Friday 3 December 2010
Connected Camp
Thursday 14 October 2010
Thursdays; only Girls Allowed
We covered this issue a while back and more recently we have made a change to the format of our lunchtime sessions. Our ICT room is open most lunchtimes for students in KS2 on a daily rotation basis, although those with work to do have priority.
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival
Tuesday 21 September 2010
Moon Festival INSET
1. Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
We are lucky to be joined by Dr Daniel Churchill and Dr Bob Fox from Hong Kong University who will be speaking and running workshops. The day will consist of two keynote sessions and ten workshops, eight of which will be run by Kellett staff. It's excellent to see that we are able to provide professional development opportunities for our staff using our own expertise.
We will also be welcoming three colleagues from overseas FOBISSEA schools who will be joining the day and sharing their experiences.
The workshops range from subjects such as Google Apps and Docs, Data Handling in Maths, using Scratch, Twitter as a professional development tool, and using iTouch apps in the classroom.
As you can imagine, hosting an event like this has taken a large amount of organisation and I'm very grateful for the efforts of the ICT Team in making it happen, as well, of course, to all those involved in the workshops and keynotes.
Monday 23 August 2010
Scratch@MIT Conference
Attendance at the conference strengthened my view that Scratch is the best piece of free software that schools can use. In fact, it may just be the best piece of software for education full stop.
Scratch can be downloaded (at no cost!) here.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
Monday 7 June 2010
Tessellation in Google Sketchup
Some students also created 3D solids, including a stellated octahedron. Below is a slideshow of some of our work.
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Outstanding.... What now?
So OfStEd has declared that we are outstanding in every item of it's schedule. That's a fantastic achievement and a testimony to the hard work of the staff who consistently deliver across a huge range of school experiences.
From a technology point of view it will be interesting to see what the inspectors say. They were able to see a wide range of technology usage and commented to me on how the teachers and students were engaged with what they were doing. They certainly saw some innovative uses of technology; Web 2.0 (Shelfari), online Mind Mapping (Mind 42), Nintendo DS within Literacy, iTouch to support phonic awareness etc. OK, so these ideas aren't original but they are in the upper band of classroom innovation.
The report will hopefully highlight these as signs of a school that is continuing to improve. The need to continue improvement is keenly felt within the technology department - any tech department that wishes to be seen as outstanding must be constantly striving to improve, as the landscape changes continually.
I was delighted to see that Scott McLeod commented on my previous posting on OfStEd and I return to his words to help me evaluate what we need to do next.
The following extract from his closing comments at ASB Unplugged has been hijacked by me with some of my own additions.
"Most of you have yet to put a computer in every kid’s hands;"
No we haven't. We are 121 in secondary but in primary we're 124 - that's a decent ratio that I'm pleased with, but not when I see machines not being used. With other international schools in the region looking to extend their 121 programme into primary it may be something that we will consider in the future. Ultimately though, it's what you do with your kit that counts.
"Most of you have yet to incorporate online courses into your curricula in any kind of substantive way."
Guilty as charged - this is a huge challenge for us and will occupy large amounts of staff time during the forthcoming year.
"Few of you are teaching students to be empowered - not just responsible - digital citizens in our new information landscape."
We are making inroads here; schools have a responsibilty to ensure they produce ethical, resilient digital citizens, and we work hard on that. It does need to be a whole school approach and we need to enhance our staff development models.
"Few of you have a staff full of educators that are modeling active participation in that landscape."
Staff need to become more active in using the web as a means of professional development. This is explicit in the ISTE standards for teachers and we will be looking to implement these more widely in the future. It would be great to see more staff actively fostering a digital footprint and developing themselves as professionals online. We have teachers who are now using Twitter as a development tool and we need to encourage more to do so. By engaging with educators on a global level, the impact upon classrooms can be tremendous.
"As far as I can tell, none of you has robust student assessments at every grade level that target higher-level, more cognitively-complex thinking and doing and being."
Getting there. We have been looking at higher order thinking skills but we haven't managed to consistently develop them within units that use technology. We are aware of this and have made some progress.
"None of you has moved to a truly personalized learning environment for every student, one in which students’ progress is facilitated and perhaps assessed by technology and is organized around student competence and completion rather than age and grade level."
In truth we're a long way off this although various initiatives have helped us down this road. We're built around what Heppell might call the Victorian model as are most schools and I could only see us ever nibbling at this.
So, that's Scott McLeod's challenge for school improvement. I'm going to add a few more that I'd like to see us tackle!
We should be questioning our curriculum and examining it in the light of what technology can enable us to do and what our students can produce. We can't keep going on about 21st Century Learning without identifying what's 20th Century Learning and questioning it's validity. It's no good saying to hit HOTS we should be podcasting if we can't say what those podcasts should replace... newspaper reports, postcard and letter writing?
We need to look at how we can use technology not as a replacement tool but as a transformation tool. Let's use the new tools we have to collaborate, create and problem solve. We've made some good progress here but there's still a long way to go.
We need to foster a feeling of innovation, creativity and excitement consistently throughout the whole school by capturing the expertise we have and highlighting it and building upon it.
As all schools and organisations do we need to take a good long hard look at ourselves regarding the environment by using our technology in a greener way and utilising it to help us become more ethical and resonsible in our use of resources.
Thursday 22 April 2010
Earth Day - April 22nd 2010
Reception children will be looking at Recycling in their ICT lessons, finding out what it is and working in Simple City.
In the spirit of Earth Day, below is the recent edition of Kellett Tellit - please don't print it out!!
Tuesday 20 April 2010
iPad - A Game Changer?
Sunday 18 April 2010
Blogging - A Global Account
Blogging is an excellent means of professional development for teachers; it can help them reflect on their practice and pedagogy and also act as a showcase for their work. It can also showcase the work of schools to the parent community and the wider world, including, of course, any prospective students.
Unlike school websites, blogs can be updated quickly with little technical knowledge required and whilst the ideal of developing a conversation is only achieved by the minority of blogs that shouldn't discourage teachers, or classes, from having a go.
This blog doesn't have huge readership - students and parents pop in to see work posted and it doesn't have the in-depth professional reflection of the so-called 'rock star' technology teachers - but even so it does get viewers from locations all over the world.
A reminder to me this week was when I checked the blog feed and saw that during the last five days visitors had arrived from the following places;
Boston, Massachusetts
Prague, Czech Republic
Elmira, New York
Sahuarita, Arizona
Boxborough, Massachusetts
Reading, UK
Distrito Federal, Mexico
Sheffield, UK
Waltham, Massachusetts
Askeby, Storstrom, Denmark
Houston, Texas
Alexandria, Virginia
Madison, Alabama
Meriden, Connecticut
Muncie, Indiana
Falmouth, Maine
Saint Neots, Cambridgeshire, UK
Middlefield, Massachusetts
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Dublin, Ohio
Rantau Panjang, Perak, Malaysia
Stockton, California
as well as Hong Kong, of course.
Inspection Time!
First thing to say is that I'm looking forward to the week. This will be my second OfStEd and it will be very different to the first one. At that point in time OfStEd was still reimageing itself after the days of Chris Woodhead when there was a real feeling in schools that inspections were a vehicle for criticism and little else. I was also a Deputy Headteacher in a large primary for that inspection and the pressures were very intense as I had wide-ranging responsibilities.
The pressure for this inspection is much less - OfStEd is much more focussed these days and whilst it can still be forthright in it's opinions (see Zenna Atkins!) in general they stem from a desire for improvement rather than any kind of hidden agenda.
Whilst the preparation has been demanding, from my own point of view I feel safe in the knowledge that what I do is interesting, challenging and relevant. The top OfStEd category is of course, outstanding. For any school achieving a grade of outstanding it's a testimony to the hard work of staff as a whole. I could never describe my work as 'outstanding' - not because I'm not confident in what I do, it's just not in my nature! It's a personality thing.
In any case, the pervasive nature of ICT within the curriculum means that the work students carry out within their ICT lessons as a whole is now only a small part of their ICT experience in school. In short, KS2 students spend 45 mins a week in the lab but should be spending much more time using ICT in authentic ways within the curriculum. So any comments on ICT within Kellett will hopefully reflect that.
An aspect of inspection which I think is very useful is it gives staff an opportunity to reflect upon their practice and pedagogy and look at what real learning is going on in their classrooms. The greater attention to detail in planning can help to focus ideas and move things forward. I know it has for me!
The evaluation schedule of OfStEd (see illustration for word cloud) talks a lot about schools using new technology but it's not clear what it means by this. PCs aren't new, nor is Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, or e-mail for that matter. What new technology might they see next week? Well, from a personal viewpoint if they come and see me they're going to see Y3&4 students using Google Sketchup to investigate tessellation & symmetry, and Y5&6 creating computer games for students to use within the curriculum. Both of these could be described as "new" technology don't you think? The Sketchup module is a progression for us, moving this excellent software down through the school, from the creative, design activities we use in Y6&7 to activities rooted within the Mathematics curriculum.
The Y5&6 module will be using 2DIY, by definition it's new because we've only had it for six weeks! This is definitely an example of how in a 21st Century classroom the teachers should be learning alongside the students - already the students have had more time on the software than me so we'll definitely be exploring together.
So that's me sorted, don't know how it will go down with the inspectors but I know the students will be engaged and challenged - I don't think you can ask for more.
What might they see elsewhere? It's difficult to find the time to work out what everybody's doing - it's easy to get wrapped up in making sure you will be ok - but I am expecting them to see;
Web 2.0 technology being used. Year 6 will be leading the way on this - having already used Primary Pad and Glogster (as well as Guitar Hero!) they will be collaborating online using Mind42 and Shelfari - hopefully the inspectors will clearly see here how new technology can impact upon learning - now that is outstanding in my mind!
Games as a stimulus for writing. Having used Rollercoaster Tycoon, Year 5 will be tackling a range of writing activities stemming from their time creating their own theme parks.
Laptops New technology? Not sure, but they will hopefully see that as a school we are committed to mobile learning.
Multimedia. They should see students constantly expressing themselves through audio, video and images - our relatively small resource of digital cameras, Flip video, Vado video and TTS Digital microphones will be as popular as ever during inspection week.
Nintendo DS - Year 2 will be using DS consoles and the game Nintendogs as a stimulus for their classroom activities. Inspired by the work of teachers such as Anna Rosvoll in Scotland this module is one of the things I'm hoping to get to see in the next couple of weeks - I'm fascinated to see how it goes.
iTouch - we love them! They work - immediately! Our small team of iTouches have proven to be very popular and have already impacted upon learning. I have no hesitation in describing Katrina Hall's work in Y1 using the iTouch as outstanding. These appear to be booked out for most of the week - I just hope we can find time to recharge them!!
So that's just a flavour of what's going on and what the inspectors might see. There's lots more too, Chinese Studies will be using laptops extensively, as will other year groups, and PE will be using digital video to analyse their work.
Do I have any misgivings or concerns about the week ahead? Well, if the school network falls over that could be problematic, but not much we can do about that. There will always be technical niggles, iTouch apart, ed-tech hasn't got to the light bulb stage yet (switch it on and it works) - but dealing with that in the classroom is part and parcel of the job - whilst it's true our support structures are stretched I've never been in a school that admits to having too much technical support!
What else... if I was honest I'd have to say that the National Curriculum is not exactly an inspiration for embedding authentic technology within the curriculum. Our move towards ISTE is a reflection of our desire to be more creative in our work and also to focus upon the professional development of our staff. I hope they see that reflected in what we do.
So, what would I like them to say about our use of technology?
I'd certainly like them to say that we are innovative in our approach, I'd like them to note that technology is being used for creative purposes as well as problem solving and that although research type activities and basic software skills are still part of what we do they are no longer the core.
That we are beginning to come to terms with what it means to enable our students to become responsible and active digital citizens in the 21st Century - we still have a long way to go on this but so does everybody!
I'd like them to highlight that some staff are prepared to work outside their comfort zone (no matter what that zone is) and commend them for it.
They should take note of staff who are developing themselves professionally through sharing and collaborating with teachers outside of their own school - this is a key characteristic of outstanding teachers in the 21st Century and a part of the ISTE standards for teaching staff.
I would also like them to highlight the outstanding (there, I said it!) progress we have made in the past couple of years, we've really moved technology along during that time. But at the same time it's important for them to be clear that we still have a huge amount of work to do, or in the words of Scott McLeod...
Friday 16 April 2010
iPad in School?
The iPad looks like it could have a wide range of uses in school and we'll be looking at how we might use them and how many we might purchase in the near future.
Friday 26 March 2010
Kellett Cares ICM
Monday 22 March 2010
P4 LOGO Work
Friday 12 March 2010
ICT & School Council Digital Photography Competition
Thursday 4 March 2010
FOBISSEA ICT Conference
Year 4 Games Based Learning
At Kellett, games continue to have a major influence on our work with recent examples in Literacy with Guitar Hero, Samarost and Moshi Monsters. Next term sees a new initiative for us as we seek to build upon the work carried out in Scotland using Nintendo DS consoles. More news on that later.
Year 4 have also had the opportunity to study a simulation game in their ICT lessons based upon preparing for a natural disaster, in this case, a tsunami. These so-called 'serious games' allow users to use traditional game play techniques whilst allowing them to reflect on some aspect or issue. We've only just started this module but a number of parents mentioned the game during our recent parents evening so the link for the game is below. It also has a variety of other disaster scenarios, including a sadly quite topical one on earthquakes.
The site can be found here.
Tuesday 9 February 2010
Monday 8 February 2010
Glogster
Have a look through this video tutorial to give you some ideas. Remember that you already have an account, but you need to get the details first. Have fun!
Monday 1 February 2010
Experimenting with the Kellett Dragon!
Monday 25 January 2010
Chinese Studies Using Go Animate
Tuesday 19 January 2010
Voicethread
Monday 18 January 2010
Artist in Residence Work
P5
P4
P3-10
P3-11
P3-12
P2-7
P2-8
P2-9
P1-4
P1-5
P1-6
Wednesday 6 January 2010
Christmas iTouch?
However, I am aware that a number of students received an iTouch from the big man in red. If you've been playing with it already you'll probably agree with me that it's a fantastic piece of kit.
Here's a note for parents though. If you are running filtered or controlled access to the internet via your PC or laptop, your filter software will not apply to the internet access via the iTouch. In other words, net access via the iTouch is unfiltered.
Now, in an ideal world that would not be a problem. There would be little inappropriate content on the web and all our students would be perfectly capable of using the iTouch in a responsible manner. Sometimes though, that's not always the case and it's perfectly understandable that parents feel the need to take precautions.
So, what can you do?
Well, the iTouch itself has settings which can disable various functions, such as the web browser Safari and the Youtube App as well as access to the App Store itself. Disabling these is an option, but if you want to go down this route then you probably should have purchased a standard iPod rather than the iTouch!
If you want to disable these functions , click Settings on the main screen, choose General, scroll down to Restrictions, Enable Restrictions. You then need to create a restriction PIN (which you should write down somewhere safe so you can always remember it!). You can then choose which services you wish to disable (all the fun ones!!).
If you need any further information on this, click here.
You might also consider a third party piece of software that allows you to monitor and control net usage on the iTouch from your own computer. There are a variety of paid solutions available, the most popular seemingly being;
Mobicip
iNet Safety Bubble
Safe Eyes
If you use any of these applications please let us know how you get on.
At Kellett we have begun to experiment with the use of iTouch in the classroom. We have a small pack of six so far. P1 children have been using them to work on their phonics and later this week Miss Chen will be looking at how to use an app called Finger Lite to teach Chinese Studies in the secondary school.
Monday 4 January 2010
Running to Keep Up
My New Year's Resolution is to keep going! To try to help us keep up and to continue to encourage innovation and creativity. Our recent purchase of a small pack of iTouch devices is just the beginning of what I hope will be an inspirational year for our students.
Maybe the following is just around the corner;
Thanks to Bill Boyd for this.