A year 7 class at Talbot Special School came to the CLC to create a film about life during World War 2 as part of a unit of work on the topic. The students learnt all about air raids, how families built Anderson shelters in their gardens, rationing, wartime songs and poems. They built fantastic sets for an animation, and recorded songs and poems to include in the film, using the green screen to add suitable photos as a backdrop. The project really brought the topic to life, and helped the students understand how life may have been back then. What particularly impressed me was how well the class worked as a team on the animation, taking it in turns to take the pictures, direct and move the characters, and always supporting their less able peers. You can see an extract of the film below:

“The Natonal Education Network (NEN)  is the UK collaborative network for education, providing schools with a safe, secure and reliable learning environment and direct access to a growing range of online services and content.“

Their website is well thought out and it is simple to find the information you are looking for. It provides links to a large number of web-based resources for all subject areas from KS1-KS4+, plus resources on E-Safety. In addition it links to the websites of all the regional NEN providers, for example the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning (YHGfL) which provides the broadband connection for schools in our area. Each regional provider has their own bank of resources which are well worth investigating.

We had pupils from Heritage Park and Sevenhills Schools in for a number of sessions last half term creating some animations.

Heritage Park students animated the story of Perseus and Medusa – first reducing the tale to a manageable number of scenes and creating some fantastic figures out of plasticine. Once they had animated the story in I Can Animate, they edited in Windows Movie Maker, adding a voiceover and titles to help understanding. You can see their finished film below:

The group of year 11 students from Sevenhills had an equally difficult task as they had to come up with their own stories to animate. All of them were influenced by films, TV programmes and computer games for their topics, and found that creating the characters and developing a story was the hardest part of the process. You can see a couple of examples of their films below:

Photo by www.recumbentblog.com

This GPS tracker has been written about before by my counterpart at East CLC (see his post here), but I thought I’d add my own opinion too.

Essentially the tracker logs your position every 6 seconds and creates a track on Google Maps when you return and plug it into the computer.

Any photos taken on the trip can also be uploaded, added to the map and annotated – in order for these to be placed correctly, the time on the camera needs to match the time on the computer. The map can then be shared on the www.a-trip.com website – either as a private trip or made public. You can see an example of mine here, which involved a walk around Chatsworth House to look at the latest Beyond Limits sculpture exhibition. As you can see the route isn’t always 100% accurate (I’m pretty sure I can’t walk on water), but considering the device was in my pocket for tha majority of the time, it did an excellent job.

Positives:

• It’s really small, as you can see from the photo above.
• It is simple to use, with a single button and some LED lights.
• The software to create the map and add photos is easy to use too (see exceptions below).
• It is retailing at £49.99 at the moment, and so is affordable for schools. (See the website for more information on where to buy.)

Negatives:

• Sometimes it’s hard to work out if it’s waiting for satellite data or just not turned on, as you rely on the combinations of LED lights.
• The software is great when it works, but there have been some glitches on certain computers – and it’s not clear why that is happening.
• You sometimes need to drag the photos to the correct spot on the map, even when the time onthe camera is set properly.

In all though, the device is great, so much simpler and more reliable to use than previous devices we’ve looked at, and it seems to have some obvious educational applications, in particular documenting field trips.

One of our partnership schools, Mundella Primary, borrowed the tracker for their year 6 field trip to Eyam. Dave Shaw, the teacher who led the project, said:

“The GPS tracker was useful for the children to help recap on everything we did and saw. The photos linked to the GPS especially helped their memories. They were also able to see the ‘bigger’ picture by using the maps to look at the landscape and its uses. [...] It brought the project alive!!”

We are also planning on using the tracker for a transition project at Newfield School, with year 6 pupils from their feeder schools taking a tour around the school grounds, then adding photos and descriptions of what happens at different sites.

photo by Brenda Anderson

La Oruga Muy Hambrienta

Last term a class of Year 1 pupils from Woodseats Primary came to the CLC to perform a Spanish version of the much-loved children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Earle, with the help of year 7 pupils from Meadowhead.

This was the result of a coaching project at Woodseats which aimed to give primary teachers with little knowledge of a language the confidence to deliver language lessons.

Three Meadowhead pupils read the story in Spanish whilst the year 1 pupils acted it out with fabulous props and costumes. The performance was watched by th remaining year 7 pupils back at Meadowhead via video-conferencing. This was followed by a question and answer session and a Spanish song.

Señora Goulden, the year 7 teacher said, “From my point of view, this was a really enjoyable experience. I was delighted to see so many talented linguists working together and very proud of the achievements of all those involved!”

Her thanks go to Señor Fernandez, Señorita Cassou, Señora Lewis and Señor Sockett at Meadowhead School, to Señora Millbank at Woodseats and the staff at the CLC.

Ideas to Inspire is a great website  that collates a number of collaboratively created presentations on the use of ICT in the classroom. The ideas have all been suggested by teachers and other educationalists, based on tried and tested projects. There are suggestions on using specific software and online webtools, items of hardware, and subject specific ideas – suitable for all key stages, though with a slight bias to KS1 and 2.

For example there are 40 interesting ways of using a Pocket Video Camera in the classroom, 24 ways to use Google Earth, and 23 ways to use a Nintendo DS. You can also add your own ideas if you feel they are missing by mailing Mark Warner, who created the site.

To visit the site go to http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk.

This term saw the launch of the Double Club at the CLC. Selected students from Newfield School spend time on a Thursday at the CLC doing English lessons, with all the resources based on football related themes, and each week there is a new team captain to lead the training. The club is an extension of the Playing for Success scheme based at the Sheffield United ground, and the students receive 2 hours of football training after school each week from United coaches.

The Club has been very successful so far, with students returning early from lunch to continue with the activities.

To see what the students have been learning, and how they feel about it, see the Double Club blog here.

Over the holidays I came across the Learning Event Generator by John Davitt, which generates over 2500 permutations of topic and activity, for example: “Do the concept of gravity as a blow by blow sports commentary” or one of my favourites: “Do the history of the Olympics as a mime”.

I then decided to create my own slightly more colourful version aimed at Primary teachers, to randomise choice of ICT activities. You can see the Activity Generator here. Type in your own topic at the top, press the button and it randomly generates an ICT activity.

To make it even more useful to teachers, it is in the form of a template, whereby you can edit a text file with your own options, to create a bespoke list of activities. If this template would be useful to you, please e-mail me at cmoore@ssclc.net, and I’ll send it along.

Finally, if you teach at one of our partnership schools (see list here), you are welcome to come along to the CLC with your pupils to be used as guinea pigs for a randomly generated ICT activity session – with small groups working on the same topic, but all using a different medium.

The Ordnance Survey have announced their scheme to provide a free OS Explorer Map to every year 7 pupil in the country.

“The scheme not only supports learning about geography and the environment but also helps encourage children and their families to get out and about and explore their local area. It has been praised by teachers, pupils and parents alike.”

Teachers must place their order for maps by 30 November 2009 on the Ordnance Survey free maps website: www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/freemapsfor11yearolds.

An additional resource will also be available to teachers, a booklet called The Language of Landscape, created with help from the Geographical Association.

For more information about this initiative, see the press release here.

Incidentally, the Geographical Association’s new website is now live, with lots of resources for geography teaching, primary and secondary: http://www.geography.org.uk/.

A second Spanish Summer School ran last week, essentially a repeat of the first one with different children. Once again it was a great success, with feedback from parents that their children were really keen to come back each day as they were enjoying it so much.

Here are some of the comic strips and animations they created – the pronunciation is fantastic on the animations: