Creative ICT News

ICT Mark Update and Free Software

ICT Mark Update

Those of you in-the-know may be aware that Naacemark is about to die and be replaced by ICT Mark (logo on the left). Naacemark was the only quality mark available to schools that reflected their commitment to ICT and was originally set up by Naace, the National Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education (of which I am a member and Naacemark Assessor). About 600 schools have gone on to achieve Naacemark across the country. At the Bett show, the Government announced a new scheme to extend and replace the Naacemark called the ICT Mark. All the relevant bodies, including Naace had an input to the design of the new quality mark and the resulting work will be released at the launch on March 30th.

The Becta ICT Mark website is here.

The ICT Mark will be significantly different to Naacemark in that it includes an emphasis on pupil outcomes, and the assessment will be based on an online Self-Review-Framework. Becta (the awarding body) want as many schools as possible to use the SRF as a tool in which to improve the quality of their ICT provision, even if they don’t apply for ICT Mark. To this end, included in the SRF website will be tools for development planning and help in defining where your school is in the Framework. These tools may not be available when the site launches in April, but will be added shortly thereafter.

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that ICT Mark will be significantly more challenging than Naacemark and it will not be something that Heads and SMTs will just be able to delegate to ICT co-ordinators. Schools are also likely to need support in developing towards ICT Mark, but they will not be able to use an ICT Mark Assessor who has been involved in supporting them through the development (again, something different to Naacemark). Cost of assessment has not yet been published, but schools will need to book assessors via Becta.

I will be completing my ICT Mark Assessor training in early May and am happy to discuss support projects with any school wanting to get involved. In particular, I am happy to work in a collaborative way with a cluster of schools, as I have been doing with a Naacemark cluster in Manchester. If you would like me to talk to a local cluster group on ICT Mark, please get in touch. The ICT Mark, I am sure, will come to be seen as a significant award, especially by those bodies involved in looking at school performance (you know to whom I refer!).

Free Software

The software company that I recently helped launch has released a free tool for ICT co-ordinators to use to help manage their ICT budgets. Just visit http://www.bransoft.co.uk/ and download IT Budget. It will be free for a limited time only as we anticipate an enhanced version to be available soon. Any feedback you can give me on the product will be greatly appreciated.

This product, and the IT Inventory product sold by BRANSOFT, will both help schools to demonstrate sound management of ICT resources, and as such, their use may be used as evidence in the SRF when being considered for ICT Mark.

Blogging - still not convinced?

Next Wednesday I am pleased to be delivering a seminar on blogging to teachers in Redbridge (East London). While preparing for this I asked Peter Ford if he had any materials he could let me have. He duly dispatched a PowerPoint upon which I have based my presentation. Included in the slides were a set of statistics from Professor David Buckingham which made stark reading:

•98% of children in the UK watch 23 hours television on average a week.

•80% of children have home computers

•70% have internet access

•80% have a games console

•55% have cable or satellite tv

•25% of households have a video camera

•70% of teenagers have a tv in their bedroom; 50% have a VCR

•4% of UK children attend museums, art galleries or the theatre

•46% do not read for leisure

•Children read books on average for 15 minutes a day

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Children use computers for 80 minutes a day

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Source: Prof David Buckingham: 'The other teachers' – How do children learn from TV and new media?

http://www.nestafuturelab.org/events/past/bb_pres/db01.htm 

Also included was a quote from the same Professor:

"One could argue that schools largely failed to acknowledge and use the most significant media of the 20th century – film and television. Now, at the start of the 21st century, many of them seem to be trying to head back to the 19th. This divide or gap between school and the world outside school may in fact be growing – or at least the task of building bridges may be getting harder."

I might argue with the statement about heading back to the 19th century, but it is surely undeniable that for a variety of reasons, including lack of investment, teacher knowledge and fear of the new, few schools have yet grasped the collaborative possibilities that are avilable in the digital age. Video conferencing has largely failed due to the complex technicalities of allowing access to schools through the Regional Broadband Consortia. And many LEAs and RBCs seem to be very slow in grasping the possibilities that Web 2.0 affords.

Enter blogging. Blogging is a cheap and effective means of web publishing without the necessity of having to know anything about HTML and uploading stuff to the web. So easy is it, that teachers can use it live in the classroom to post a shared write in their literacy hour straight to the web. Suddenly, teachers and children are responsible for the content on the school website, not the poor put upon ICT co-ordinator or Senior Management Team. Suddenly, all the collaborative possibilities that the web intended to allow are available in a very easy to use format. In fact it is so simple, that there is every chance that children in your school are already blogging at home.

Blogging creates opportunities for:

• International links and home/school links
• Instant publishing of work done by your class to a real audience
• Feedback from your audience
• Easy publication of multimedia e.g. videos and podcasts
• Working inclusively with the school's whole community: governor blogs, PTA blogs, club blogs, teacher blogs...

It is quite possible to start a blog for free, e.g. www.blogger.com . This is fine for a personal blog, but I wouldn't recommend it in a school setting as it is too easy to access other blogs within Blogger. Better to invest in an educational blog site such as that provided by PMWeblogs . For £300 per annum a primary school can have a fully configurable and secure blog site with up to 100 blogs on it. The PMWeblogs site also has some excellent examples of schools already using weblogs.

What are you waiting for? To book the seminar "Creative ICT and Blogging" or to discuss the setting up of a weblog for your school, contact me at: [email protected]

Children watch TV and video for 200 minutes a day

What have you had for breakfast?

I heartily recommend Cinnamon Crunch Cereal

Yet another outstanding free web resource spotted by the eagle eyes of John Johnston at Sandaig Primary in Glasgow.

It is a brilliantly simple mixing product, ideal to produce backing tracks for podcasts and other multimedia. I say ideal, because unlike many free products of this type, it actually allows you to save your finished work as an MP3 file which can then go straight into Audacity, Windows Movie Maker, or whatever to provide a soundtrack.

Did I mention it is just great fun to play with too!

All the free multimedia web resources that I have spotted, or have been brought to my attention, are posted at: http://del.icio.us/creativeict