Northumberland ICT and eLearning
Curriculum Support and Online Safety: Spring 2022
Welcome back!
We hope you've all had a great Christmas break. In this term's newsletter you will find upcoming
course highlights,
Online Safety updates, an introduction to
Book Creator and an offer to upgrade and refresh your
school website.
As we appear to be looking at another term of juggling face to face and home learning, please contact a member of the team should you need support in this area. School360 has you covered with Google Classroom, Busy Things, J2e, Book Creator and Adobe Spark!
Your pupils also have access the 'report a concern' feature within the learning platform which could prove to be an important line of communication for any pupils isolating in difficult circumstances, or those generally worried or struggling. This guide will help you to check your concern reports are being monitored correctly.
Everyone Can Create!
This is a series of 5 fun workshops running over spring and summer term aimed to ignite creativity in teachers and students using iPads. Each session has a different creative focus, including drawing, music and photography. Between workshops, attendees are encouraged to try out activities with their class and in the final session share some of their favourite outcomes.
Photo - 18/01/22
Drawing - 01/03/22
Video - 03/05/22
Music- 14/06/22
Sharing & reflection - 12/07/22
Online Safety Annual Training: Staff and Governors
The 2019 KCSIE statutory guidance states that “all staff undergo safeguarding and child protection training (including online safety) at induction” and that “online safety training for staff is integrated, aligned and considered as part of the overarching safeguarding approach”.
We would encourage all staff to take part in Online Safety training at least once a year.
Our next Online Safety session takes place 25/01/22, 3.30pm - 4.30pm, online.
NEW: Computational Thinking in EYFS.
This workshop is targeted at practitioners and teachers with little experience and confidence in teaching computational thinking.
This session will provide the perfect introduction to computational thinking in the Early Years and support you to get started, providing reassurance, resources to use and next steps.
10/03/22 - 3.45pm - 5.00pm
NEW: GDPR An Introduction
This is a general GDPR introduction / refresher course suitable for all members of staff, delivered by Vicki Evans of the NCC GDPR team, covering:
Choose from: 09/03/22 or 07/06/22 - 4.00pm - 4.45pm, online.
Book Creator via School360!
Book Creator is a fantastic tool that allows your pupils to create multimedia books which can be published on your school website, shared with parents or downloaded and printed. Pupils can start from scratch or choose a template to create a newspaper or comic book.
Pupils can include images, drawings, video, and text in their digital books. They can use the dictation tool to have their speech turned into text and can record their voices as audio clips making this a very accessible application.
Why not challenge your pupils to create:
Their own short story.
A retelling of their favourite story.
A recipe book.
A nonfiction guidebook or fact book.
A story book for younger children, recording audio clips to be used as a reading aid.
A newspaper article about a local event.
A comic book retelling of a famous story.
As most of you will be aware the School360
Learning Journal has now been integrated with the Northumberland
Readiness Passport, meaning that you can view your observations from within Passport to support your summative assessments.
We've now added a new EYFS link to your School360 homepage (this sits just to the right of your avatar). You can now click this icon and be taken straight to your parent inbox and the learning journal menu.
We've also updated the teacher app to address a small bug with the counter for sent and saved observations. Please ensure you have updated to version 1.6.
Undressed Resource for Younger Children
LGFL have recently updated their undressed resource for younger children. It includes a video and accompanying resources to help teachers and parents begin those important conversations about online risks.
You can access the updated resource HERE.
Fake News and Educate Against Hate
There has been a great increase in the amount of mis and disinformation spread online during, and post Covid lockdown. It's now evident that covid conspiracies and online gaming have been adopted as a way to contact and recruit young people. It is more important than ever that our young people are equipped to identify and react to these online risks.
The Guardian have compiled a Newswise resource for KS2 pupils and their families to help in the identification of fake news. You can access this HERE.
Going to Far? is a resource developed by the DfE and LGFL aimed at KS3 and KS4. which aims to help students understand extremism and how certain online behaviour may be illegal or dangerous. The resource for secondary school pupils aims to promote critical thinking and build resilience. You can access this resource HERE.
Cyberbullying
The Early Intervention Foundation has published the results of a survey which explored teachers’ preparedness for handling instances of cyberbullying in schools. Only one in three teachers completeing the survey, felt prepared to help stop a case of cyberbullying.
You can find guidance on recognising and responding to instances of cyberbullying HERE.
Tik-Tok Checklist
The Tik-Tok checklist, created by the UK Safer Internet Centre and SWGFL, has been updated. It covers:
- What is TikTok?
- How to stay safe on TikTok
- How to set up the parental controls
- How to block users on TikTok
- Where can I go for further support?
Access the latest version HERE.
Instagram Updated Parent Guide
Instagram have updated their parent guide. This resource is aimed at parents of secondary school pupils, however, we know that many younger children also access Instagram so you may decide this resource is relevant to your Primary school parents too.
Instagram Guide
Website Redesign
We're now able to offer a website redesign to our current eSchool settings. For £200+VAT eSchools will work with you to plan and create a new design before applying this to your current website. All content will remain intact, unless you would like to have a spring clear out in which case we can help you to reorganise your content.
If you don't currently have an eSchools website and would like to find out about having one set up, then please get in touch.
Follow the links below to see some recently updated sites.
Website Security Certificates
Following a Chrome update, you may have noticed that you have a 'Not Secure' message displayed in your school website address bar.
Firstly, please be assured that the content of your eSchool websites are secure. You'll notice that when you login to edit your website you see a padlock indicating that the site is secure - this is where your content is hosted.
Some schools have decided that they would like to obtain an SSL certificate for the public facing part of their site so that visitors don't see the 'Not Secure' message. The purpose of this is solely for visual purposes, it is not required from a security perspective.
If you would like to arrange to have a certificate applied to your website please contact a member of the team rather than eSchools directly. A £95 pa charge is usually applied but we have been able to arrange a discount so that schools pay only £45 pa.
Management of iPads and Chromebooks
We manage iPads through Lightspeed Mobile device Manager and Chromebooks via the School360 domain. Settings and restrictions are deployed centrally as well as the distribution of apps
If you have been offered additional DfE devices recently, or are considering purchasing iPads or Chromebooks, please get in touch to find out more.
