20th September 2007

At The Café – Granada Learning
http://www.blogger.com/www.granada–learning.com

http://www.semerc.com/

Content:
· CD
· Guide – Covers installation, planning grids & credits
· Support Material - Large book of copyright-free sheets

1. Objectives
· Extend role-play
o Offer choices from food/drink menu
o Develop scope for conversation in different roles
o Encourage expression of preferences
· Draw-out mathematical language
· Support understanding of money (totalling bills)

2. Comparison with other software
a. Clear and concise
b. Many set-up options for personalisation


3. Integration
a. Numeracy development – Money
b. Printed Receipt to extend exploration

4. Collaboration
a. Making menu choices

5. Implications
a. To be run next to role-play area where actual items can be manipulated

6. Underlying Values
a. Food choices limited to ‘western’ menu options
b. Healthy food options available

7. SEN
a. Support would be required to understand coins

8. Strengths
a. Clarity
b. Sound effects & animations
c. Planning grids enable integration into existing schemes
d. Teacher support material

9. Summary

Simple City

Application:
Title: Simple City
Publisher: 2 Simple
Supplier: 2 Simple

Age Group Suitability: FS and Y1

Main Learning Objectives:
KUW, CLL

Potential for integration with other activities
KUW: Could be used as introduction to a topic or a role play (videos, exploring areas)
or as a follow up activity (questions, simulations)

CLL: Letters can be dragged onto screen. Sounds are pronounced when clicked on screen.

Potential for collaboration / sustained dialogue
Children are encouraged to make decisions. Vocabulary is introduced.

Comments related to SEN:
Very useful for visual and auditory learners.


Can Text be Spoken: YES
Child’s Control over the activity: HIGH
Quality of Sound / Images: GOOD
Can you print out: YES
Adult support required: SHORT INTRO

Leaps and Bounds Review

Application Review – LEAPS & BOUNDS (3-6 years)

Granada Learning
Semerc

Main Learning objective – as back cover: Sensory awareness and response, prediction and coordination skills, lengthen concentration span, develop decision making skills and encourage tracking and left/right orientation.

Easy and fast to load. No need to leave CD in.
Response (to child’s action) fast
Music, sounds, animal sounds (option to turn off)
6 types of activity, including musical keyboard, animal sounds, matching pairs – differentiated 3 levels.


Activities involved simple cause and effect, mouse control, colourful images
Some sounds and images were inappropriate e.g. when wrong monster poked tongue out and blew a raspberry!
Adult support not required

Teddy Bear Tools

Easy to set up
We think it is suitable for Foundation Stage – particularly Nursery. Would need some support or children could get ‘carried away’, especially on the ‘stamping’!
Child can move around areas easily – maybe too easily.
Sound and images were clear and bold.
The writing on Big Ted level was too complex. There was no sound on word bank - only in finished document.

2Simulate evaluation

Title: 2Simulate



Publisher: 2Simple

Supplier: 2Simple Software Ltd

Age Group Suitability

Year 2:
Unit 1 Narrative Stories with familiar settings

Year 3:
Unit 1 Reports
Unit 1 Narrative Stories with familiar settings
Unit 5 Narrative Plays

Year 4:
Narrative, Issues, Dilemmas & plays
Non-fiction Unit 1 Recounts and Reports
Unit 2 Narrative Set in Imaginary Worlds

Year 5:
Unit 3 Persuasion
Unit 2 Recounts

Year 6:
Unit 3 Arguments
Non-fiction Unit 2 Journalistic Writing


Integration with other areas of Curriculum

Literacy
Geography
PSHE


No reference to SEN support materials or differentiation.


Better used for whole class and group work using the interactive whiteboard or the pc.

Good sound and images.

Clicker Phonics

Clicker Phonics



Main learning objectives:

Teaches Phonic awareness

Red Level – discriminating between environmental sounds

Yellow Level – Id patterns in words – Develop awareness of sounds within words

Blue Level – Systematic synthetic phonic word.



Compare to alternatives – Goes above and beyond clicker, Jolly Phonics and Ruth Mishkin

Integration – Literacy, Music, ICT - KUW

Potential for group work / collaboration – High group work possible for all activities. Could be used individually or whole class.

Implications for class use – Need good speaker and microphones. Check works before use with class/groups

SEN issues – Use with Clicker 5 For use with any child with reading difficulties

Strong features – very visual, links to new letters and sound.

Summary - Great ticks a lot of boxes in terms of phonic provison and activities.

Hardware – Needs Clicker 5, Win 98, Mac OSX

test

jdfedfedj

New Term - New Look

Welcome to the new home of the Redbridge Primary ICT community. I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible @ tomorrows Subject leaders event. If you haven't booked yet, remember you can do so online @ Redbridge PDC. If there are other courses that you want to book consider then the revised course booklet can be downloaded from the widget in the sidebar.

I hope that I wont be the only author of this blog and I am therefore inviting contributions form as many of you as possible. See you soon

What has gone well and what we want more of!

You may recall that yesterday we talked about what has gone well and what we need to improve on/develop.

Here are the diagrams we complied using 2Connect

What has gone well

Areas to develop

Have I missed anything?

Post a commet and let me know

July Subject Leaders

Anthony is on time for once!

This half term we considered Internet Literacy in the light of Alan November's talk @ June's conference. If you missed Alan's talk you can download and listen to parts 1 and 2 here:

Alan November Part 1

Alan November Part 2

We were privileged to be joined by Fraser from Kartouche, he gave us a hands-on session on creating a Kartouche animation. He also provided all those in attendance with a free copy of single user software.

Trial Feedback
Val Barker gave a feedback on her recent use of the TTS tuffcam.


The Tuffcam uses USB to download, and will just download onto computer . You can copy/paste where you would like a file to be kept, file format uses windows media player.

Advantages:- easier to use at home, store, save and share.
XP finds the driver and installs.
Tuffcam had the advantage over the digital blue software as on occasion’s software does not run properly.

Children's views

Munnaan – likes the tuffcam because it has a screen,

Yasmin – recording button was easier to hold in but she felt the tuffcam did not like her because she could not turn the camera on and off.

Ameerah – says she would stay with using digital blue – because when she managed to turn the tuffcam on she could not turn it off..

Sana – finds digital blue easier to turn on and off and it stays on until you want it to turn off.

Hiccups – When recording tuffcam screen goes black and freezes giving the impression that the battery life has finished, but hen removing batteries and testing they were still full of life.

Overall –
We clearly had a problem with the on and off switch and recording. These problems then over spilled into our literacy lesson and therefore taking away the children focus on the lesson in hand.
If these problems could be rectified then I am sure they would be a big hit, as the children clearly did like the additional features and being able to manager the recording switch with much ease.

Compiled by Val Barker @ Gearies Infants

Other News:

• We have established a blogging and Podcasting Network, this involves Manford, Fairlop and Redbridge. These schools will be feeding back their findings in next years Redbridge ICT Conference. Similarly a further 3 schools are collaborating on a video conferencing project with 3 matched schools in Havering. These have yet to confirm, but more on this when we get it!
• 
  
  Promthean have loaned us two class sets of voting systems. If you would like to borrow one of these for a term then please email Anthony, who will arrange this with Chris Barlow form Promethean. If you are a Promethean user,then don't forget to register with Promethean Planet, as this website offers and amazing array of resources!
• 
  
  There are a number of courses available online- see RedbridgePDC for a reliable list of what is happening when. One such successful course was the recent Animation day, which will be repeated next year. To see what happens when Mossford and Nightingale get together and animate click on the video below:

del.icio.us- link sharing- This new web 2.0 tool allows us as a community to share what we find and find out what others in the community deem worth looking at or using in the classroom. In order to use this effectively users need to sign up for a del.ico.us account and tag websites of interest as they come across them in their surfing. We decided on using the tag redbridgeit, that way we can all subscribe to anything on del.ico.us that has that tag and we will know that it has come from a Primary ICT Coordinator in Redbridge. You can see the latest tagged sites in the side bar RSS feed. If you need help in signing up and using the service, then there is a simple instruction booklet in the sidebar too!

Powerpoint/ Slideshow

Here is the Powerpoint for today:

Freeware Applications

• Modelling Activities form SWGFL and IBoard

• Scratch -A versatile hybrid of Control and animation, from MIT. This application is free and could be an ideal tool to explore in computer clubs or/ and with gifted ICT users in Key Stage 2. You can download it free from the MIT site today. But beware it is just a bit addictive!

Google Sketchup- This tool from Google is also free and allows user to create 3D graphic models which can then be imported into Google earth. See it in action below:

What we do well and what could be better.

It was valuable to use the last 20 minutes of this session to consider the achievements and success of the Redbridge Primary ICT community, while also considering what we could do to improve upon what we offer.

Many of the comments centred around how good it has been to work together in Subject Leaders and other Networks. People wanted more of this and more in-school support. More on this in our first meeting of the new academic year.

Redbridge Conference Pictures

For all those of you who are viewing this blog in school, you may have difficuly viewing the flickr embedded pictures in the sidebar.
Therefore I have posted some below:

At the end of a very busy but very stimulating day I asked you:
What will you take away with you from today's conference?
Here are a selection of comments:

sandra said...
Wow, so much to take in.

14 June 2007 16:29
sandra said...
Alan was truly fantastic. So many ideas to take away. I have known for a while that we needed to teach children to critically evaluate the content that they use. But the question for me has always been how? Now I have several ideas which I can apply straight to the classroom. Practical ways to make my children think about where the information that they use comes from. Some of the issues raised today were quite scary, such as the upcoming software able to search face and voice patterns as well as the privacy issues which we open ourselves up for when we upload content. We feel in control of personal pages and can edit and delete them as we see fit. With archive.org that power is no longer ours. Overall a wonderful morning, which left me with many answers and yet so many more questions. Thank you for arranging for Alan to speak at the conference

14 June 2007 16:39
Nic Hughes said...
Hi there - I've said it all on my blog check it out. BLOGWow is all I can say though
14 June 2007 20:39
Gary Jelks said...
I thought Alan was mind blowing.I have however, put in steps to block www.nofiltr.com.
15 June 2007 09:26

Anonymous said...
A fantastic day!! I came away inspired by both speakers. Alan has left my brain spinning in a positive way. I have learnt important things about the Internet that previously I had not been aware of, when reflecting on the day some of the information he shared appear obvious, how old is the site? who published it? although I had no idea of how to find this information out, his comparison with a library and the stone age really helped me realise the implications for our teaching and learning in the future. "The right tools for the job in hand" springs to mind, I have to ensure the children gain a good understanding of the importance of this sentence and can use appropriate critical thinking skills when using the technology. I have already put a "searching the net" display up with many though provoking questions for the children to think about.
21 June 2007 14:48

Alan November - Inspirational

Nic Hughes writes
I could do a very long blog on the whole session... and I will but on my own blog :) http://nicholashughes.blogspot.com/2007/06/redbridge-ict-conference-2007-part-1.html Check it out. Alan truly inspired me. I bought his book and today I set up a Poem Blog for my English set, and today in class they where posting their poems. http://5nh.typepad.co.uk/5nh_poems/
Check it out and leave my kids some comments. Lets use "anonymity for good." Nic Hughes - Nightingale Primary School

May Subject Leaders

This month we consolidated the previous message around both Podcasting and E-Safety, by holding a mini competition. We began by looking at the story of Libby from Eastenders, , and used her story and CBBC's Dongle as our inspiration to complete up to 3 minutes of journalistic heaven!
The idea was to both master Podcasting and learn the Childnet SMART rules for internet safety.

So, What is Podcasting?
Podcasting is the practice of making audio (or video) files available online in a way that allows software to detect new files and download them. Podcasting is used by everyone from the BBC to deliver radio broadcasts, such as 5live and Dr Who, to small niche users on issues such as Photoshop or basket weaving.
Schools are increasingly making the most of this exciting medium, and London schools are uploading their Podcasts free to the LGFL podcasting site.

Click on here to hear a sample Podcast, created by Anthony Evans

How can it be used in Education?
The ability to upload audio broadcasts to the net means podcasts are a great tool for home study. Some schools are using the medium to help students with home revision, as seen on Teachers TV. But, it should not just be used just as Edu-radio, it can also be a means of providing children with a voice or as a means of addressing an audience, a feature of both ICT and Literacy. Children can put their work 'up-there' for others to evaluate. This is a another form of wall display, except this time many more people can view their work.
The Renewed Framework for Literacy has over 14 mentions of Podcatsing, but these are all in Keys Stage 2. Cefn Forest school in South Wales has been successfully podcasting for some time, here the children from Key stage 1 upwards put football reports and book reviews online regularly.

A further good example of Podcasting comes form Oakington Manor school, where the ICT coordinator, Ophelia Vanderpuye, works with children to create inspiring Podcasts for their radio station.

Software
To subscribe to Podcasts (including your own) you will need to download ITunes or a similar aggregator, such as Doppler. To create your Podcast (with Windows), you have two main choices:
Audacity- a free tool that allows you to combine wav or mp3 files with voice recordings. You can download it from soundforge, but you will also need to download the associated Lame encoder to export files as MP3s.
Podium- This software from Softease is quick and easy to pick up, but does not have the complicated features offered by Audacity. This makes it ideal for use in the Primary school. Look out for an upgraded version, coming soon that will allow users to layer tracks on top of each other.

Resources
Music to use within your Podcast is available from the following sites:
audio.lgfl.org (only available on London school machines)

Free sound effects, including everything from twigs snapping to toilets flushing, is available here @ soundsnap.com
Support, Manuals and Tutorials
Podcasting with Audacity video tutorials click here
Podcasting with Podium video tutorials click here
Podcasting Tutorials with Audacity PDF format click here
Tips for a successful Podcast from Wolverhampton

Links
Podium Blog
Podium Wikki
The Poducator

March Subject Leaders

We began with this rather amusing video from German TV that parodies IT support. We then had a presentation from Bill Gent on preparing for Ofsted.

We were also joined by Ophelia Vanderpuye, an AST from Brent and star of Teachers TV. She talked to us about how using 2Type has greatly improved the typing skills of her pupils, at Oakington Manor Primary. She also showcased Podium, podcasting software from Softease.
Gary Jelks from the IT Unit demonstrated Click2 Meet, a video Conferencing application from LGFL. He gave all those attending a Webcam, if you missed out, and then be sure to pick yours up in the next meeting. Later we looked @ how to use Keepvid.com to download videos from YouTube. Remember though you must respect copyright and not promote YouTube to your children.

Web links
http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/sections/vc/homepage/c2m/
http://iboard.co.uk/magicschool/
http://keepvid.com/

February Subject Leaders

Thank you for all those of you who attended our meeting in February. We networked briefly over coffee, received local updates and covered the National picture of ICT as seen by OFSTED.
We also looked at ESafety and the reliability of the Internet. Katie Chart from 2Simple visited and gave us an in-depth and hands-on presentation of 2Paint a Picture.

During this session we watched this short film,which gives a flavour of ICT in Redbridge!

You can click through today's presentation by following the slide show below:

2Paint a PIcture

Andrew Steer, ICT Coordinator @ Christchurch has tried out this new and exciting art package with Year 1 and Foundation stage pupils. These are his thoughts

Have had lots of fun playing around with the program today. Children thoroughly enjoyed using it. The photos are of reception and year1 children. Including some who would often find art fairly difficult and not much fun - they all loved it and produced some really nice stuff.

It Rocks!!!

Mixmen

Wanstead Church school, have been using the mixmen digital mixers from Digital Blue. They have been using them with their computer club and found that the children found them particularly engaging.

Here's Zak's comments on the Mixmen . Zak is in Y5 and used the Mixmen in Computer Club.

MY REPORT ON THE DIGITAL MUSIC MIXER

I thought the digital music mixer was an excellent machine because it is like a DJ and you can switch faders and also scratch sounds. I also think it is good because you can use a warp effect on the music, you can choose the style of the music whether you want House, Techno, Hip hop and a few more. You can choose sounds and record your own music. I like it because it has different settings and I loved the style of the music.

By Zak