Head in the Cloud

http:/worldofoddballs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/BROKE.jpg Yesterday I ran an inset day for staff at a primary school. The aim of the day was to introduce my cloud based ICT scheme of work. This normally involves firstly talking to staff about digital competence, as it's been written in a way that I believe will address the new digital competence areas. I then plan in an opportunity to log into the cloud platforms mentioned in the scheme and look at some of the available tools. In this particular school the focus was on Office 365 and J2E , both of which are available through the  Hwb  platform. First part of the morning ran smoothly until we all tried logging onto Hwb. Internet access ground virtually to a standstill. Pages were taking an age to load, if they loaded at all. So, here am I talking about moving much of the school's ICT curriculum to the cloud and about 28 people in an ICT suite bought the internet to a complete halt in the school. Very frustrating and...

Spent some time today looking at a relatively new feature available in 2Simple's Purple Mash platform . 2Email is basically a safe place to teach young children how to use email. The interface comes in two 'flavours', one for the foundation phase (KS1) and the other for KS2. Each being tailored for those groups (see images below) Foundation Phase Interface KS2 Interface Teachers can set class permissions on where emails can be sent - to others across the school, to teachers, or to their pupils in their class. Teachers can also 'approve' each email that a child may want to send. Therefore lots of control over how you want your class to use it. There is also a 'Report to teacher' option if a pupil receives an email that is inappropriate. This email is then deleted from the child's email and the teacher is alerted and can view it (and the email conversation) from their email account. A very neat feature. If you don't want pupils emailing eac...

Since September 2015, Digital Pioneer Schools from across Wales have been involved in the development of the new Digital Competence Framework. This framework will be available to all schools in Wales from September 2016. If you've read any of my previous posts on Digital Competence you would have seen that there has been much work done in this field already by many organisations around the world. Therefore we could take an informed guess as to aspects that would be covered in any newly developed framework. I made a stab at this sometime ago, coming up with: Digital Citizenship / eSafety Communication and Collaboration Solving Problems and Thinking Critically Creativity and Innovation These are basically the 'strand' headings to my ICT scheme which many schools are now using. A colleague of mine has just pointed me in the direction of a presentation on the Welsh Government website that does show the headings that the Digital Pioneer Schools are now working to: Citiz...

Just bought myself a Google Cardboard viewer. If you've never heard of Google Cardboard then basically it's a relatively cheap and simple way for a user to experience virtual reality. The viewer was purchased on Amazon for £10.99 and took me about 5 mins to assemble. The duck tape is you can see in the photos is just there to strengthen some areas. You download the Google Cardboard app to your smartphone, calibrate it to the viewer via a QR code and it's ready to use. Your smartphone is inserted into the back of the viewer, and the display is split into two images (one for each eye). The result is a stereoscopic 3D image. It reminds me a little of the ViewMaster toy I loved as a child! But Google Cardboard brings that idea up to date, allowing you to take your own 360 degree images. Move your head to the left or right, or turn around to see the whole scene. I've been taking 360 degree photos via my Android smartphone for some time, and viewed through this they become v...

It's been interesting to see over the last couple of months the number of schools in south east Wales who have 'gone Google'. If you have read some of my previous posts you will know that I've helped to introduce Google for Education into several primary schools across the region, and during a recent conversation with a primary school it became clear that this number is beginning to swell greatly. In one local authority we counted at least 17 primary and secondary schools using Google Apps, and these were just the ones that we were aware of. I certainly believe that number is going to grow quite significantly in that local authority, and also in surrounding LAs. During these conversations one Google Apps tool kept being flagged up as "amazing" - Google Classroom . I was obviously aware of it's potential in school, and heard lots of good things, but until now had never had a chance to use it with a class. For those who don't know what it is, ...

It was with interest that I read these articles over the last couple of days: BBC website: "Tablets Eroding Pupil's Digital Skills" The Register: Kids' Tech Skills Go Backwards Thanks To Tablets And Smartmobes" The Conversation: ICT Is Failing In Schools - Here's Why Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority - ICT Literacy Report Shows A Decline In ICT Literacy National Assessment Program ICT Literacy - Yrs 6 & 10 Report 2014 A report just published by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority found that the ICT literacy performance of students in both Years 6 and Years 10 decreased between 2011 - 2014. Their conclusions certainly caught my eye, and that of the press around the world: "The decline does not appear to be a result of changes in the test content, in the way the test was administered or sample obtained. One of the possible interpretations of the decline in ICT literacy is that the incre...

In my last post I talked about the balance between coding and digital literacy, and how it was refreshing to read a report from the ECDL saying that perhaps there has recently been too much of a focus on coding at the expense of digital skills.  It was with interest therefore that this morning I read this post - ' Coding and Digital Skills' , from Miles Berry. In it, Miles reflects upon the first year since the introduction of the Computing curriculum in England. He talks about the move from ICT to Computing and about computational thinking, but it's his conclusions that I found most interesting, and in my opinion should be read by all those educators in Wales involved in developing the new curriculum and digital competence frameworks. Let's hope that we do learn from England's experience in changing their curriculum, and in restoring a healthy balance between coding and digital skills/competence. Here is Miles' conclusion in full: I don’t want to give the im...