Author Archive: Sarah
ICT for Education Magazine Conference – Cardiff
A pleasure to be in Cardiff taking part in the ICT for Education Magazine Conference at Cardiff City Football Club. We started with a workshop looking at games, still images, panoramas and Web2 resources to bring literacy and so much more to life. Continue Reading
Barry Island Primary School, South Wales
Great to spend a day with the children, staff of Barry Island Primary School, South Wales, and visiting colleagues, looking at ways to engage and inspire literacy skills through analogue and digital means.
The morning was spent with 50 Year 1′s and Year 2′s, then a quick break and we had the same number of Year 5′s and Year 6′s, together with their teachers and the visitors. Continue Reading
La Grande Boissière Campus, International School of Geneva
Lovely to return to Switzerland for a second visit to La Grande Boissière Campus, of the International School of Geneva. Last time, we were here to present at the “Pollens pédagogiques” event. On this trip, we had the chance to work alongside students and teachers in the school. Continue Reading
Bidston Avenue Primary School, Wirral: Day 2
What a delightful way to end our trip up to the Wirral: working with three sets of children today, here at Bidston Avenue Primary School. We really enjoyed the atmosphere in this school over the last two days. Laughter – big time – too. Continue Reading
Bidston Avenue Primary School, Birkenhead, Wirral: Day 1
Today, we are back in the North West of England to spend the first of two days at Bidston Avenue Primary School here on the Wirral, and the Elections get our vote!
With the school being used as a polling station, it made sense for us to spend some time with the teachers today, and work alongside the children tomorrow, breaking creative teaching down in to its constituent parts 
.
Bidston Avenue has started using Twitter to communicate with parents. Follow them here, and headteacher Stuart Brady here.
We met Stuart back last November while at the Durham Primary Headteachers Conference and were struck by his desire to seek out and deliver the very best for his children and staff. The school website reflects this, with a whole section devoted to the power of smiling, and there were many, many smiles here today.
We are really looking forward to our day tomorrow, when we will be in the classrooms with the children and their teachers.
Thank you to Stuart, for recording his thoughts on today:
Continue Reading
SIRikt iPad workshop, Kranjska Gora, Slovenia
More fun to end this trip to SIRikt in Slovenia. We did another iPad workshop today, and our first go at doing it ALL via the iPad itself. It worked! A presentation in Keynote and popping out to show the different, creative, apps that our delegates could try, on the iPads in the room – and all went smoothly.
We are very grateful to Louise Devos from iFactors Pro in Holland for sorting out an iPad2 and VGA cable as we passed through Holland for the IPON event. It meant that were able to mirror all of our preparations and presentations, on the iPad AND the big screen.
A lovely, cosy, fireside, storytelling atmosphere pervaded the room. This was only shattered by lots of laughter and music, as people made, created, and explored, all through the iPad touch screen. Continue Reading
Conference for Bedfordshire Middle Schools & Holywell Middle School
A great start to our visit to Bedfordshire, with some sixty children from Holywell Middle School in their school hall. Continue Reading
Southfield Technology College, Workington, Cumbria
The last day of a great week in Cumbria, and the chance to work with secondary colleagues, and children, at Southfield Technology College. Continue Reading
Reflections on a day of lessons
Thank you to Helen Leuty, ICT coordinator, Brodetsky Jewish Primary, for recording her thoughts on a day of lessons at St Matthias C of E Primary.
As the children entered the Year 2 lesson Tim asked, “what’s that sound?” “could it be wind?” (He also confessed to having a bit of a problem with wind!)
“What is that? Snow? Sea?” “Let’s find out…”
Children were helped to find the right time to ‘drip’ ideas in without putting hands up and why this would be better; you might miss other people’s ideas or new ideas of your own if you concentrate on putting your hand up. The children quickly got the hang of waiting for an appropriate time to share and were actively listening. Continue Reading
Education Leeds Inspiring Writing 3 – St Matthias C of E Primary
Today we were at St Matthias C of E Primary doing some lessons with children across the age range, so that staff from the school and colleagues from other schools who attended yesterday’s training, could see “it in action”, but also become involved and muck in with an exploration of the power of virtual worlds.
This has bought to an end the third (well actually fourth if you also include the Wii project too) of our visits to Leeds to work alongside Colin Davies and Sam Collier of the Education Leeds advisory team. Continue Reading
