Requests for change - 5 steps to budgeting heaven!

Many people in the education world spend this time of year walking for miles around an indoor arena and collecting assorted pens, mouse mats and business cards. This is BETT time of year in London.

If you manage ICT in your school BETT can create pressure on your purse strings. You are highly likely to get many requests for new educational gadgetry from your colleagues, and you may even be tempted to purchase a few things yourself. How can you objectively plan to ensure value for money and not end up spending your precious budget on unnecessary things?

Ofsted's subject-specific guidance for inspectors

Ofsted updated their subject-specific guidance yesterday with specific changes to English, science, history, religious education, modern languages, physical education and music guidance. We last published Ofsted guidance in 2010, but there was an update released at the beginning of 2012.  This article refers to the ICT-specific guidance.

Is my school open today?

If you work in an LGFL school you have access to a service called Opencheck. By registering your school's status on the LGFL website your school can then be seen on the area wide map available on www.opencheck.lgfl.net.   It looks like this:

What is even better is you can run a feed directly back into your own website updating both the area wide map as well as your website in one go. 

5 questions you should ask your students

Leading a Student Home Access audit

Do you know what your students’ know about technology? Really know? Of course you might know about what you have taught them in ICT lessons – that they are capable of creating a spreadsheet that draws a complex (and colourful) pivot-graph about how your class travels to school or that they can animate plasticine with ease. But what do they do when they are not at school?

A student access survey should ideally be conducted annually and can focus on a stratified sample of students. The results will help you plan your ICT curriculum (especially important in the current environment); plan your whole-school online learning strategy and also ensure your eSafety education focuses on the issues that are relevant for your students.

Redbridge ICT courses and events for this term

Fronter Administrator

Wed 23/01/2013 09:00-15:00

If you have a technician or ICT leader in your school who does not have administrator rights on the Fronter system then they need to attend this course. This course covers all the basic system administration functions and gives you ongoing access to the Fronter support desk.

A new year and a new focus: introducing the ICT-RMC

Our blog template has been refreshed and geared up ready to go for 2013. This year we will be journeying through the Redbridge Management Calendar (ICT-RMC). The Redbridge ICT team has reviewed and analysed all the possible ICT management activities that schools are likely to need to do in any given year. Rather than producing one very long list of management tasks we have sorted all these activities into the calendar months when that activity should be actioned. What's even better news is not one month has more than 3 management tasks! If you work in a UK primary or secondary school and you are involved in ICT leadership just follow along and be inspired to action as each post is published – what could be easier than that?