Tag-Archive for ◊ vital ◊

Going old school
Thursday, February 10th, 2011 | Author:

I’ve been thinking about ICT, it’s kinda what I do as ICT coordinator, but I’ve been thinking a bit bigger. I love the exciting projects such as green screening, rolling out Google Apps or testing QR codes, but I was wondering if there was something missing. I was at a Lead ICT Teacher meeting a few weeks ago and we talked ipads, digital leaders and video conferencing, but someone brought up the great point that there are lots of schools not doing this stuff and thinking ICT is a massive chore. It can be, but it can also be exciting.

So I was thinking about the quick wins for schools. What are the easy things that can be done with little hassle and more importantly, little money. podcasting is one thing that sprung to mind, £10 for a decent microphone and record some sound from a music performance, a poetry reading or a persuasive argument.

So next week’s Vital ICT chat will be focusing on simple ideas. Lots of tiny things that might get people excited and might lead on to other things too. The chat will take place on Wednesday February 16th from 8pm. Further details (and a recording afterwards) can be found here. You do need to login, but it’s free and there’s loads of stuff there too.

So, please put your mind in that of a school that might want some way of getting started. Where do they go for help? What tools are there out there to get them going?

There is the excellent Interesting Ways series from Tom Barrett (and others) available here, but where else could teachers go to get ideas? I’m not talking about Twitter as such because it takes a special kind of teacher to make that jump. I’m thinking reluctant teachers. Ones that might have been given ICT.

Of course, these ideas could be useful for anyone and everyone.

So please share your ideas in the comments here or in the replies on the discussion forum. It could be tools, websites, resources, hardware, software, whatever…

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags:  | 2 Comments
Looking back…(and forward a bit)
Thursday, December 30th, 2010 | Author:

I wrote last year about my predictions and plans for 2010 and looking back, it seemed like I only planned for the first few months of the year! I talked about Bett, which is always a highlight, our Hampshire VLE conference and the need to look for another job. All that happened of course but so much more besides! So what was I busy doing this year?

Bett/Teachmeets

Yes, I attended Bett and yes I attended Teachmeet. I went first and presented on the use of Voki, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Since that first Teachmeet in January 2010, I have now organised Teachmeet Hants along with Gideon Wiliams as well as supporting others including Bev Evans and Tim Hand as they organise their own Teachmeets. I have presented via video at many more throughout the year. As we come to the end of 2010, I am in the midst of organising the big one, Bett 2011. Quite a huge jump within a year! Looking ahead, the next Teachmeet Hampshire will happen soon. Hopefully before Easter but I need to speak to some people and find some venues. Yep, venues. Hampshire is massive so hopefully we will have one in the north and one in the south to keep people happy.

Other Conferences

This time last year I didn’t even know what a Google Teacher was and now I am one. It was a great achievement and I was honoured to attend. Thanks again to Tom Barrett. Also this year I attended the Microsoft Innovative Educators Forum and was very happy to see @ideas_factory and @deputymitchell honoured for their amazing work.

VLE/School

I finished my contract with the local authority and am now back in school. It was a great two year post and I enjoyed it. I hope the work I did, along with my fellow consultants, will have a big impact on the schools and children within Hampshire. But things move on and I’ve been in my school a term now and it’s crazy to think of what we’ve achieved already with 40,000+ blog views and 13,000 to our school website just since September. This is fantastic and I am truly amazed. I have big plans for next year in school and I will blog about those tomorrow.

Sharing

I have also been involved in the Vital Primary ICT Forum for the past few months along with @colport. This is a great area for sharing practice with other professionals and trying to help in the crazy world of ICT. I have also been helping when possible with UKedchat and this has become a huge event each week for teachers to share ideas and discuss key topics within school.

Personal stuff (aka the important bits)

We moved house in January and we’re all settled, a friend commented that it looks like we’ve been here forever as it looks perfect. Which is a good thing. Other than that, we got engaged in the Summer so now have a 2012 wedding to prepare for!

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , , , ,  | 2 Comments
Springboards for success
Friday, August 13th, 2010 | Author:

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the launch of the Vital Primary ICT group. This can be found here: http://bit.ly/vitalict. The main aim of the group is to provide an area in which Primary ICT Coordinators can chat, learn and share resources and tips that will be useful to them in their role.  The discussions are coming along nicely and @colport has been adding great things to the wiki.

Another section of the site, and one that I see as very useful, is the Springboard section. Springboards are short guides on ways to use software within your school. This tends to be free software at the moment, but I don’t think it is limited to free only. Anyone can write a Springboard and we will be asking people for their help a bit later on.

The first Springboard I have written is for Wallwisher. Now I know most of you out there will already have seen this, but just in case you haven’t, check out the Springboard for it. The Springboard will contain how-to guides for getting started, tips that you might find useful, examples of how it can be used (thanks to @missbrownsword, @deputymitchell, @relativism and @knikidavies for those), similar websites/tools and links to existing resources. We don’t want to re-invent the wheel with the Vital site, if a great resource exists, we’ll link to it. For Wallwisher, there are great ideas from apps4class and Interesting Ways, so we provide links to those.

We would love the Vital area to be the one-stop shop for Primary ICT leaders and we would love more of you to get involved. On the simplest level, this is joining in the discussions and suggesting ideas for Springboards. For those that are a bit braver, why not help us make the content? For example, if you have already written a blog post on how to use Primary Pad or ways of using Voicethread, can we borrow it and put it on the site? We can either copy and paste it for you or give you access to do it yourself. We will of course give you full credit and share it with others, including giving your blog a mention too.

The way that I intend to use the Springboards in my school is for training my staff. Lots of the people reading this blog will know how to use the various tools or will be brave enough to have a play, but lots of your staff won’t be. I was going to create guides of how to use various free tools and give them to my teachers, but the Vital site has given me somewhere to put them all! Hopefully then I can point my teachers to the required area and they can see how to use them.

So, check out the first of our Springboards – Using Wallwisher in the classroom, and let us know what you think.

Note – You will need to login to view resources on the Vital site, but it’s all free.

Category: Useful Sites/Software, Vital ICT  | Tags: ,  | Leave a Comment
Green Screening – A guest post
Friday, August 06th, 2010 | Author:

This is the first time that someone else has shared an idea via my blog and it is great to see someone else willing to share ideas.

This message comes from Nick Phillips and he originaly sent it to the ICT Primary mailing list here in Hampshire, with his permission, I am reproducing it below.

I’ve been experimenting with green screen technology and have had some good results and the children have asked if they can do it at home – this is a bit tricky so I have been looking at cutting and pasting from one picture into another. With careful cutting you get similar results. (This is for still pictures only and not movies)

There are three attatchments with instructions for children which I will test out back at school – I’m hoping our yr6 will have a go when they do habitats and ‘Honey I shrunk the Kids’ by taking photos of grass etc and themselves and then superimposing one upon the other by cutting and pasting.

Of the three photofiltre is by far the easiest and its a free download

Nick’s Links are here:
Photofiltre
Sumo Paint
Paint

Greenscreening is definitely something I want to try in my new school and I know that various people have tried different tools. Vital have a Springboard guide on their website here (you’ll need to register but it’s free).

I have head good things about Wax 2.0 as well.

Have you ever tried green/blue screening? What age groups have you worked with? Any tips or tricks to help us out?

Category: Useful Sites/Software  | Tags: ,  | 6 Comments
Vital Primary ICT Group Launch
Monday, July 26th, 2010 | Author:

Over the last week, Colin Hill and I have been enrolled to manage a Primary ICT Coordinators Community within the website of Vital

The idea of the community is to build a space where Primary ICT coordinators can share and discuss ideas, challenges, resources and success stories to colleagues around the country. The luxury of the two of us taking the role is the wide range of networks we both have access to, as well as advocating a north/south partnership, with myself flying the flag from my base in Hampshire, and Colin from his North West England Base. Colin and I are both Primary School teachers with responsibility of ICT in our own locations, so we are very are of the challenges and tasks undertaken by colleagues across the primary sector.

We are not trying to create this group FOR Primary ICT Coordinators, but WITH them instead. This is a group that we would like everyone to contribute to and for everyone to bring their ideas and issues to share with the forums. We will not be creating huge amounts from scratch but bringing together the best resources already available and trying to put them into one place. We will be hosting weekly online chats to discuss certain topics and this may be in a similar vein to #ukedchat but with a greater focus on ICT matters. Users will need to register on the Vital site, but this is free following this link, and we will be contacting people via our own networks to make the community engaging, challenging, and supportive for ICT coordinators.

There are already a few discussion forums underway on the site, so visit the community pages here to see the work in progress, or to join in the discussion.

If you have any suggestions or ideas, please contact us and we will do our best to accommodate them. We look forward to seeing you there!

http://bit.ly/vitalict

Category: ICT Co-ordinator Stuff  | Tags:  | One Comment
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