WrightICT eNews
Issue 8
Welcome
Welcome to the latest issue of WrightICT eNews.
Articles and further snippets via my website, Twitter and Pearltrees.
A link to my SLA, circulated to schools earlier this term, is here.
Hour of Code
For information and resources, pop over to the Hour of Code site.
For a festive twist on the event why not get the pupils to design some festive designs?
School Websites
It is a legal requirement to do so and not doing so is a possible trigger for an inspection.
There's no definition of what needs to be published, but 'we use x scheme' isn't enough and detailed lesson plans are certainly not required.
The advice was to consider the audience and publish accordingly.
And from the Clerk to Govenors website, there's this extract.
Update November 25th 2014: A letter from Sir Michael Wilshaw to the SoS Nicky Morgan (25/11/14) about the trial of 35 no-notice inspections in the autumn term said: “This included 11 schools chosen primarily because they were failing in their legal duty to publish their curriculum plans on their website.”
An embedded link to the full presentation is below.
eSafety
There's no shortage of sites offering advice to parents and carers, but these few below offer clear guidance for schools and parents.
Vodafone Digital Parenting Guides
These guides are available to view online or schools and parents can order paper copies from this link.Google Safety Centre
This site offers advice for both general advice and specifically for families.
ICT4C have a visual links to links page that could be a useful addition to your school website.
Key:
Top left (Grey): eSafety films
Top right (Green): Lesson plans/Teacher resources
Middle left (Red): Links to sites aimed at parents
Bottom left (Orange): Activities for pupils to use
Bottom right (Blue): Curriculum overviews/Sample SOW
Point2Protect is a new online service for schools and parents, which includes guidance from the UK Safer Internet Centre to help tackle online threats against children. It makes monitoring and moderating children’s use of mobile devices simpler and smarter, reporting on what children are doing online across more than one device on different networks, but without significantly invading their privacy.
Purchasing options are available for both schools and parents and an online flyer for parents is here.
Ofsted Myth Buster
Lego WeDo Construction set offer
The offer includes the Lego WeDo software, but it is worth mentioning that both Scratch and J2Code also drive the WeDo kits, if you'd rather not tangle with another piece of software just at the moment.
Crick Software launches new accessible keyboard for iPad and iPhone
The SuperKeys Assistive Keyboard has been created to support learners who have difficulty targeting small keys; the unique design of SuperKeys gives users just seven large keys to target instead of over 30 small ones. There are significant benefits for users with low vision too; all the keys are in the standard qwerty layout, and use a large, accessible font.
SuperKeys is currently available to purchase at a special introductory price of £2.49. It is also included as an accessibility option in the latest update to Clicker Connect and Clicker Docs, Crick’s popular literacy apps for iPad.
Moovly Animated Videos
Moovly has a very powerful free version but also provides educational licenses that let you do more with the application. Teachers, students, schools and other educational institutes can benefit from premium features. Moovly also provides educational group licenses, including classroom group sharing and group management features for teachers.
Special promotion: Until 31 December 2014, educational plus licenses and group licenses are free for users who can prove their educational status.
Christmas Links
Draw a track for Santa to slide down and collect the presents in this strategy game.
Draw lines to guide the sugar into the cups. Oddly addictive and not easy easy as it sounds.
J2E have some freely available Christmas Activities here.
Frog have provided an Advent Calendar here.
If you'd like to weave a little bit of festive data handling into the end of term run-in, try this Searching for Santa database. I used a version many moons ago and it went down well. This version exists in French, German and Spanish too.
Kudlian animation competition. Christmas Animate It! competition. Share your Christmas-themed animations created with Animate It! and there’ll be a prize for the judges favourite animation.
Dot and Dash
Watch out for a review, and maybe a drop-in session in January.
In the meantime, an explanatory video is below.
* I recently showed both of them the JIT interface in J2Code and they often go to that as their preferred activity on the iPad, which is a positive choice, I feel.
WrightICT
Email: paul@wrightict.co.uk
Website: www.wrightict.co.uk
Phone: 07917160770
Twitter: @WrightICT