Ofsted and E-safety

By claire.duffin | Published: September 17, 2012

The new guidelines from Ofsted are now upon us, with an increased emphasis on e-safety.  Ofsted will now be looking out for signs that schools have policies and procedures in place that aim to protect and educate staff and pupils in the safe use of technology.   Here at Education Reach we are encouraging schools to make sure they are ready just in case the “call” comes.

Some questions to think about include:

  • Does your school have a Safeguarding policy which includes e-safety and to what extent?
  • Does your school have an E-safety Co-ordinator?  Do staff/pupils know who this is?
  • Are staff trained regularly in new developments in technology/e-safety issues?
  • Does your school have a progressive e-safety curriculum?
  • Would staff/pupils know how to report an e-safety related crisis?
  • Has the school network got adequate filtering/security built in?

E-safety is a huge issue – technology is constantly changing and it can be a daunting prospect to try and keep up.  However is the problem technology itself? Or is it the behaviour/practices associated with the technology?  Whatever your opinion, we need to educate staff and pupils in both if we are to raise awareness and help children manage the risk.

But where do you start?  Start by just putting E-safety on your “To do” list and if you need help answering any of the questions above, don’t hesitate to give us a call.

 

 

 

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No such rule

By chris.warren | Published: August 29, 2012

Sometimes teachers teach us rules, and when we grow up we discover that it was all a myth.

I was taught at school that beginning a sentence with a conjunction was a mistake. “Don’t start a sentence with ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘because’!” the strict grammarian said, “and never, ever split an infinitive.”

I was looking up a quotation in a digital version of the King James Bible, and noticed that a very large number of sentences begin with the forbidden ‘And’. So I decided to count them. If we’re given a rule these days we can do our own research to prove or disprove it!

This is how I did it:

  • I loaded the whole text into Word.
  • I highlighted all final punctuation (fullstops, exclamation marks and question marks) and the first few letters of the following word, using Replace (Ctrl+H).
  • Next I deleted all the text that wasn’t marked, again using Replace, searching for Not Highlighted, Find Whole Words Only and replacing it with a space. This left me with just the first words of each sentence.
  • Lastly I saved the result as a .txt file

There is a specialist program available for free on the Net called AntConc. It very effectively counts word frequencies. So the last step was to load the .txt file into AntConc, do the counting, and then export the results. I discovered that there are about 33,000 sentences in the KJ Bible. Over a third of them begin with the conjunction ‘and’! Here is a list of the top 10 words used to begin a sentence, with a percentage showing the relative frequency:

King James Bible Openers

Perhaps the result only applies to the Bible – after all, it was written 400 years ago and maybe the rule has grown up since then. More research needed!

Into Antconc goes some Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, EM Forster, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell.
And yes, once again “And” and “But” feature strongly as the first words of sentences in every text. And isn’t the rest of table an intriguing insight into author-preferences and intentions!

 

 

 

 

 

Other books openers

Try it yourself – or ask a student to investigate. The pattern is quite clear. And there’s NO SUCH RULE.

 

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Geocaching………help needed!

By claire.duffin | Published: August 15, 2012

Having heard quite a bit about geocaching over the last year, I thought I would give it a go this summer holiday.  I had watched a few presentations on it at various TeachMeets, followed a few tweets about it and spoken to a few friends about what was required.  The whole concept is quite exciting and I could see how it would motivate and engage children in exploring the world outside.

I pored over the Geocaching.com website, which was full of excellent information on how to get started.  Imagine my excitement on seeing that there were loads of caches quite near to my home!  I registered on the website, dutifully wrote down co-ordinates of some of the nearest caches and looked at the hints (it was my first time so I felt entitled to “cheat”).

I told my three year old that we were going on a treasure hunt and we would have to bring my phone, a pen and some little trinkets just in case we needed them – he was very excited.  I made sure that the GPS on my phone was working (I used Google Maps) and off we went.

At this point I would like to say that I am not usually a patient person; my three year old less so.  However, we did spend ages trying to locate the caches.  Did we find any?  No we did not!

I have now tried geocaching three times (I don’t like to give up), even bringing my two friends and their children to join in the experience.  I have yet to find any caches.  I’m not sure if it’s my GPS, the fact that someone might have moved the caches or if I just can’t translate the cryptic clues!  I have since downloaded a geocaching app and even that hasn’t worked.

If anyone out there has any advice or ideas, please let me know!

Claire

 

 

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5 top tips for school websites

By steph.greenstreet | Published: August 1, 2012
With changes in legislation governing school communication coming in to force in September, many schools are refreshing or rebuilding their websites over the summer holidays. But what should you consider when creating a website for a school? What are your audience looking for when they visit your website? Our top tips for a successful school website might help guide your thinking when developing a new site.

1. Match your website to your school’s branding. Your website should be an extension of your school, it should include your school’s logo in a prominent position and use your school’s chosen colour scheme throughout. It should be obvious to your visitor that they have come to the right place

2. Showcase your students’ achievements. Your students are capable of some amazing things! We celebrate our students’ achievements in school but how often do we congratulate them in public, the school website is the perfect place to do this. Every student loves the fact that they can visit the school website and see their name in lights. (For extra safety only use students’ first names)

3. Keep it up to date. There is nothing more off-putting than visiting a website to find all of the information is out of date. Your visitors expect your website to be updated at least weekly and information like staff names being incorrect are cardinal sins. It much easier to keep up to date if you can edit your website yourself without having to contact your developer every time there is a change.

4. Involve all of your stakeholders.  Writing copy for your school website can be time consuming and tiresome for one person. Get the whole school involved in writing articles to be published on your website, students can develop their literacy skills writing a report on the latest sports match, staff love talking about the success of a trip they arranged, parents like to hear news about the school directly from a member of the governing body. Just make sure you have editorial control over the content.

5. Include important dates and documents. We often take for granted that we will be able to find out information on the internet, from looking up the time of a train or the listing for the local cinema. Parents expect to find important information on your school’s website, from the date of the INSET days and holidays to the uniform policy, it should all be easy to find on your website.

We hope our top tips have given you a few ideas for improving the experience your visitors have when they land on your school website. If you need any further advice about your school website, get in touch.

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Getting off the rollercoaster……and looking ahead

By claire.duffin | Published: July 20, 2012

I have just completed the most interesting and varied year of my career to date and now that it’s summer, I can finally get off the rollercoaster and enjoy a few weeks of calm.  I have been employed for two days a week as acting head of ICT in a secondary school.  Not to go into too much detail, but when I first started working with the school I was left with a big ball of wool to untangle, figure out and then put back together again.  When I seemed to have untangled one mess, another would appear very quickly.  There didn’t seem to be an end in sight.

In the meantime, to cheer myself up and to ensure that there were other people out there doing great things in the classroom I would dip in and out of twitter.  I have been inspired, motivated, encouraged and sometimes incredibly jealous of what my PLN were able to accomplish with their classes.  How I longed to get back to the creativity I once knew in my previous job and try out new and exciting things.

Now it’s the end of the year and I am incredibly excited that I am now in a position to start being experimental.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with a very supportive SLT who have taken ideas on board and are willing to share the journey.  As I write this post, Education Reach are developing a brand new website for the school complete with “Virtual Tour” video,  as well as co-ordinating the move to Google Apps and all that entails.  We have been trialling Edmodo for the past half term with a focus on home learning and hope to roll it out with the entire Y7 cohort in September.  Our complete revamp of the KS3 curriculum means that we can also try out some of the tools I’ve been reading about:  Glogster, Prezi, Scratch, Homestyler to name but a few.

They seem like tiny steps but we’ve got to start somewhere and I am sure that from September 2012 we will be on a “Pleasure Beach Express” rather than a “Pepsi Max Big One”.

 

Claire

 

 

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School learning platforms are a complete failure?

By steve.sansom | Published: July 14, 2012

I’ve just received a tweet from Alan Teece as follows:

School learning platforms a complete failure. In over 40 secondary school visits since easter, 90% make no use and the rest limited. Scandal

I have seen really good use of learning platforms by a very small number of staff in a few schools, other than these few I too have seen many schools wasting lots of cash with staff  on expensive commercial systems (RM, Frog, Fronter, Its Learning etc.).

Most staff do not have the time to waste learning systems that are not as easy to use as they should be.

I should also mention that the demise of Becta may have contributed to the problem, they were beginning to provide some quality resources to help in the use of learning platforms when the rug was pulled.

Surely the free offer by Google  is worth investigating by more schools?

 

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Does your school website meet the new legislation?

By steve.sansom | Published: July 9, 2012

 The DFE recently announced new legislation concerning school websites which comes into effect for the 1st of September 2012. In summary, the new legislation is removing the requirement for schools to provide a paper prospectus and is instead requiring schools to have all of the information available online.

Is your website ready?

  • Do you have a description of all of your curriculum areas, what is taught and when?
  • Do you explain clearly how applications for admission should be made?
  • Do you tell your visitors about your school’s pupil premium allocation and how it is used?
  • Are your visitors able to read the school’s policies for behaviour, charging, SEN and provision?
  • Are there links to your latest Ofsted report, the DfE achievement and attainment data, and the latest end of key stage results?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you need to act now!

 

How can Education Reach help?

If you have any questions about the changes in legislation or are unsure how it affects your school, we are here to help. We can advise you on how to make your current website meet the new legislation or what options are available to you if you don’t currently have a website.

We are already helping a number of primary and secondary schools to make sure that they comply with the new rules!

Simply email our team directly, and we will get back to you quickly.

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Steve Sansom

steve.sansom@educationreach.co.uk

 

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Photosynth – create stunning panoramic photographs

By claire.duffin | Published: March 30, 2012

Reach into the Toolbox #9

The Photosynth tools from Microsoft allow you to create visually stunning photographs from single images which are then ‘stitched’ together.  The example below was taken by my colleague Steph as we left the BETT show in January 2012.

A view of BETT 2012 on Wednesday evening as the last visitors were leaving. Taken with Photosynth for iphone.

All Steph did was stand on the balcony, take about 40 photographs with her iPhone and the Photosynth app on her iPhone stitched the photos together to create a panoramic view.  Simple!

However, what if you don’t have an iPhone, iPad or anything else beginning with the letter i?

You can still use your ordinary camera to take the photos then upload them to your PC/laptop.   Visit the Photosynth website where you will have to download their Photosynth Application.  From there it’s a case of using the tools to create a stunning photograph.  If you want a true panoramic photograph you also have to download their Image Composite Editor which will stitch your overlapping photos together to create the panoramic view.

You can share your photosynths through the usual channels – adding to favourites, embedding into a website, displaying on Facebook etc

As with most Internet based tools, you will need to create an account so that you can store your Photosynths – they are automatically set to be on public display however you can choose to keep them private and, as such, unlisted on the Photosynth website as well as any search engine.

In terms of mobile apps, as I previously stated, anything beginning with an ‘i’ is available; according to various ‘techie’ review websites there’s an app coming soon for Windows phones.  There is nothing however, for Android phones.   Boo!

However, I definitely think this is a tool not to be missed.  A stunning 3D classroom display or a virtual tour of a school would look fantastic on a school website. Now get creating!

More next week

Claire

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Wallwisher: sticky notes!

By claire.duffin | Published: March 23, 2012

Reach into the Toolbox #8

Wallwisher in an online noticeboard which can be filled with ideas, thoughts, notes, opinions, facts etc by everyone and anyone.  It’s a bit like sticking post-it notes onto a big sheet of paper.  You can also post links to pictures, videos, Powerpoint presentations, spreadsheets and PDF documents.

If planning to use the site with a number of classes, it’s best to create an account so that you can keep the walls you have created.  You can do this using your normal email account or if you have a Google log in, you can use that too.  The beauty of this site is that students do not need log ins as they can post on the wall by simply double clicking on it and typing on their post-it note.

As the owner of the wall, once you are logged in, you can change the colour scheme, move posts, edit posts and you can opt to moderate each post before it’s posted on the wall.  You can make your wall public (for everyone to share) or private (only you can see it).  If you have created a public wall for your class to use, once the activity is over you can reset it to private so that no one else can post to it.  The wall will be saved in the list of “My Walls” in your account so you can revisit it at a later date.

I’ve used Wallwisher in class and have set homeworks based on it.  When using it in class I found there was every possibility that pupils would choose the same position on the wall to write their post-it notes.  When this has happened, not all of them have been displayed however a quick screen refresh solved this and pupils were able to choose appropriate places to stick their post-it notes.  Also, as owner of the wall, I was able to move posts around so that all of them were displayed properly.

An alternative to Wallwisher is Linoit - works in a similar way with similar features.  I haven’t explored Linoit yet and look forward to doing so in school so I can accurately compare the two.  Watch this space…..

More next week

Claire

 

 

 

 

 

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Teacher Training Videos

By claire.duffin | Published: March 16, 2012

Reach into the Toolbox #7

The Teacher Training Video website has been created by Russell Stannard,  a principal teaching fellow at the University of Warwick working in the Center for Applied Linguistics.  He has created a wide range of videos to help students and educators learn how to use new technology tools and apply them in the classroom.

For CPD purposes, this is a fantastic site for quickly finding your way around tools you’ve heard of and learning about new ones! Examples range from how to use Audacity, Windows Movie Maker and your IWB to how to create blogs and wikis, capture whats happening on your screen with Jing and how to get the most out of iTunes in your classroom.

Of course there are plentiful videos on how to use technology to teach language and literacy especially for students who are learning English.  Each tool is expertly presented and demonstrated making it really easy to pick up the skills you need.

I would thoroughly recommend this site as the tools captured are wide ranging and can fit within any curriculum subject.

More next week

Claire

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