Games Based Learning

Not sure how many people caught this.
Its interviews on the BBC with Derek Robinson about the Consolarium project and the Nintendo DS. Its national news it seems as now after the inital trail the Scotish Goverment are now rolling it out on a larger scale in 16 schools.

We are currently creating a small test bed project of our own in Redbridge.

Its a shame that both the opponants to Derek didn't seem to understand the point of the DS.

Derek himself says that its its 'Good Teachers use good resources." Its about getting children switched on to learning. The DS and games in general can allow teachers to open doors to learning and achivement.

Check them out - what do you think?

We'd love to hear your commments.

More information can be found here.

Redbridge ICT Conference - 21st Century Learning

The Redbridge ICT Conference is coming soon on the 19th May 2008.

The theme will be 21st Century Learning.

The Keynote speakers are:

Ewan Mackintosh - who will be discussing 21st Technology in schools.

Karl Hopwood (TBC) - who will be talking about E-Safety

Along with these inspirational speakers there will be opportunities to look at good practice from primary and secondary schools throughout the borough.

You can book now at redbridgepdc.org.uk.

See you then.

CPD @ the PDC

We (Nicholas, Gary, Peter and I ) are constantly looking to improve the courses we run at the teachers Centre. I have found that some courses have had less than 8 delegates and this is a shame when the quality of some of our outside provider courses has been excellent.

As I begin to put together the course list for 08/09, I have asked you to tell me what you think of our courses, what your ICT priorities are and whether there were any courses that we could deliver that we are not delivering.

Check your email for a link to the Google form and watch this space for updates, but already I am observing some interesting feedback.

For instance under ICT priorities, the following have come up:

• multimedia

• learning platforms

• cross-curricular ICT

• Embedding ICT across the curriculum

• Improving use of whiteboards

• 'Curriculum ICT' priorities- Control and Web 2.0

• improve teaching and learning

• Making Anytime Anywhere Learning a reality. Want to expand the school network. Want to include extensive use of digital media in learning. Updating the skills and ICT usage of staff.

• To use innovation in ICT, update schemes of work and ensure that every child's potential for ICT is realised

• Animations

• Control
  

• ICT scheme of work, ICT and the 'renewed frameworks'

I am saddened to read from some entrants that they did not know what was available, and encouraged to read that some of our courses were inspirational.

Upon further reflection I also think that, perhaps the killer question that I omitted was :

Has the central CPD had any impact on your Teaching and your childrens' learning?

Do get involved and don't forget the Facebook group:

Newham is Live and Free

Well done to Ken, Karen and the team @ Newham, their ICT scheme of work is now online and open-source. Many of our schools, our leading teachers and myself have been looking at these resources over the last few months, and we have all been impressed with the detail of the materials and the inclusion of help videos and support documents. There are also teaching materials in the form of brilliantly presented whiteboard files in Activ Primary Format.**

What's more the materials address skills while still basing the units within a themes, so they are both 'teaching the skills' and allowing for 'the cross-curricular'.

Redbridge schools that have Activ-Primary and a dull,wilting ICT scheme work could pick this up of the shelf and use it. Though its is to be remembered that the units are based on Newhams toolkit of Primary software and many of our schools may not have software such as Dazzle.

However a good ICT coordinator could take these post QCA materials as a starting point and fashion them to their school.

***But hang on we don't have Activ Primary - easily solved- either use SMART board software to open th e Activ File (version 10 will do this) or download a free Activ primary Viewer.

ICT Inspirations: Making a Floor Compass With A Probot

ICT Inspirations: Making a Floor Compass With A Probot

Video Conference Form

At 10:57 this morning the form for VC booking (see below) looked like this.
The power of Google Docs!!!

Space Centre Link Up

Note this post is also on the VC Blog

During our Subject Leaders Event we hooked up with the National Space Centre in Leicester to chat with Charlotte. We were told about a new E Mission for Key Stage 2 , which is open to Redbridge schools.

We aim to offer these to 6 schools over week beginning the 30th of June. If you are interested in taking part and hosting an E Mission, then you will need to attend a prior training session at the Teachers Centre with myself and MinaPatel on the 12th of June. Once you have applied to take part in the E Mission and this has been accepted, you will need to register for the course by booking on Redbridge PDC

If you have never seen an E Mission before, then you can look at how Parkhill Juniors got on with their Operation Montserrat mission earlier this year. You may remember that Rob from Redbridge was really enthused by the E mission at his school too, and took some time to tell us about it @ our last Subject Leaders event.

The Emission event will take place around 10am or 1pm on the week beginning the 30th of June 2008. If you were at the Subject leaders event, then you should have been sent a google form to express interest, if not then you can access the form here, or email Anthony Evans @ the usual address.

ICT and Inclusion Course- free

As a Redbridge Teacher you are entitled to free attendance at Senjit courses.One of which is:

Inclusion and ICT in the Primary Classroom
on
17th March 2008
10:00am- 3:30pm
@
The Institute of Education

Senjit (Special Educational Needs Joint Initiative for Training) is a partnership between the Institute of Education and local education authorities which provides short courses, support groups, local training and consultancy for teachers and other professionals working on inclusion and special educational needs.

The course above is described as follows:

This course will explore the range of resources and
approaches available to primary teachers to help improve
curriculum access through the use of ICT. The main focus
will be on commonly available programs, but some
reference will be made to specialist resources, both
software and hardware. Tutor: John Galloway.

Further details can be found on their website, click here