Creative ICT News

Creative ICT's first Podcast

Podcasting is a relatively new phenomenon. It's a fantastic way to set up a school radio station for next to no cost. A podcast will become a regular feature of this news page and check back regularly to listen to interviews with people at the cutting edhge of ICT in schools, topical news from schools I work with and info on where to get the best free resources on the web.

Download creative_ict_podcast_30.11.05.mp3

To find out more about podcasting, come to the free seminar on Thursday 1st December at Bridge Hall Primary School in Stockport, 1:30pm. Click on the link fo more details:

http://www.creativeict.co.uk/RSS%20Seminar.pdf

Spreading Online Learning

This one had passed me by.

Apparently the BBC's Digital Curiculum (known to most people as "Curriculum Online") is going to be called "BBC Jam".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/29/jam.shtml

Report from the Naace Conference on Creativity in the Primary Curriculum

While much of the country shivered over the weekend, I was attending the Naace Conference on Creativity in the primary curriculum.

The conference was held in Edinburgh and featured workshops and seminars from the Scottish Learning and Teaching programme’s Masterclass teachers (early adopters and pioneers of creativity and ICT).

Two presentations stood out:

Andrew Gallagher’s presentation on his Moving Image Education project. Funded by a host of bodies including the Scottish Executive and the British Film Institute, Andrew has been working with 9 Scottish primary schools on integrating the moving image into the curriculum. His use of movie clips from a very obscure Swedish film about a child and a wolf demonstrated powerfully how children’s imagination is fired by film and how it can inspire incredible insight and speaking and listening simply by asking the right questions: “What happened next?”…

John Johnston of Sandaig Primary School in Glasgow showed how easy it is to set up a school radio station with minimal money and resources. The children at Sandaig see podcasting and blogging as part of their everyday educational experience and use these very simple techniques to publish their work to a wider audience.

http://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/

To find out more about just how easy it is to use blogging and podcasting in school, come to the free Creative ICT seminar this Thursday at Bridge Hall Primary School in Stockport:

http://www.creativeict.co.uk/RSS%20Seminar.pdf

I also found out about two free pieces of software that are worth having:

Microsoft Photo Story 3

This neat little program allows you to put together a series of photos, add music, captions and narration and save them as a Windows Movie (wmv) file for publication on the web or on a network. The neat bit is that it automatically pans and zooms on the photographs – much more interesting than just a plain slideshow. This is a great resource for teachers wanting to put together a simple, yet arresting slideshow of a trip, a performance or about their school etc. Requires Windows XP and Windows Media Player 7 or later. (you can also send photo stories to Windows enabled mobile phones or PDAs with Windows Media Player 10).

Artrage

I can’t believe this is a free piece of software. A really neat art program in the vein of Dazzle or Fresco. Not as complex, but a really nice interface and one great feature – it allows you to load an image on the canvas as a background, which you can then trace, and when you’ve finished, remove the background. Brilliant for use on a whiteboard or graphics tablet/ tablet pc, but will still work with a mouse. Works on a Windows 98 and onwards or a Mac.

http://www.ambientdesign.com/artragedown.html

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Free Blogging and Podcasting Seminar

Blogging and Podcasting are just the kind of new technobabble words that are guaranteed to put people off from investigating them. Too modern, too cool, untried etc. Actually these new ways of using the Internet do apply to schools, they are incredibly useful, easy to use, and cost the school next to nothing.

Here are just some of the things you could do with blogging and podcasting:

• Have children put news items about their clubs onto your school website – without any website formatting skills

• Update your school’s news page yourself – as often as you like

• Notify parents automatically that new information is available on the school’s website – without using email

• Create a school radio program that can be broadcast on the internet

• Have children/parents record newsletters spoken in their home language and make them available

• Set uplinks with schools overseas and post news, pictures, files for your partners to download

• Learn how to automatically scan all the websites that you visit to improve your time management

The technology is simple to use and costs practically nothing. It will change the way you and your school use the Internet.

Find out more: Creative ICT are holding a free seminar on this subject on Thursday December 1^st at 1:30pm at Bridge Hall Primary School in Stockport. There are only 30 places, so booking is essential.

Who should attend: Headteachers or ICT co-ordinators.

To download details of the seminar and venue: Click here

Thanks for Coming

Thank you to all those schools who attended the intY and Creative ICT seminar at the Lowry yesterday. Everybody who came along said that it was an very interesting and stimulating event. More information about the intY web solution for education will be posted shortly.

Last Chance to Register

On Friday morning, Creative ICT are holding a seminar at the Lowry Art Gallery in Salford in conjunction with intY.

IntY are a commercial provider of Internet services to businesses and, increasingly, to schools. Based in Bristol, they are the fastest growing technology company in the west. My link to intY goes back over three years when we chose the company to provide Internet services to my school (Crumpsall Lane Primary School). The product has been such a success, and the level of support and service provided so good, that when the LEA offered us the opportunity to join the new LEA broadband network, we turned them down.

The seminar attempts to explain some of the Internet jargon that is out there and looks at how you can run a safer Internet environment in school. There is also a discussion on possible alternatives to LEA broadband systems. Session headings include:

• Internet jargon explained
• The Internet and an employer – education’s duty of care
• Effective Internet monitoring – policies & protocols
• Alternatives to LEA broadband networks

Over forty schools have already registered, and there are only a few places left.

To register, follow this link:  http://www.inty.com/seminarRegistration.aspx?pageId=171

I hope to see you there.

Educational Blog Policy

This article caught my eye today:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20411-1799946,00.html

In summary, it cites examples of people who have been suspended or lost their jobs as a result of postings they made on blogsites. It has never been easier for disgruntled employees to vent their spleen online via a blog. I began to consider the implications for schools when, spookily, I came across this article in the TES this week:

http://www.tes.co.uk/2154025

In truth, there is very little you can do about this, other than to be aware of it and its implications. Individuals are protected by libel law, but is there a case for including a clause in your school's Acceptable Use Policy to prohibit the posting of personal and defamatory remarks against an individual or the school? At least that way, awareness of the issue might be raised.

Interestingly, the DfES' opinion on weblogging in schools is that its use is no more risky than any other form of web publishing.

http://safety.ngfl.gov.uk/schools/document.php3?D=d77

Conversation with Earl Mardle

I have just had a long conversation with Earl Mardle.

Earl who?

Earl Mardle is an Aussie technology guru who has carved out a name for himself in developing global collaborative projects using ICT. So successful has he been that he is on the jury of the international Stockholm Challenge.

http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/

I have been talking for sometime to Awasu, also based in Australia, trying to get around some of the issues relating to children using blogs in an educational setting. In particular, I was concerned about children posting inappropriate language and that this could be cut off at source by employing a banned wordlist, or by teachers previewing blogs before posting.

Earl's comments were interesting:

1. Using banned wordlists and the like do not stop the posting of inappropriate comment: there are so many abbreviations and acronyms for abusive language - many of which come from txtspeak, that it is virtually impossible to generate a sensible list.
2. If you make the teacher responsible for vetting all postings, who is responsible for anything that was missed?
3. Most of the really inappropriate stuff in blogs is reached via weblinks - which banned wordlists don't check.

Earl's answer is to tackle the problem of inappropriate content in the classroom by peer critique: put up the offending blog; discuss its content; consider who might be affected/offended. In short, help the children understand that their actions on the internet carry consequences.

Earl Mardle's own blog can be found here:

http://www.kn.com.au/

These issues and many more will be tackled at the Creative ICT seminar on blogging to be held on 1st December 2005 in Stockport. Visit the Creative ICT website for details.