It’s now my second year in Year 5 and I have to say one of my favourite topics has been the Tudors.  This year we have added to it making use of ICT.

One of the ways we did this was using weebly this is a free service whereby teachers can sign up to 40 students for free.  The children are then able to create their own websites of up to 5 pages, learning key skills of presenting, research, combining information and sharing this.  The children in pairs all picked their own part of Tudor life that they wanted to research – ranging from fashion to the wives.  We found it was a great way for the to present their research in stead of doing it via a powerpoint.  The idea came from the Switched on ICT unit 6.5 we are web designers – we did tweak the plans to suit our children.  You can see examples of their work here

Another resource that we use is Purple Mash – with this we created Tudor houses using 2 design and make – the children first looked at some example of Tudor houses then created the nets – these were then printed and then cut out and put together to create a Tudor village display.  We also used 2DIY 3D to create games- the children really enjoyed this activity looking at what made a good game and how they could make them more challenging and appealing to play – examples of these can be found here.  Purple mash also has some great Tudor activities these include creating a Tudor menu, creating a magazine front cover and using the mash cam to become Henry VIII.

BBC Learning clips  has always been a favourite little resource and it has some great clips for use with the Tudors – my favourites are those from schools radio including this one about Tudor rich and poor great for developing listening skills.

Once again our corridor has been converted into a Tudor museum – we are using Night at the Museum on the Wii within Literacy – we have tweaked the plans slightly this year but you can get the general idea from the post I wrote last year.

We have also visited the Golden Hinde, created new gardens for Henry VIII at Hampton Court in maths using our area and perimeter knowledge and will be making pottage. As well as looking at Romeo and Juliet, filming news reports live from the streets of Verona and learning Tudor dance.

The Tudors aren’t so terrible after all!

I am always interested in events and contests to enable digital innovation, this week IC tomorrow, a Technology Strategy Board programme that stimulates innovation and economic growth in the digital sector, launched ‘Digital Innovation Contest – Education’, in association with Nesta.

For the first time, this series of contests is exploring emerging opportunities in the education technology sector. IC tomorrow is looking for innovative ideas from start-ups, practitioners and developers to meet four challenges set in conjunction with the contest challenge partners; The Open University, Mozilla, Cambridge University Press and Pearson. For more information please see: http://goo.gl/tqWkP

IC tomorrow are holding a briefing event on Thursday March 14th in central London at the Work Foundation, starting at 10am SW1H 0AD. All of the contest partners will be there to speak about their individual challenges and members of our IC tomorrow team will review the application process for attendees. Register for the event here: http://bit.ly/VZTUOY

It’s a very simple application process. To apply, innovators simply need to submit a 2minute YT video and complete a light weight application form to explain their idea. There’s no requirement to have an existing prototype or be currently working in the education space. IC tomorrow are looking for a range of applications from great ideas through to prototypes already built. Closing date for entry is midday 8 April 2013 – so just over a month to submit applications.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops

The weekend of January 24th-26th sees the second StartUp Weekend London Edu, Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. This particular Startup Weekend is focussed on Education. Attendees will be invited to pitch their ideas for the next big thing in education. Last year  I attended a Start Up Weekend  Edu – I was asked to go along as a mentor – I had no idea what the weekend would hold but for me it was one of the most interesting and exciting weekends I have been involved with you can see why here.

This year the organisers  have added an additional ticket category especially for teachers to come and pitch the ideas that they feel would have the most impact in their classroom or lecture hall. They have also provided a special discount code of TEACHER for those who wish to come along – I would say if you can – DO!! You can sign up here

It is a manic 54 hours but one that left me absolutely buzzing!

Yesterday I attended the inaugural London Festival of Education – it was a great day with lots of thought provoking questions raised – not always answered and a programme that was packed.  For me this was part of the problem – there was just too much good stuff at one point delegates had the choice between listening to Micheal Wilshire, Guy Claxton and Michael Rosen – it was a toughie.  I was able to follow a lot of the other talks/debates via twitter and catching up on blog posts today, but it was a shame that there were these clashes and also that some sessions were put in rooms where the capacity was limited to 150.

I started the day by listening to Michael Gove – may be not the most ideal way to start at Saturday but I enjoyed the conversation – he does have an unerring belief in his own beliefs which I do not always agree with.  Yes, there are schools that are not operating as outstanding schools, but surely there should be support for these – not just turning into academies.  Yes, I believe that education should be assessed but the notion that education without assessment is just play – well then I will continue to ‘play’ in my teaching and learning as surely this is how we learn? Yes as Michael Gove pointed out if you tell someone that they are a failure this will have a devastating effect they why does he do this to our profession as a whole?

Graeme Eyre has written a more detailed account of the conversation which you can read here. Also Tom Bennett  as ever has written a great account of the opening conversation with Gove which you can read here.   Oliver Quinlan also blogged here

Next was a panel  with Sir Tim Brighouse, Vic Goddard and Munira Mirza talking about What does it mean to be educated? very interesting perspectives from all three.  Vic Goddard kicked it off and I really  agreed with his point that listening was important within the classroom and talking and listening – hearing the aesthetics in a conversation – he spoke of humanising knowledge – promoting empathy and that if all we do is fill children with knowledge then they are no more than a dictionary. Everything we do is about making connections.  Sir Tim Brighouse was next quoting Temple  as the purpose of education as this: ”Are you going to treat students as they are or as they might be?”  Going on to say that if you want to have human liberty you must have education – to ‘think for yourself, act for others’. As ever he spoke so much sense that I could have listened to him all day – he also made the point  that Eton can give a false sense of confidence, like making you think you can run the economy or country when you can’t – again hitting the nail on the head!

At this time I have to confess on leaving the main hall, a combination of needing something to eat and also to process what had been said in the morning sessions – it was that full.  I had also missed Oliver running his session on ReconsiderED; the discussion – he has written this session up and can be read here.  I also missed Dug Belshaw discussing Learning technologies, but again he has blogged both the session and his thoughts on the conference.  It did mean that I could grab some lunch and have those conversations which was needed and I think to build on this year would be great to build in a slice of thinking/wandering time into next years programme to give delegates the chance to visit the various pop up spaces around the festival which I missed.

After lunch it was back into the main hall for ‘what makes great teaching – the global view’ this had John Hattie and Pasi Sahlberg on the panel and was fascinating. Hattie spoke of the impact of teachers of their passion – not just a love for the job but the passion that enables teachers to see ways to improve own impact and that see teaching as part of their lives.  It was also ways to build on these high impact teachers within schools, it is about the impact of teaching on students, not the teaching, that ”we must recognise ourselves-the impact we have as teachers.However, we reward and recognise student effort – not ours”  he spoke out the biggest issue being within our schools, not without and  asked where is our professional teaching body within the country?  Sahlberg continued this theme by stating that in Finland ‘we trust our teachers, we don’t test them to death, we dance and play as well as do the academic and that - The quality of the education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachrs.  He spoke about Finish findings on good learning saying that learning had to be goal-orientated, contextual and cumulative.  He also got one of the biggest round of applause when he suggested that politicians stay out of teaching.  Hattie made a great point during the questions when asked about time and where was the time to become a High IMpact teacher – that these teachers ahd the same amount of time as everyone else!

Then it was off to #ukedchat – looking at how social media can connect educators this was run but Tim Rylands and Martin Burrett – it was great – we did some speed dating – talking to others in the room about the pros and cons of using tools such as twitter and tips for the best way of using tools such as twitter. As well as this we were also introduced to some great tools – on the iPad/iPhone – GroupZap, brainstorm and syncspace for sharing ideas.  There was also Cacoo and linoit for min mapping as well as memplai.  Sarah has also created a lino that people in the session were asked to add to that can be found here. it was a great fast moving session and at the same time there was a live #ukedchat occurring!

Next was back into the main hall to listen to two of my favourite authors Michael Rosen and Anthony Horowitz – who spoke about developing a love for reading – at the heart of this was creating a great library, that literacy and reading are not the same thing, reading is not a passive activity you are actively involved in the themes and characters of the text that you are reading, reading is not something to rise up to – if you are not enjoying it – leave it – find something that you do. Rosen was more political – asking what we were doing to put children off reading – giving them tests like the Spag!  Transformational power in reading for pleasure, but with all the strategies in place and the form filling that teachers had to do there was no time – we need to make time!  It was a great session, although I had missed Sir Michael Wilshire talking, thankfully it had been recorded and a transcript of it as well as the recording can be found here

Finally was the question of what qualities do the best teachers share?  Camilla Batmanghelidjh spoke of the best teaching being rigorous, demanding, aspirational and that worked to abilities, Bridget Minimore read her own poem about English Teachers , some things will stick with you forever! Celia Hoyles, spoke of the fact that great teachers give everyone a grounding but also a glimpse of the horizon, Michael Rosen – more highlights advice to be curious and that the fundamental basis of education is talk.  Kindness was also mentioned but if you want the teachers to be kind to the children, the management has to be kind to the teachers was again a great point from Camila.

It was a great day! For next year – easier entrance, more time to have those conversations- over coffee, in break out rooms.  Congratulations must go to all who organised and I look forward to next year!

To end a thought from Camila again – ‘Why are donuts always round and not triangles”

On Thursday night I headed along to a local school to attend a teach meet concerning all things iPad – it was a most excellent evening organised by Mr Skinny boy Evans.  At the moment I only use my own iPad in class and was really looking forward to hearing how other schools had approached putting these into schools – the results that they had found and useful apps for across the curriculum.

The first presentation was from Stephen Hawke who spoke about an app called Figure – the idea behind it was to make relevant music for the children and ability to see instant results.  It has 3 musical parts – drum, bass and lead and all work by touching and placing fingers on the screen. You are able to layer up different versions and put different beats in – it also uses the musical terminology such as tempo, key and rhythm.  Figure is an iPhone app and is 69p to download.  I have already downloaded this and have to say – it is very intuitive and is my sons current favourite app!

Next up were Laura and Neree form Elm Park Primary – they spoke about and showed their journey of implementing first of all iPod touches and then iPads into their school and curriculum – they showed a video which really highlighted the impact and progress that has been enabled across all levels of learning.  You can also follow them on twitter @EPPS_ICT  where they also tweet about the excellent work that goes on.  For me it was really interesting to see the route they went down, looking at integrating apple alongside laptops using a range of tools where they are best suited for the curriculum.

Steve Bunce appeared via video – included were the following apps – coach’s eye and huntzz – a great app that could be used to set treasure trails around the school and local environment – this app has amazing potential! You can watch the video here

Mike McSharry shared e paper with us – a great app that is a drawing tool that enables children to create their own picture books I think this would be really useful for a project within a class with each child creating a page within the book.

So to Thursday and back to LWF with the chance to look around and hear some of the speakers in the main event – for me I liked the domes, although at times they did seem small for the number of participants that wanted to listen to the breakouts – having also been to the brewery the same  can be said. The theatre space was large -although my favourite was the round from last year.  At times the noise from outside could be heard but did not detract from the main speakers – it will need time to develop and I look forward to seeing what Graham has in store for us all next year.

So onto the speakers

First up was Mitch Resnick who I absolutely loved and could have listened to all day! He spoke of the discovery of learning that comes in Kindergarten, of Scratch the programme that he came up with and that is used in my school and thousands of others across the world to give children a chance to discover and program for themselves, he then moved onto warrior cats something that was new to me but will investigate and used it as an example of how people where using scratch to take well known literature and changing it for themselves. including a lovely example of mothers day cards – his talk ended with his view of ICT as “Invention and Creativity Technologies” something that will most certainly stay with me.

Next was Mark Surman and Michelle Levesque from Mozilla who carried on the theme of discovering and creation and talked about enabling a generation of web makers through tools such as hackasaurus and open badges – again another great talk about enabling children to discover and create.

I skipped out of the main hall at this point to have a look around the domes – talking in Lego- building a classroom of the future, looking at the computers in the Museum of computing as well as watching young hackers come up new and interesting developments that would be shown later in the main hall. I missed one of my heroes Jesse Schell speaking as I was hosting a session straight after in one of the salon pods that involved myself and 9 teachers all who I have met via twitter and all who agreed to help me – each of them are inspirational with what they do and I am lucky enough to call them friends.

The aim of the session was to show what is happening in Education now – not in the future but wright now in classrooms up and down the country – we took the approach of starting at Year 2 and taking a journey through the life of a child right up to university. This idea and line up was decided before Gove made his announcement at BETT  at the beginning of the year and is an example I feel of what can be achieved in schools with technology – the presentations if you missed them or would like to watch again are embedded below – with a few to follow.

I think we really showcased what is happening in schools as well as the power of Twitter for CPD and forming relationships – it was certainly something special and I know from following tweets those in the audience agreed.

Once it had finished it was time to head back into the main stage after a few conversations – part of these conferences for me is the catching up and the face to face conversations that make these a special occasion.

Back into the main hall for talks from Jim Knight who spoke about the design of spaces to encourage learning and what would schools look like if Steve Jobs had gone into education  and not technology an interesting talk – I also enjoy listening to Lord Knight speak – he regularly talks and listens to teachers and the same was true during one of the breaks – a real pleasure. Then it was on to the Young ReWired State with young people demonstrating what they had been working on – a great demonstration of passion for ICT and coding as well as brilliant presentation skills as things sometimes did not quite go to plan a great way to end the afternoon session.

Then it was time for the closing with Sir Ken Robinson live from LA- one of his quotes that resonated both with myself and many in the audience was that Technology does not remove the need for great teaching and active learning – it enables them.  This was the last talk of the conference and home I headed.

Final thoughts – the domes I liked being able to move in and out of – although would bigger domes next year be possible? The talks prompted my thinking as always and given me things to think about which is always good, the connections made and conversations were fantastic, I was delighted to host a session and thanks go to Graham for inviting me to put something together. I missed some parts of the Brewery – mainly the main stage area but not others and next year LWF will be in the ‘new’ West Hall of Olympia – it will also cross over with BETT which next year moves to EXCEL which could be an issue mainly for those teachers who would like to attend.

Last Wednesday night I left school and headed to Olympia for Learning Without Frontiers 12 this was the first time that it had been held here and from following the tweets that led up to the event I know that organiser Graham Brown Martin was going for a different experience!
This was true on arrival to be meet with a series of domes – these were part of the Free conference and hosted break out sessions as well as Lego, Rewired state, Nintendo, Toucan, Pearson and History of Computing.  It looked very interesting and unlike any conference I had been to before.

I headed to the Pearson Pod as I was taking part in WeTweetED the main points to come out for me were: collaboration will push technology use in school forwards and fear is what often holds us back. That training and research needed to be ongoing, with networks working together having the children at the fore front using their skills.

From here it was on to the LWF Awards and a chance for a nice tweet up as we all headed for a table – for me this has been the fantastic part of twitter – forming friendships face to face as well as the virtual online tweets.  It was great to see David Mitchell win the Primary Innovator award for his continued work with blogging, quadblogging and now his latest project of blogging the leap year.  You can see a full list of the winners here. I was also there to present a Eulogy with Tony Parkin to remember Tom Cooper who sadly passed away at the end of last year, it was a lovely moment and a pleasure to meet both Jenny and Tom’s mum – just a shame it was under the circumstances.

This term in Year 5 we are looking at the topic of Space.  Over the summer holidays I discovered the author Oliver Jeffers and his beautiful picture book – The way back home.  The illustrations are just delightful as can be seen below:

We used this text as a basis for our Literacy work at the start of the term to engage the children and to teach a range of texts and assess understanding.  It has worked really well, and demonstrates the power that picture books have.

We carried out a range of activities including: looking at the cover and deciding what the book would be about and why, a diary entry for the boy when he goes into space, instructions for the boy and the alien on how to fix their machines – this included some fantastic role-play and use of ‘alien’ language, character descriptions of the boy and the alien and a play script,  the children continued where the book ends.

We also used it to ‘unpick’ the story and the children used this to create their own picture books, with illustrations, front covers, blurbs  and to add a twist a limit of 100 words! The children worked in groups to create these and they are lovely and will be a great resource for the children to share.

There was also some ICT – with the children using storybird to create stories set in space, this was the first time that the class had used Storybird and they loved it as did I watching them build their stories and share with each other.  I have included two below:

Bill goes to the moon on Storybird

the bogey brothers! on Storybird

As the new term starts again for those of us in England – I thought it would be a good time to start blogging after following the example from Tim Rylands and having a mostly analogue August.

A lot of teachers reading this will be planning and for subject co-ordinators that will also involve looking at how ICT is delivered in their schools and year groups.  Thanks to twitter I have had some great ideas that I have been able to implement and have a go at in my classroom. There are boroughs that have also shared their resources online as well.

I find the best value with a lot of these ‘schemes’ is the ability to dip into them, move them around to suit the needs of the individual school/class/year group.  Since January we have been looking at two resources that support the planning and delivery of ICT within the classroom.

First is teach-it from do-be, what this resource does is provide is step by step how to use guides for a range of free web 2.0 resources and ideas for cross curricular ideas to bring the curriculum alive in the classroom.  Their featured free resource at the moment is Tour-it – which shows how to record a tour in Google Earth and ways that this can be used in the classroom.  I know that this may not be for everyone but for those who want to try new technologies it provides a way of working through new technology that they can then use in their own way.

I have  shown these to student teachers when covering Geography and they really find it useful as have staff in school when introducing new resources at INSET sessions. These resources are available online as well as in a folder with ideas grouped together in sections such as games based learning.

Secondly is Switched on ICT from Rising Stars this has been in written in collaboration with Terry Freedman, Miles Berry and Tom Barrett – having their expertise working on this scheme is a fantastic reason to take a look at it.  The scheme has a lot of fantastic modules that again can be used in ways that suit your school for example, it comes with six activities again with step by step guides and a dvd-rom with resources, laminated cards for the children to use as well as including e safety points and level descriptions.  It is based on a mixture of web 2.0 resources as well as ‘old’ favourites such as Publisher and powerpoint.  Progression and skills across the year groups is also included.

At the moment Switched on ICT is available for Key stage 2, with Key stage 1 resources being published this Autumn – for me this scheme provides exciting lessons with support underpinning them for those teachers that may not be confident in using new tools.  As well as including great ideas for even the most experienced teachers.

As well as commercial schemes – there is also ideas and planning free on line.  Ian Addison is fantastic in sharing resources that he creates and his latest is this ict planing website a site that is already filled with some great ideas and will continue to grow throughout the year.

Ian is also responsible for undertenminutes which does what it says – videos explaining how to use educational technology in under ten minutes – a great way to start a staff meeting.

Last but not least is this sight from from the Isle of Man department of Education which looks how to use a range of technology across the curriculum – thanks to Simon Haughton who tweeted the link earlier this evening.

If you have not seen these resources before I would definitely recommend taking a look – would also be interested to hear what you use in school.

Here’s to a great year ahead.