Saturday 31 May 2008

Redbridge ICT Conference Roundup.

In case you missed last weeks conference, here are three videos of the event.

Videos:
Introduction to the conference



Ewan McIntosh



Karl Hopwood



In case you missed last weeks conference, here are links to 3 podcasts of the event.
(To be added soon)
1. Introduction to the Event bu Antony Evans and Peter Shepard.
2. Ewan McIntosh - Participation Culture
2. Karl Hopwood - e-Safety in schools

Thursday 29 May 2008

Dawn's conference notes

Thanks to Dawn Halybone who has sent in her notes she made during the conference and Teachmeet.

Website updates!!!!
Here are some fab websites that I have found – hopefully they will prove useful!

http://www.jumpcut.com/ – enables you to share photos and videos – you can also re arrange adverts from top name brands – a useful link to Literacy perhaps?

http://www.earth.google.com/ – when the new system gets put in this will be on the system – a fantastic tool for Geography and used in conjunction with Flickr enables you to ‘fly’ to your destination.

http://www.flickr.com/ - a fantastic photo sharing website – I am currently setting up a group site – similar to blogging but will enable us to upload art work – this site enables you to do amazing things – can create a galaxy, put post it notes on photos – really worth checking out! It also has some great groups – classroom displays – lots of ideas!, six word story – does what it says in the name, tell a story in 5 frames – again does what it says on the tin!
http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/ - a website that gives advice and lessons on e safety!

http://www.gogivers.org/kids_home.cfm a great PHSE resource with lesson plans and ability for children to create timelines and vote for school councillors.

http://www.classtools.net/ – some excellent ‘games’ for IWB – includes a fruit machine which randomly selects childrens names for answering questions and my favourite a timer that counts down to tv theme tunes including mission impossible and Dr who!

Wednesday 28 May 2008

Gearies Infants - Well Done




Well done to Gearies Infants, who have just been awarded the ICT mark.

Flickr Slideshows Again

Yesterday I posted about a tool that allows you to embed a slide show of Flickr images (Pictobrowser), though this is a great tool which gives a nice clean display, it did not allow me to create a show of images based on a group or tag. Now I have found a slideshow tool that allows me to create a show based on either a user, group or tag. This has allowed me to embed a slide show on the Teachmeet site based on the tag teachmeetnel. Great!!

The slide show below is a display of all the images from the London borough of Redbridge Pool and was easy to embed, once you found the group id. Instructions for which are given on the Flickr Slide show Generator website. but if you miss them you need to:

Go to the group you want to get pictures from -
click on post new topic -
the url will end with a long code like this 38113494@N00
copy this part of the url and paste into the group id box of
Flickr Slideshow Generator
Copy the code and paste onto your site/blog
Easy

The London Borough of Redbridge Flickr Pool - enjoy

Tuesday 27 May 2008

Sth Woodford School First For Brain Training (from This Is Local London)

Sth Woodford School First For Brain Training (from This Is Local London)

New Tools and links May 08

Here are some new tools and general links that have been buzzing around my feed reader over the last few weeks. There are probably over 30 more but I have only included a small selection here. I hope these are tools that you would find useful in the classroom.

Let me know your thoughts and perhaps you can input comments below or at the next ICT Subject Leaders event (9th of July or course book now @Redbridgepdc)

Aniboom.com-










Aniboom is a great place to watch short animations, and thus would be a great springboard for animation projects. Though as with every site, check it out before you share it out! There are also two free creative tools on the site that allow you to make your own animations. There is the Shapeshifter tool which allows you to create simple animations using the geometric shapes. It seemed quite easy to use, though there were some small irritations, such as not being able to copy and paste shapes and group objects only seemed to last per frame. However there were some nice tools and effects, for example you could add music and there appeared to be folders of special effects, which I have yet to explore. I also like the bomb icon which basically made all your shapes explode gradually across the screen- instant animation there! The completed animation could quickly and easily be saved as a gif , file- thus this could then be stored on a hard drive for pasting into SMART notebook, PowerPoint or uploaded to a website.

Alongside the Shapeshifter, the site also has a web cam application (Microsmotion) that lets you capture images and add silly effects. For instance you can marvel as an arrow goes through your head or you can bounce a (virtual) football on your head.


Have a look and enjoy ( lets hope Aniboom isn't blocked in school!!)

A big 8.76 out of 10 for me on this one!

IBoard New Maths


Subject Leaders and and anyone on any of my IWB training gigs will be familiar with this one. Its those lovely IBoard sims and demo tools again, but this time they are all pegged down to the Renewed Framework.I had been showing these on a BETA site, but now the product is officially on the London Grid for Learning (apologies non London people) and will therefore work in school or @ home with your LGFL logon. I note the site is still in BETA version and though most things work as they should, there is still the occasional anomaly and some things don't work as you'd want or expect, but there is the opportunity to feedback your comments and this will allow the developer to update and improve the tools.










The write up on the LGFL site goes something like this:


The popular i-board resources on LGfL have now been upgraded to provide complete coverage for the renewed numeracy framework. They are organised into the seven new strands across each year group for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 .


There are 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



I have been using these for quite a while now and I like them a lot, they are great for lessons that involve any sort of scales or measurements. Furthermore the images and animation is bright and easy on the eye without the patronising silly reward dances of some Maths content sites. But then these are not games, they are teaching tools in the style of ITPs.










The more I play with this site- the more I find that I like and feel could be useful to be included in a Key Stage 1 Teachers toolbox of models, images and simulations.

My current favourites so far are:


The Interactive Number Square- which includes paint brushes to highlight squares and a magic wand for making numbers disappear or reappear.


Pizza bears- share out the pizza for the bears and if there are

not enough to go round then slice it up. This is a nice open ended simulation with no right or wrong, hence allowing for lots of discussion and possibilities.





Many of you Redbridge bloggers have often asked me - how do I embed a Flickr slideshow on my blog, well currently I think Pictobrowser is the easiest tool for this and seems to give the best results. See the example below:




Friday 23 May 2008

Fairlop Primary @ the ICT Conference

Click on the link to see Fairlop covrage of this event: link

Karl Hopwood




















Many of you asked for Karl Hopwood's links from his presentation. I have included them all here, a huge thank you to him, for passing these on to me:

Child Safety Online - teaching resources

http://www.childnet.com/kia/traineeteachers/default.aspx4-7 year olds

www.hectorsworld.com excellent resources for all ages but good for KS1 – incl. lesson plans and useful activities

www.nettysworld.com

7 – 11 year olds

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/8_10/

www.childnet-int.org Ongoing excellent materials including for teachers and parents

www.kidsmart.org.uk Primary and secondary resources created by childnet

11 – 16 year olds

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/11_16/

http://www.netsmartz.org/netteens.htm

Cyberbullying

www.digizen.org.uk Created by Childnet for DCSF – brilliant resource with video and comprehensive lesson plan

Validity and Bias

www.allaboutexplorers.com Superb site which contains a lot of very useful information. Ideal for a teacher who isn’t too confident about some of this.

Social Networking

www.safesocialnetworking.com Bebo’s site for safety. Contains some good videos and other resources. Also accessible via www.bebo.com/safety provided you don’t filter Bebo!

Video Resources

Webcam sex is bad! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdYdRPEG0y8&mode=related&search

Where is Klaus? http://a124.g.akamai.net/7/124/30915/v0001/gff.download.akamai.com/30915/klicksafe_english.mpg

Think before you post http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/adcouncil/26474/

CEOP films and other resources http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers/ sign up on the site

For further information on resources, lessons and esafety in general please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Karl.Hopwood@swgfl.org.uk I hope that the session was useful.

Space Centre Emission



This is a reminder post about the June Space Centre Video Conference or Emission


My Records show the following schools and their designated places for week commencing 30th of June


If your school is featured and you have not booked a place on the pre Emission training afternoon, please do so as soon as possible.
(see redbridgepdc for details)

Monday 30th June am Alison Seagrave Parkhill Junior

Monday 30th June pm Gill Webb Chadwell


Tuesday 1st July am Mike Lane Woodlands Junior

Tuesday 1st July pm Nicholas Hughes Nightingale Primary

Wednesday 2nd July am Wendy Mears CoppicePrimary

Wednesday 2nd July pm Nicky Palmer FairlopPrimary School

Thursday 3rd July am vacant

Thursday 3rd July pm David Roca-Mas St Augustines

Friday 4th July am Cassim Bana Aldersbrook


Friday 4th July pm Nadine Weiderman Barley Lane

If I have messed up your time slot or missed you out altogether- please let me know.

Thursday 22 May 2008

Conference Animoto

Conference Aftermath







Thank you to all of you who came along to the conference. we hope to have a podcast of Ewan's speech and Karl's powerpoint posted here too. In the meantime, check out our write up in the Ilford Recorder, released today
Click on the image for the full story (opens as PDF)