Parent Technology Coffee Morning

Here is the presentation from the first of our Parent Technology Coffee Mornings.

Parent Tech Coffee Morning - Social Networking on Prezi - allow presentation to download before clicking on the arrow to scroll through - alternatively click More and choose Full-Screen

The focus in our first session was Social Networking, with the emphasis on the use of Facebook. Clearly this was a very appropriate place to start as over 50 parents were present for the session in the primary school gym. We looked at some definitions of Social Networking and discussed why it was so popular with young people today and why it has the opportunity for them to learn and utilise a variety of skills which they will have to call upon as they get older.

Having looked at the benefits we listed some of the issues and spent time finding out how to configure profiles and privacy settings.

The two major texts used as the basis for the talks are free and can be downloaded here;

A Parents Guide to Facebook;
http://www.connectsafely.org/pdfs/fbparents.pdf

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out;

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/hanging_out.pdf

Also a good idea to listen to danah boyd talking about young people's use of social networking;

Many thanks to all those that attended. If you have any feedback about the session or have a suggestion for future events, please let me know or comment in the space below.

The remaining dates for this term are;

Friday 11th February - Gaming Technology

Friday 18th March - e-Safety

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.

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!

New Toys

So what did you get from Santa?

After a highly optimistic series of Christmas letters, here, and here, I was hoping for a bumper festive season. Oh well, it's not long until Santa visits again!

On returning to school though, some late presents were waiting for me. Our order from TTS in the UK finally arived and we've already had some great fun exploring the two peripherals we bought.

First out of the box, was the handheld USB microphone which I mentioned early last year. These look extremely useful and clearly have a wide range of curriculum uses. Unfortunately, three hours after I opened the boxes, the P5 teachers stole them off me and I haven't seen them since! Apparently they are being used extensively by P5 students in a series of interviews. When I get them back I'll be sure to test them out and plan to use them in KS1 after Chinese New Year.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing
Our 6 ProBots also arrived and Computer Club have been taking them for a test drive. These programmable cars build upon work carried out in the Foundation Stage with Bee Bots and add a degree of complexity to our study of Control Technology. Not only do they cover directional control, the addition of light, sound and sensors mean that they can be used throughout the primary years.

We all look forward to seeing them put through their paces!

Year 7 Scratch

Both Year 6 and 7 have continued to look at the programming language Scratch in the last three weeks. Whilst P6 have begun to look at controlling images of themselves within the Scratch environment, the Year 7s have been considering aspects of computer game design whilst creating simple games that could be played by younger students.

A number of the games are very playable and include important aspects of game design, such as scoring, timers, levels and targets. The study of Scratch not only helps students to understand aspects of Control Technology, it also encourages review and refinement as well as offering a relatively simple path into the world of programming.

Hopefully a few of the games will be available for playing shortly.

Scratching Around

P6 students have begun to use Scratch in their ICT lessons. This brilliant piece of software from MIT is a great learning tool, allowing access to theories of programming as well as creativity.

We have been looking at different ways of learning the software, either progressing through a series of tutorials provided by Learnscratch.org or simply playing with the software and trying things out. Interestingly the results varied between classes with those set the task of investigating through play appearing to have a better understanding of the software than those who were working through the tutorials.

Learn more about this project

However, the tutorials do contain some excellent ideas for extended projects which we will be visiting in the next few weeks.

Scratch is an extremely engaging piece of software, students quickly become immersed in the intricacies and require little in the way of support from the teacher and are at ease with methods of self-support or helping each other out;

"How do you get rid of what you've drawn?"

"Right there."

Another great aspect of Scratch is that it's completely free and downloadable from the MIT website. It's a must have download for all students at the top of KS2 and up (or maybe even younger)

You can download Scratch here.

For those digital immigrants who like me require the security blanket of organised tutorials, LearnScratch is a great place to start.

Scratch

Earlier this year Computer Club had a go at exploring Scratch, a control type programming language that extends upon work started earlier in LOGO and even earlier with Bee Bots.

Now Year 7 are beginning to investigate how the program works, using video tutorials to help them understand the different functions.

One of the great things about Scratch is that it's completely free to use. You can download a copy of the program here.

Room With a View

Here we are in KL... Day Two of the FOBISSEA ICT Conference about to start. Here's the view from my hotel room... pretty nice!

Just watched an excellent presentation on Scratch by Glenn Malcolm from BIS in Hoh Chi Minh. We used Scratch in Computer Club earlier this year and we'll definately be looking at it again in the near future.

You Should Be Dancing....

P2s are continuing to work with Bee Bots trying to get them to move in a synchronised way... almost like dancing! They need to plan their routines carefully, using appropriate terms, such as 'forward' rather than 'that way' and then input their commands accurately, otherwise the Bee Bots might stand on each other's feet!



One of our Bee Bots has now been named Barry after the main character in the film Bee Movie. Well done to Max for being the first to work out the answer.



It was nice to hear from Nicole Sprainger who runs the blog Bee Bots Down Under It looks like they're doing some really exciting things in schools there.