Teaching Control in Primary Schools

After a request from a primary school asking about teaching control I put a call out on Twitter. I’ll be reviewing the responses in more detail soon but thought it worth sharing the links I got in case others can benefit from them now.

@claganach shared a link to a fantastic page of information BeeBot to Logo – engaging the primary mathematician!

Lots of people had used Scratch successfully with KS2

@MrAColley shared links to moodle courses to get you started:
http://moodle.ictcurric.org.uk/course/view.php?id=10
http://moodle.ictcurric.org.uk/course/view.php?id=17

Some people thought Scratch would be suitable for younger pupils but Kudo was suggested as a good alternative

Alice was another alternative

Thank you to everyone that helped

Using Twitter in School

I’m preparing for an in-school training session on Twitter and Blogs.  I’ve found lots of great examples of how these are being used by schools, teachers and classes.  I’ll be blogging about these soon but thought this post that I first wrote for the Northern Grid website would be useful to share.

Who are the most influential tweeters in eLearning? Simfin is one!

Friday, 25 March 2011 15:47

Northern Grid has been using Twitter for over two years and it has proved to be enormously beneficial. The obvious way we use it is to get messages out about our services and events but that’s only part of the story, and the least important part. Twitter is about connecting people, having a conversation, sharing interesting news and finding out what people think.At the simplest level it can be used for sharing the unimportant minutiae of people’s daily lives but follow the right people and you get enormous insight into the key issues of the day. It takes time to build up a list of key people and not everything you read will be of interest to you, but it is worth the effort. Don’t worry if you’re not sure what you should say on Twitter, lots of its users are interested ‘lurkers’ people who benefit from contributions from others but say very little themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that and for a lot of people a lack of time means this is all they can do, they dip in and out taking what is relevant to them. But fortunately some people do more, they share their knowledge and experiences, they use Twitter to research and share their findings, they ask for and provide support and much, much more. Since we started using Twitter we have made contact with many enthusiastic, committed and outstanding practioners. We have learned a lot from them and want others to benefit too. That’s why we’ve invited so many of them to present at this year’s Northern Grid conference. So how do you decide who to follow? Start with people you know and respect: people who have similar interests to your own. Then look to see who they follow, check out those people’s twitter streams and see if they are sharing things you’re interested in, if they are add them to your list. Over time you’ll find out who are the most interesting people you follow and through them you’ll find others. Another starting point would be to look at this list: The Top 20 most influential tweeters in eLearning, training and HR http://nowcomms.com/newsbank/webucationtweeter_result.htm These are people that are well respected and known for sharing valuable resources or ideas and it’s great to see our very own eLearning Officer Simon Finch (@simfin) at number 15. This achievement recognises that Simon is one of those key people who does much more than lurk. Also on the list are Professor Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) at number 5 and Doug Belshaw (@dajbelshaw) at number 16. Both will be at our conference in June.This list was generated after asking 500 people to nominate just one tweeter worth following, if you ask different people you’ll get a different list. Everyone needs to build their own contacts and make the list of people they follow relevant to them. This list isn’t a bad place to start though. You may want to follow @northerngrid – that’s us @the_nen – the National Education Network @the_lpn – the Learning Platform Network @simfin – the ‘influential’ Simon Finch @jackcl – more of a lurker, Christine Jack For more information Twitter Simon’s blog entry on using Twitter Twitter – share ideas and knowledge Or How to Have a Positive Twitter Experience http://simfin.wordpress.com/more/twitter/ Those Who Can Tweet – TES article 25/3/11 includes more useful people to follow http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6074409

Using Sounds, Animations and Images in PowerPoint

Copyright is an important issue for schools, teachers and pupils.  The best way of avoiding problems with copyright is to create your own images and sounds, this also allows pupils to understand how copyright relates to the work they create.  It is not always possible to create all
images and sounds you need this post lists some of the archives of sounds and images available online.  Make sure you
always check the terms and conditions. See Simfin’s blog for more information http://simfin.wordpress.com/copyright/proper-tea-is-theft/

http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/

All the resources in this Gallery have been provided freely for Educational use only. These ARE NOT copyright free: the copyright in the resource is retained by the resource owner and any commercial use is explicitly excluded.

http://search.creativecommons.org/

Creative Commons is a common standard for licencing digital assets, the licences clearly state what can and can’t be done with each asset – Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike, No Derivatives

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search?hl=en

Within their existing image search, Google added a usage rights parameter to their advanced image search. Here, you can specify whether the image should carry a license that allows reuse, commercial use, and/or modification.

http://www.openclipart.org

Openclipart is the largest collaboration community that create, share and remix cliparts. All cliparts are released to the Public Domain so they can be freely used in any project for free.

http://www.dltk-kids.com

Free colouring pages, line drawings, see http://www.dltk-kids.com/copyright.htm for copyright information – don’t sell, don’t add to websites

http://www.gifs.net/gif

Over 13,000 fun free animations for you to use on your website, add excitement to emails or just have fun!

http://www.everystockphoto.com

A search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.

http://www.freesound.org

Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse. Freesound provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to:

• browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a “sounds-like” type of browsing and more
• upload and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
• interact with fellow sound-artists!

This site is free but does require you to register and login.

Blogging in Schools

I have been working with a number of schools to explore how they can use Blogs and twitter.  While I was preparing I found lots of useful links and information includng:

Further advice and guidance on social networking, including ‘How to write a social media policy for school’ can be found on the Northern Grid website.

Using Social Media and Technology in Education Settings document from Kent County Council

Childnet International ‘Digizen’ Social Networking

Supporting School Staff (protecting yourself online)

SWGfL 360 degree safe audit tool to review current practice

Edublogger:  Tips, tricks, and help for educators and Bloggers using technology

10 Reasons to Get You Class Blogging

 Student Blogging Challenge: includes links to avatar creators

45+ Ideas for Class Blogs

BlogActionPlan

More than Just a Website (Blog post by Sharon, Year 5)

Why should school’s blog (YouTube animation)

Shift Happens