Students from Oaks Park spoke at the opening ceremony of the London-New York video conferencing partnership, set up by Mina Patel from London Grid for Learning.
Representatives and students from London and New York schools and local government were linked by video conference at the Tower Hamlets City Learning Centre. There was a ceremonial cutting of the ribbon by Lord Jim Knight (former Minister for Schools) in London and Charles Dedrick (District Superintendent) in New York.
Both Lord Knight and the Mayor of Havering were impressed with our students and they also found an appreciative audience in the New York students.
Here is the link to the news on Teachers TV taken by ITN
If you are in a London school, and today is the 8th Feb, follow this link to watch the live Redbridge/China celebration of Chinese New Year - mms://media.lgfl.org.uk/cny
Programme Feb 8th 2010
8.50 - 9.00 Welcome from Presenters
9.00 -9.10 A Chinese Tale from 125 School Beijing KS2/3 - 125 School Beijing, China read a traditional story. What does the Year of the Tiger mean to the Chinese?
9.10 - 9.20 Mayor Chan (the first Chinese Mayor in Britain) welcomes schools to the video conference All Key Stages - The Mayor of Redbridge - Councillor Thomas Chan - Ask the Mayor a question
9.20 - 9.30 Beal High School - A Chinese Drama KS3/4 - An interactive Chinese Drama
9.30 - 9.45 An Interview with Angela May - Fullwood Primary School All Key Stages - Put our Oriental presenter on the hot spot
9.45 - 10.00 Glade Primary School - Chinese Exercise KS2 - Get ready to exercise with the pupils from Glade Primary
10.00 - 10.15 A Chinese Calligraphy lesson All Key Stages - Learn to write some Chinese letters. Get your pens and paper ready!
10.15- 10. 30 Mayfield School KS3/4 - The Olympics - 'Then and Now'
10.30 - 10.45 Oaks Park High School, Chop Stick Championships All Key Stages - A Chopstick Games and other Chinese activities
10.45 - 11.00 More questions for Angela May All Key Stages - Do you have any questions for Angela?
11.00- 11.15 Chinese Lion Dancers All Key Stages - A Chinese Lion Dance live
11.15-11.30 Seven Kings High School - A play in Mandarin KS3 – The pupils of SKHS act out a play ‘Finding Friends’ in Mandarin
11.30 - 11.45 Redbridge Primary School - International Food KS2 - International Food
11.45 - 12.00 A lesson in Thai Chi with Siman Yue All Key Stages - Take part in a Thai Chi lesson with a Thai Chi professional
12.00 - 12.15 Snaresbrook Primary School - Learn to speak some basic Mandarin KS2 – Learn some basic Mandarin language with Snaresbrook Primary
12.15 - 12.30 Wanstead High School - Take the Chinese Challenge All Key Stages - A quiz about China
12.30 Close
You are very welcome to join in by watching and letting us know how you have used this link.
The London Grid for Learning, working in partnership with Redbridge, will be hosting a videoconference for primary and secondary schools to celebrate the Chinese New Year on 8th February 2010 (8.50am - 12.30pm), live from the Redbridge Teachers’ Centre. LGfL is preparing to link up live by video to schools across London, the UK and China. The first Chinese Mayor in Britain – Mayor Chan will be opening the conference and welcoming schools from China and all over the UK.
Click here to view the programme for the event. Schools that are directly involved in presenting on the day are:
Beal High School
Fullwood Primary School
Glade Primary School
Mayfield School
Oaks Park High School
Seven Kings High School
Redbridge Primary School
Snaresbrook Primary School
Wanstead High School
We would, however, like to invite all of you to watch the live stream on the day, so please, click on this link on Monday Feb 8th -
Inviting all KS1 classes via JVCS –Parkhill Junior School – Redbridge offer you a Video Conference session with a twist!
Stories with a Twist -This is a collaborative VC session aimed at supporting Speaking and Listening skills in Literacy at KS1. A group of year 6 children at Parkhill have written stories "with a twist". The VC session lasts for approximately 20 minutes. This will involve the children from Parkhill reading two stories and answering questions from their KS1 audience. This will be followed by the participating school performing 2 charades based on Nursery Rhymes or Stories for the Parkhill children to guess. Dates available:- 20 minute Wednesday morning sessions on:
20th May 2009.
10th June 2009,
17th June 2009,
24th June 2009.
1st July 2009,
8th July 2009.
Parkhill Junior School will set up a joint Blog for both schools to publish the work and to add comments to. Click here to see an example:- http://www.scargillandparkhill.blogspot.com/
Joining Instructions:
For more information please contact Alison Seagrave, ICT Curriculum Development Manager, Parkhill Junior School. Tel: 020 8550 5253. email: parkhill-jnr.redbridge@lgfl.net
Max Wainwright from 2Simple shows 2DIY for the first time
Welcome back and happy 2 oh 9. Its going to be another exciting year for Primary ICT, with even more innovative gadgets and software filling the shelves of this weeks BETT show. And as always Redbridge ICT people will be carrying on the innovation and consolidation of good ICT Tech and Teaching
In this weeks issue:
Diary Dates Primary Review Initial thoughts Begin the year with a blog Redbridge Primary ICT @ BETT In the News
Diary Dates
The following dates are on RedbridgePDC , but they may have passed you by:
04 February 2009 - London MLE Show and Tell 14:00 - 1600 find out how the MLE / Fronter is being is used in London schools. Also that day for your technicians there is a MLE: Administrators' Workshop from 10:00 until 13:00 -further details and for queries please email Alex Rees
11 February 2009 - Teaching the Control Element of KS2 ICT - a course lead by Gary Stevens of 147 group pm Logo, Lego and Control - a very popular, stretching and worthy course- places till available
12Th March 2008 - Primary ICT Subject Leaders Meeting - Supply cover paid - an excellent, high quality day of input and hands-on learning from Nicholas, Anthony and Doug Dickinson - be there or miss out- more details and agenda to follow soon - so far we have taken 22 bookings - roughly 50% of our schools - is that you and if its not why not - why are you missing out on supply cover paid networking, cpd and up to the minute news and ICT inspiration
18Th March 2009 ICT and Renewed Frameworks in Literacy lead by Rebecca Stainsby and Anthony Evans - places still available
The Primary Curriculum Review - Initial Thoughts
(note there should be a video from the Telgraph under here- be patient)
Last December saw the publication of the interim report of the Primary review, headed up by Jim Rose. This is very exciting and important for ICT as the report recognised that ICT needed to take a greater part in children's learning. In terms of ICT the report raised this and other key points,mainly:
The curriculum and teaching and learning has not always kept pace with children's passion for and agility with ICT
Many of the topics for ICT @ KS3 could move into KS2
There still needs to be a good balance of both discrete and cross-curricular teaching
Currently we are waiting to see what the new guidelines for ICT @ primary will look like, but by September 2011, we will be teaching a revised and a more fit for audience Primary ICT curriculum. This is surely well overdue, when you consider the publication of the QCA schemes of work for ICT was 1st of January 1998! It is interesting to note that the whole issue of 21st Century skill has been given a lot of debate around the blogosphere of late. While Rose has published his review a US document was published in 2007, that tries to categorise the skills needed for 21st Century learners. This was been put togther by Education Authorities and organisations such as Cisco, Adobe and Miscrosoft. Have a look at 21stcenturyskills.org
We will of course keep you posted with developments..
Begin the year with a blog
Many Redbridge Primary schools are dispensing with a reliance on the static polished website and choosing blogging as a means of quick publishing of news and events. This is in line with the advice that both Redbridge Primary ICT and Mina Patel from the LGFL give. We recognise that the Digital Brain Platform can be difficult and cumbersome to use as a platform to publish regular weekly class or whole school news, and therefore one model is to have a website as a sort of E prospectus, alongside a school blog, for weekly and even daily updates.
Some schools have taken this even further and are experimenting with blogging as a way to engage children with writing through commenting on each others ICT or Literacy work.
Look at the examples below and consider whether your school would benefit from having a blog, speaking as a regular borough and personal blogger I find it a far easier and quicker way of publishing news than a conventional website.
Examples
The definitive Redbridge school blog is run by Fairlop Primary, where every class has a blog linked to the main school blog. Parents at the school look forward to the regular news updates. The school news comes in the form of either images, videos, text or links to the school podcasts. Through embedded widgets in this website they are able to track their readers from across the globe.
Have a look at Fairlop blogs here
A new blog on the block comes from John Bramston Primary, which started last term. It is a packed site, with regular updates, which include both images,text and video. Alongside the main page of whole school news, there is also a individual class pages, which cover such topics as 'Star of the Week' and a description of the Literacy that has been covered.
I am sure you'll agree the blog is a great way of creating better home school links, as children now have an easier way to answer the question, 'What did you do @ school?' - now they can guide their parents/carers mouse to the answer.
There are other schools worth looking at as an example of what your blog may look like, these are:
Ripple Junior in Barking and Dagenham was shown to us at a recent Consultant meet- Gillian from B and D showed us a Blog that wasn't just about news sharing but used the commenting function to promote writing and editing. Have a look at the sidebar guidance for children on how the teacher would like the pupils to write using standard English.
Have we forgotten you ?
Give me your blog address, name and school, and we'll include you in our next issue:
Cleveland Blogs Buzz
By far one of the most exciting schools blogs to come to my attention recently has been the Cleveland Junior school blogs. Here the children are really participating by using the comment function and judging each others entries in online animation competitions. The school is also facilitating it's own safe online chat room, which is proving a very popular online hang out and place where children can share tips and ideas for animation. What's more children are using this as a place for friend sourcing and those that might not find talking to others in school very easy, are instead finding the online room a safer and easier place to talk. I recently visited the school and used my Flip to record Anjum and Simon (network manager) describing how they have been using both the blogs and the chat room and how the children have responded.
This week we will be at Bett, Nicholas and I are there on Friday, and you may also see me on a certain stand on Saturday. We have a rough itinerary as follows:
Visit the RM stand and the Steljes stand to see an Interactive Table- The RM stand will have real children using the Microsoft Surface There will also be other gadgets and tools and we want to talk to the children, not the sales reps about their value - stand D60
We will of course visit the Fronter stand to talk about how schools are using the London MLE stand K9
Each of the main IWB platforms deserve a visit and I am keen to see the Activ Expression from Promethean in action - stand B30
The Net book is the device to have at the moment, but which is the best model for a primary school and should one buy Linux or Windows, Fizzbook or Asus- the Microsoft stand features a giant wall of Netbooks and other suppliers like Tag learning will be showcasing robust netbook, designed for the classroom. We'd like to see as many as we can in order to be better informed. see the Microsoft stand at D40
The 2Simple Stand will showcase new French Software and 2DIY - games and electronic drag and drop making software. see my film of 2Diy on my blog here and visit the stand on F59
One of the high points of Bett will be Teachmeet - last year this event inspired us to run our own successful event at Redbridge and begun our exciting work with Asus devices and games consoles. It was here that Nicholas and I heard Derek Robinson talk about his work in Scotland with the Nintendo and Brain Training.
Who knows what we'll learn form the mini and nano presentations and in the networking with great ICT minds.
Redbridge ICT in the News
This week Redbridge Primary schools have appeared in the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian for their work with Nicholas Hughes on Video Conferencing - read more here... Nicholas's work builds on the long established tradition of Video Conferenicing in the borough pioneered by Alison Seagrave at Parkhill and others. Long may it carry on.
Other media stars of the moment include our very own Lynn Bailey from Redbridge Primary in the December edition of 'Sharing Good Practice', the weekly ICT magazine. (Heat magazine for Geeks)
Lynn wrote about a mini digital USB microscope and how she and others had used it across the school.
Read the article below and if you haven't already, then sign up to receive the weekly edition of Sharing Good practice.
Starting today Nightingale Primary School, Oakdale Junior School and Wanstead Church all started working on a science themed Video Conference project. Click here to find out more.
Another Video Conference event - you may have missed the details for: This also comes to me from Mina Patel
Hello again everyone, you may have heard about this Video Conference from Brian too.
However once again I hope you are able to forward this message onto your Literacy/English advisors KS2 and KS3/4 and to schools who you know may wish to take part. The schools could take part in the poetry writing competition only if they wish, or just the Video Conference, or take part in both.
National Poetry Day - October 9th 2008 – London Event (and Competition!) by Videoconference hosted by Havering LA
LGfL partnering with Havering LA would like to invite you to take part in this National Competition. The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day is `Work`. So in order to celebrate this, we would like children to write poems about different jobs. We are delighted that authors Alan Peat and Gervase Phinn have been secured to judge the finalists. Deadline for handing in competition entries is September 30th. Please visit this link to read about the prizes and rules: http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/sections/poetryday/homepage/poetry%20comp/?verb=view
We would also like to invite you to take part in a videoconference for primary and secondary schools during National Poetry Day, on October 9th 2008, starting at 8.50 am and ending at 3.15pm. Please visit www.poetryday.lgfl.net to see the programme for the day.
Hi there everyone, guess you may have already heard about this VC event from Brian.
However, I just thought I`d send you all an email so you could possibly forward this to your EMA Team, or schools you personally know that may want to take part.
Final call for Black History Month Video Conference – Register before 26th September, 3pm.
The London Grid for Learning, working in partnership with Redbridge Ethnic Minority Advisory Team and ICT team, would like to invite schools to take part in a videoconference for KS2 during Black History Month - 'People of Achievement Past and Present' on October 1st starting at 8.50 am and ending at 12.10pm.
Schools can take part via video conference or via the live stream and using the live forum. Schools do not need VC equipment to take part. Just an internet connection needed.
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.
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
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.
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.
Students from Oaks Park spoke at the opening ceremony of the London-New York video conferencing partnership, set up by Mina Patel from London Grid for Learning.
Here is the link to the news on Teachers TV taken by ITN
