Friday 3 December 2010

Connected Camp

Earlier this term I attended P6 Camp on the island of Wing Yi Chau in Sai Kung. Despite the fact that there was no wireless on the island we had decided we were going to try to make the experience more interactive and connected with the school community by using Twitter. Whist we would continue to use technology to photograph and record our visit, the use of Twitter would allow us to update our progress in real time.


We also used a couple of apps to track our progress, more of which later.

The micro-blogging service Twitter is an extremely useful tool, both as a means of communication and as a way of exchanging knowledge. Having used the service for nearly three years I am a big fan and would go as far as saying that it is an essential tool for teachers in the 21st Century, who need to continually strive to keep themselves up to date with new techniques, thinking and tools.

As a straight communication tool it proved to add an extra dimension for parents whose previous experience of camp was saying goodbye on the first morning and then opening up the bag full of unworn clothes on return.


Not only were we able to post text updates, we also used YFrog and Twitrpix to share photos, and TwitVid to post videos (although sadly students and colleagues within school were unable to view these due to the filtering service provided to us by PCCW!)


The service itself is very easy to use at it's basic level and I was hopeful that our community would see the opportunity to connect. I was staggered by how eagerly our parents used the service. Over 30 parents signed up to follow our tweets, with some of our photos being viewed over 150 times. Many parents took the opportunity to tweet back to camp to show messages of support and encouragement (or ask why their child wasn't wearing their hat?!)

There was also the opportunity for staff and students in school to follow the progress of camp. Many younger brothers and sisters were able to see what was going on. Three students in P3-10 were able to send greetings to their siblings, an act which must surely help to dispel and fears that younger students might have about their upcoming first camp.

All the feedback we've had since the trip has been extremely positive with parents saying that it added an extra dimension to the the whole visit.

It's certainly something we will continue to look at in the future whenever possible.

We were also able to use a couple of apps to track our progress, thanks to the iPhone. We used GPSMotionX to track our journey to Sai Kung, and Runkeeper to trace the walk from the pier to the camp. The screenshots below show some of the info we got back.



Thursday 14 October 2010

Thursdays; only Girls Allowed

Terry Freedman in his most recent newsletter highlights the work of the Big Ambition "Girls in IT Month" which highlights technology as a positive and rewarding career path for girls. I know that Terry has voiced his concerns over this type of initiative in the past but I feel they can be a valuable element in the highlighting of tech choices for our female students.

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.

Most of the students who use the room play games of try out different pieces of software. There are a number of guidlines they have to follow, such as no inappropriate games or no use of video sharing websites and in general there are very few problems.

The vast majority of those who turn up to use the room are boys, sometimes as much as 80%. As a result of this I decided to change the timetable this year and made Thursday the day when you could only come to the room if you are a girl. The response has been amazing with most stations used every Thursday. All the girls think it's a good thing; "We're so grateful for you for doing this for us," said one of the students.

Interestingly, many of the games they use are the same as the boys, although more of the Webkinz ilk admittedly.

Thinking about this reminded me to look up the winning video of the Inkwrite Classroom makeover competition from a few years ago, which highlighted girls working with technology. The original link to the video no longer exists but it is still on Youtube and can be seen below;





Wednesday 13 October 2010

Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival

I was lucky enough to be involved in the organisation of the Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival held at the University of Hong Kong last weekend. Over 100 attendees gave up their Saturday to listen and share their experiences on handheld learning.

Two of the presentations featured teachers from our school; Miss Hall presented on her use of iTouch within the classroom alongside Serena Fan from ISF Academy, while Mrs Bookless, Miss Adams and Miss Hitchcox discussed our work with Games Based Learning. It's great to see our teachers sharing and discussing their practice with wider audiences, not only does it help them develop as profession
als by being able to explain their work, it also gives them the opportunity to discuss and share with teachers working in similar ways.

Miss Hall and Miss Fan's presentation can be seen below;


Other presentations included using Nintendo DS consoles in the Chinese languageclassroom, Activote in Early Years and GPS on field trips. Keynote presentations by Professor Cher Ping Lim (HKIEd) and the Library of Congress's Kathleen Ferenz gave the audience much to think about and confirmed my own opinion that the use of handheld and mobile devices is an important tool in empowering students to engage more closely with the learning process.

Later in the day I moderated a forum panel consisting of Dr Daniel Churchill (HKU), Gilbert Ho (Apple Asia) and Peter Woodhead (GSIS). The panel responded to a video presentation featuring Tim Rylands, Derek Robertson and Dawn Hallybone, European based influential voices in this field. The discussion was extremely stimulating and covered such topics as leadership, relevance and emerging technologies.

Hopefully one of the results of the day will be an increased sense of community among those who have an interest in this type of learning. Feedback from the day was certainly positive.

Many thanks to all those presenters who worked so hard to produce stimulating and engaging sessions and also all those who turned up to share and learn!



Tuesday 21 September 2010

Moon Festival INSET

Whilst it's a long weekend for many this week, it's going to be a busy time in school as we host an INSET session on Friday. Focusing on preparing teachers to implement the ISTE Standards, the day will guide staff on how they can meet the five standards and performance indicators required;

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

Wow, where did that summer go?!

Welcome back to the new school year. As ever this year looks to be a series of exciting challenges, just one of which is to spend more time blogging. The advent of Twitter has certainly cut down on my blogging but I'm determined to get back into it this year and help keep our community informed, as well as putting the world of education technology to rights too!

Last week's prep week wasn't quite as productive as I'd hoped largely due to the fact I was late to return after attending the Scratch@MIT event in Boston.

Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is pretty much at the pinnacle of academic technologies and is consistently ranked within the top five universities in the world. Attending a conference at MIT's Media Lab was a great thrill. The Institute has been responsible for LOGO and Scratch, two technologies I have used in schools a huge amount. Indeed, my first experience with LOGO was as a trainee teacher in 1986!

The four day conference gave me the opportunity to look at how others have implemented Scratch within their environments and to receive new ideas about ways in which it could be used in the future. We have been using Scratch since it was first released, initially in our Computer Club, but then within the technology curriculum. On Friday morning I contributed to a presentation looking at ways in which the technology can be moved into the Mathematics curriculum. It seemed to be well received, which was a bonus!


Below is a video put together by the amazing team that were recording the conference.



There were plenty of 'takeaways' from this conference, not least the reassurance that we are on the right track with our use of Scratch. We now need to look at implementing the program within different contexts throughout the school, not just the Mathematics or Technology curriculum. Areas such as language teaching and digital storytelling can also benefit and we need to pursue these this year.

There were a large number of international delegates present from outside the USA and a number of possible future projects were discussed.

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.

Parents often ask me about software they can install at home that will help to develop their children. Well, the simplest answer is Scratch. It hits a number of areas, but crucially can aid problem solving and creative development.

Scratch can be downloaded (at no cost!) here.

Monday 7 June 2010

Tessellation in Google Sketchup

Students in P3 and P4 have been using Google Sketchup to investigate tessellation. After learning how to draw basic 2D shapes they then used tools such as the copy & move and rotation tools to help them to tessellate accurately. They then used the component tool to allow them to replicate patterns within their shapes.

Some students also created 3D solids, including a stellated octahedron. Below is a slideshow of some of our work.

Using Google Sketchup to Investigate Tessellation and 3D Shape on PhotoPeach

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Outstanding.... What now?

I must admit, I dislike the word intensely, it's not something I think a school should ever say about itself, but I guess if somebody else says it about you then it's ok.

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.

So, outstanding we may be and that's great news, but we've still got huge amounts of work to do and there's no question that we will be striving to achieve much more in the coming year.

The tag cloud is from our ICT School Improvement Plan (SIP) for the forthcoming year.

Thursday 22 April 2010

Earth Day - April 22nd 2010

Today is Earth Day and millions of people around the world will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of this event by carrying out activities linked to the environment.

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?

An interesting discussion on the iPad between Will Richardson and Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children's Software Review. I have to say I agree that the iPad has huge potential in the Early Years classroom.

Sunday 18 April 2010

Blogging - A Global Account

I must admit, with the advent of Twitter my efforts at blogging have dwindled somewhat. That's a shame and hopefully I can try to post more often in the future, although workload often dictates that posts are sometimes all too brief.

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.

A large number were visiting the same post which presumably got mailed around, but it does go to show that blogging is a global communication tool - I must try harder!

Image: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center

Inspection Time!

So tomorrow's the big day, our OfStEd inspection begins. I thought I'd jot a few thoughts down prior to the event and then see how things develop during the week.

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...

"I'm not sure you appreciate how far you still have to go."

Good luck to everybody this week.


Friday 16 April 2010

iPad in School?

Thanks to miss Hall we got a chance to have a look at an iPad today. Below is a video of Ava using Dino Mixer - an application which has been used a lot in P1 as part of their study of dinosaurs.

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

Here's a great video of our students working in the Philippines with children in the Kellett Cares Learning Centre. I could go on about global awareness etc etc, but the video says it all really!

Monday 22 March 2010

P4 LOGO Work

Here are some screenshots from P4's recent module using Terrapin LOGO. Please note, the music for this Animoto slideshow was chosen by Mrs Bull!


Friday 12 March 2010

ICT & School Council Digital Photography Competition

Here's a sneak preview from our recent competition. Many thanks and well done to all those who entered. The results will be announced by the School Council in the next couple of weeks.

2010 Photo Competiton Preview on PhotoPeach

Thursday 4 March 2010

FOBISSEA ICT Conference

This weekend sees the third FOBISSEA primary ICT meeting. I was unable to attend the meeting last year but found the initial meeting to be very useful. I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to share with others interested in using educational technology.

The last time I attended, my hotel had a great view of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpar. This time round I am just round the corner from this very famous landmark. Any student who can tell me where I will be via email or through blog comments can have a Kellett point - easy!!


photo credit; Flick user daymin

Year 4 Games Based Learning

It used to be that whenever you talked about Games Based Learning you would always have to start with justifying why you were including games in the classroom context. Thankfully, the need for that is less and less and you would actually have a hard time justifying why you are NOT using Games Based Learning in an authentic 21st Century Classroom.

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.

Monday 8 February 2010

Glogster

Now that PCCW have unfiltered Glogster it means that we are able to access Edu Glogster. We have a school account which allows you to create your own multimedia glogs. If you are in P5 or P6 Mr Dawes can give you an account and password.

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

Monday 25 January 2010

Chinese Studies Using Go Animate

Here's a neat little animation made by staff in our CS team to help students revise daily routines and dates.


GoAnimate.com: Daily Routine by misschen


DomoNation.com: Dates by Miss Chen


Tuesday 19 January 2010

Voicethread

Voicethread is one of my favourite applications. Whenever anybody askes me about it I direct them to this video. Unfortunately, due to the strange way in which TeacherTube runs it's site, I haven't found a way of sending the video to non-members, so I've embedded it here instead!


Monday 18 January 2010

Artist in Residence Work

Examples from our recent Artist in Residence Project.

P6



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?

I didn't get an iTouch for Christmas as I already had one (did finally get a Livescribe Pen though - hurrah!).

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

Having been involved in educational ICT for over ten years I'm painfully aware of how difficult it can be to keep up with changes in technology and allow our students and teachers the opportunity to enhance their learning using the most appropriate tools. The shift required by everybody involved is enormous, and by everybody I mean students, teachers, parents, the whole community.

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.