I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the launch of the Vital Primary ICT group. This can be found here: . 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.
