Stuart Ridout

ICT Freedom - With great power comes great responsibility

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:15:00 +0000

My Twitter feed is full of retweets this morning … “Michael Gove to scrap ‘boring’ IT lessons” from the Guardian. In his opening speech to the BETT show, Michael Gove will slam the boring and constrictive programme of study that is in place for ICT and will allow schools to choose their own curriculum.

Gone are the days of the drip fed Microsoft Office curriculum and a brave new world is upon us with exciting and dynamic schemes of work that will be updated to reflect current practice. This new curriculum will serve the needs of all and will pay homage to Turing and inspire a new generation of programmers and other digital professionals. Or will it?

Don’t get me wrong, as an ICT teacher and former Head of ICT I welcome the freedom but I’m not sure everyone will know what to do with this new found power. There are lots of excellent professionals who are on Twitter and have already made moves towards developing a dynamic and exciting scheme of work. The #ictcurric team developed excellent resources and shared them willingly. But what about the ICT departments who are not engaged in these professional networks? How do they find out what others are doing? The concern is that some departments won’t know what is possible so will not push the boundaries. This situation is made worse by a lack of computing trained professionals in schools who can inspire students and lead them on to independent programming through sites like Microsoft Dreamspark.

The major stumbling blocks in this brave new ICT/Computing world are the examination boards and the qualifications available. We can provide as much inspiring teaching and as many awesome lessons as possible but whilst you still have exam boards who are awarding marks for using WordArt in coursework (see attached extract from the mark scheme for WJEC A-Level ICT) we are still doomed to be uninspiring when we get to the formal stages.

The exam boards must develop the qualifications to match this new technological freedom and must continue to update the qualification to keep it relevant in an ever changing work.

Finally, to support teachers we need to have more CPD available to staff to get them skilled up in the computing aspects of ICT. There will always be students who want to push the boundaries of lessons (educationally) and the staff have to be able (and confident) to lead them to the next steps and support them on their journey.

These students are headed for greatness, we just need to ensure they are pointed in the right direction.

2012: My Year of Coding

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:45:00 +0000

This year I won’t be making any new year’s resolutions. For me I am focusing on using my skills more at school. As an ICT teacher it’s easy to get on the treadmill of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and the occasional Access database if you’re getting really technical. This year I am going all out for coding at school.

In my previous life (before I was a teacher), I worked for BT in their main development facilities in Ipswich. During my time I was a systems tester, systems analyst and I have been known to turn my hand to some coding from time to time. Some of those development skills have lapsed but they occasionally get a trip out when I am really into a web project - an example of this was when I developed plannerLIVE! <—- BTW: plannerLIVE! is completely free of charge, has hundreds of schools registered and has over 100,000 homework assignments online! Did I mention it’s free?

Following my visit to Microsoft’s UK base in Reading at the Microsoft in Education Forum I have been thinking more and more about getting more coding into school. Ben Nunney’s presentation on using Kinect in the classroom was excellent and got me thinking about doing more coding at school. I’d love to get him to come in (or Skype in) and do some work with gifted students. In addition, Ray Chambers is publishing some exercises on using Kinect on his website which is a future step for us.

So this Thursday I am starting Coding Club at school. The students have been fed an almost exclusive Microsoft Office diet (some have done a little Scratch) so we’re starting from the basics.

I’ll be getting all students to register with DreamSpark to get hold of software and tutorials.
We’ll be starting with a little SmallBasic to get them used to coding and conventions
Following that brief intro we’ll be getting straight into XNA Game Studio 4.0
(I’m currently working through the XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginners Guide book which is really good)
From there … who knows? The sky’s the limit!

Am I going wrong?
Are you running something similar at your school?

Let me know in the comments below!

Microsoft in Education Forum

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:17:46 +0000

It’s been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post and in that time I’ve had a couple of significant incidents that have changed my perspective on ICT and Computing in schools.

The first was the Microsoft in Education forum held at the Microsoft UK headquarters in Reading. This was a great event organised by Sean O’Shea, James Marshall and Tim Bush. A small group of 12 education related people got together and discussed how Microsoft helps with the most important thing in schools … learning!

There was a real focus on doing things differently, from moving from on-premises systems to the free Live@edu product, to the whole host of free tools available at the Partners in Learning site.

The Partners in Learning site has some fantastic resources to help learning and teaching in schools. Here are a few highlights from the site:

Microsoft Mathematics Add-in for Word and OneNote - This free add-in allows you to easily insert mathematical formulae, symbols and graphs into Microsoft Word documents.

Microsoft Songsmith - A clever free application that helps students to develop music. Students sing into the microphone and Songsmith creates the music to accompany the song.

SmallBasic - A simple way to introduce real programming skills to students. SmallBasic is the pre-cursor to VisualBasic and projects can be ‘graduated’ to VisualBasic when you are ready.

There are a lot more tools available at the newly redesigned Partners in Learning network site. They’ve packaged their best learning resources into the Learning Suite by Microsoft. This is a single installer that allows you to choose the programs you want to install.

Are you rounding up student answers? Teach like a Champion.

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:24:00 +0000

“Deep in thought” by RPatts on Flickr

An essential part of being a better teacher, manager, student or leader is the ability to review and refine your practice and to be open to new ideas. I am currently reading a book “Teach Like a Champion: 49 techniques that put students on the path to college” by Doug Lemov. Lemov is managing director of a group of ‘Uncommon Schools’ who are independently run charter schools aiming to be high performing regardless of social profile of the students.

Some may consider the advice in the teaching manual to be for new and inexperienced teachers but there is something there for everyone who is keen to refine their craft and improve the performance of their students.

Lemov has sought out and observed high performing teachers, especially those from schools whose level of social deprivation is preventing students from achieving. He has identified common themes and techniques that can be applied in your classroom now and will improve performance. These have been organised into areas:

Setting High Academic Expectations
Planning that Ensures Academic Achievement
Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons
Engaging Students in Your Lessons
Creating a Strong Classroom Culture
Setting and Maintaining High Behaviour Expectations
Building Character and Trust

Within these seven areas are 49 techniques, each with catchy names (Precise Praise, Sweat the Details, Right is Right), simple explanations and successful case studies. I am part way through the book but a technique that grabbed me in Setting High Academic Expectations is Right is Right. This is my summary of that section.

Right is Right

This section is about having high expectations for ‘correctness’ in the classroom. A partially correct answer is not good enough in the high achieving classroom. There are a number of ways that teachers can ensure that students are always fully correct and are achieving the highest standards.

1. Hold out for all the way

Teachers try to encourage students and stay positive but their rounding up of answers lulls students into a false sense of security. Consider the situation

Teacher: Katie, how will the introduction of computers into the factory affect the workers?

Katie: Well, they won’t be very happy!

Teacher: Right, they won’t be very happy as the new technology could mean that they would lose their jobs.

The teacher has ‘rounded up’ Katie’s answer here and set a low standard of ‘correctness’. Katie may feel happier and more confident but this confidence is misplaced as she would not get the marks in an exam situation. This situation is all too familiar in the classroom; it’s important that Katie is told that she is ‘almost there’ but that she is not completely correct. The teacher can improve Katie’s performance in the final exam by using simple techniques.

The teacher should praise the student but prompt them and assist them in expanding their answer to be fully correct. They can do this by using phrases such as

“You’re getting there. Can you expand that answer?”
“That’s part of the solution. Can you complete it?”
“Can you develop that answer further?”
“Okay, but there’s a bit more to this answer than that”

2. Answer the question

Students can often answer the question they WANT to answer rather than the question that is being asked. Quite often they can get away with that as the teacher is delighted that they have learned something and can recall it, but the teacher should stick to their guns and insist that the question asked should be answered.

Example

Teacher: Who can tell me what a high-level language is?

Tim: C++ is a high-level language.

Teacher: Thank you Tim but C++ is an example. I am looking for a definition of what a high-level language is.

3. Right answer, right time

We’ve all had the keen student who want to demonstrate their understanding by jumping ahead of the question that you asked. This is fine for that student but it doesn’t help the other students in the class who need the process to be broken down into the manageable chunks that you originally planned. It also creates the impression that the pace of understanding is much faster than it really is.

Effective teachers should tactfully but forcefully ask the student to explain the NEXT step, not the whole process. They should then carry on as they originally planned the delivery of the material. This is not to say that if you should not move ahead if the whole class has genuinely understood the concept faster than you expected.

4. Use of technical vocabulary

This final point is about getting teachers to not only use technical vocabulary in the classroom but to expect it back from students and not ‘round up’ the vocabulary. Great teachers should insist on precise technical vocabulary.

In Lemov’s book he illustrates this with video clips, one of which shows a maths teacher asking a student about how ordered pairs of co-ordinates work. The student answers that “the x-axis comes first and then the y-axis”. Many teachers would accept this answer as it is or ‘round up’ and say “That’s right, the x co-ordinate comes first and then the y co-ordinate”. In this scenario the student probably wouldn’t even realise that their technical vocabulary was wrong. The teacher in the video clip questions the student to coax the correct vocabulary out of them and then insists on them answering the question in full using the correct technical vocabulary.
.

Summary

Regardless of whether you are new to teaching or have been teaching for a number of years, “Teach like a champion” allows you to identify the little things that make a big difference in the classroom. I have already used some of the points in my classroom and will be using some of these suggestions for staff when observing lessons for professional development and mentoring.

Teach Like A Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College (Doug Lemov) is available from Amazon.co.uk

~~RRP: £18.99~~
Sale Price (at time of publishing): £13.67

Amazon also have a live preview where you can read a sample of the book before you purchase.

Why I'm an Amazon Prime member

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:00:06 +0100

I signed up for Amazon Prime two years ago but I didn’t mean to. I signed up for the free trial and didn’t cancel in time but now it’s one of the best things and I wouldn’t be without it.

For those of you who don’t know what it is, Amazon Prime gives you

unlimited FREE One-Day Delivery on millions of eligible items sold by Amazon.co.uk
free shipping with no minimum purchase
the ability to share your account with four other members of your household

… all for the low cost of £49 for a year.

I tend to find that Amazon prices are normally excellent on most items and you can order quite late in the afternoon and still receive it next day. I use it with the Amazon iPhone app to order on the go. It makes the whole process a doddle!

Amazon Prime has saved me so much on shipping over the last two years and it means that using Amazon is a no-brainer as you only need to think about the cost of the item and it is couriered to you for the next day.

There is a one month FREE TRIAL available so sign-up today and take my word for it … it’s completely worth it!

Paid for checking in? Quidco goes social.

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 18:41:00 +0100

A number of people enjoy checking in with apps like Foursquare and Gowalla but after you’ve been riding high at the top of the leader board for a couple of weeks it gets boring pretty quickly.

Foursquare has specials if you are the mayor of nominated places but these have never been useful or relevant. The only one I could possibly imagine using is Domino’s but it takes time to earn the mayorship.

I recently came across Quidco when my father in law purchased an iPhone and we earned £109 for buying through Quidco. Quidco have now released an iPhone app but the interesting part is that they make payments for checking in to different stores. This puts a whole new perspective on the foursquare system … why would you check in for free when you could be earning money?

They are only small payments but they will build up quickly. Examples of check in payments include

check in to Debenhams = £0.25
check in to GAP = £0.25
check in to Halfords = £0.20
check in to New Look = £0.10
check in to the Cutting Room (a small hairdresser near me) = £0.25

Of course you can also earn payments for buying things online - e.g.

What are you waiting for?
Sign up now and start earning on your check-ins!

Inspire magazine

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:44:00 +0000

A few months ago I saw the excellent C Magazine from Jamie Portman at Campsmount and was incredibly impressed so when I started at my new school I wanted to start our own learning magazine. I worked on this with a colleague (Jay Davenport) and initially this was published internally only but we are now pleased to publish this far and wide on the Internet!

We have now completed our third issue and the next one is in progress. Inspire magazine is the learning magazine from Ousedale School. The first issue was generic but subsequent issues have had a focus including teaching gifted students and the post 16 issue.

The response from staff has been incredible and they are starting to have more conversations about learning. It is certainly creating the buzz that we were looking to produce. I hope you enjoy them and pass them on to staff at your school.

You can read all the three issues by visiting www.ousedale.org.uk/inspire

Watch this space for Issue 4 … coming soon!

ActivInspire

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:49:07 +0000

One of the ICT crimes in schools is buying technology but not using it. One of the most common technologies that suffer from this is the interactive whiteboard.

Rather than buying new stuff, we are focusing on making the best of what we have got. Our school has lots of Promethean Activboards but many of the staff do not know how to use the ActivInspire software or are stuck on the older ActivStudio software.

We recently ran a whole school training session on use of interactive whiteboards. We had three classifications: beginners, intermediate and advanced, but with a lot of staff split across two campuses how do we achieve a consistent training experience?

We wanted to train in ICT suites and had ActivInspire installed on all the computers so staff could practise during the session instead of sitting and watching. We ran one advanced session, four intermediate sessions and two beginner sessions simultaneously.

We made a number of mini training videos available and training flipcharts for the trainers.

You can access all the training videos and the trainer flipcharts at our new learning platform that we are currently developing. Visit http://learningzone.ousedale.org.uk/course/view.php?id=59 for all the files.

Can you afford Office365 for Education?

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:58:00 +0000

Earlier this week Microsoft announced the pricing plans for Office365 for Education, the successor to the free live@edu. Anyone who manages ICT services or is a budget holder will always we filled with dread when they read “pricing plan” as this often means expensive tiers and reduction of features.

So is Microsoft pulling a “bait-and-switch” on our schools with Office365?

In October last year I was looking to migrate my school to the free live@edu service that lots of people were raving about. We investigated the service, signed up for a trial and were enthusiastic to move our provision across. Then Microsoft announced Office365 for business and said ”availability and pricing for Office 365 will be announced at a future date.”

This set off alarm bells for us so we slammed on the brakes and stopped our plans until pricing was announced. Our main concern was that we would be offered free hosted email, 25GB SkyDrive and access to Office Web Apps today but will be charged tomorrow.

Unfortunately that is exactly what has happened!

What was free for our school before email, SkyDrive and Office Web Apps is now only available in the Plan A2 in the diagram above. This has been justified by adding additional features into the pricing tier including SharePoint and Lync, but the basic offer in live@edu has been reduced.

So how much would this cost our school? We are a large secondary school with around 2000 students. We have 285 staff with email addresses who would need to be migrated across. These are not just teachers but our associate staff base who are essential to the running of the school.

$10 per month = $120 per annum each
$120 x 285 staff members = $34200 per school

What makes matters worse is that the UK pricing has not been released yet. We know that US pricing rarely equates to the equivalent UK price according to the exchange rate.

Assuming direct exchange conversion this gives us a total cost of £21,500 at today’s exchange rates. This is too much for any school to afford.

Four months ago I wrote an article “Has everyone gone gaga for Google?” about schools migrating to Google Apps for Education. It now seems like these schools were ahead of the game!

It’s no secret that UK Schools are going to be suffering financially over the coming years and that budget cuts are looming. If it was a choice between saving jobs or paying for extra services I’m sure very few schools would choose the latter.

Making a successful start

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:09:48 +0100

From Ousedale School Blog - Friday 15th October 2010

Change is always a difficult part of life and changing jobs is a stressful exercise. This is my first year at Ousedale School as an Assistant Headteacher having moved from a local secondary school. I’m sure many of us remember the nerves of starting at a new workplace and all those questions that went through our head before the first day … “Are the staff going to be friendly?”, “Will I be able to cope with the work?” and “Who can I ask questions to if I don’t understand?”

These are the same kind of questions and worries that must have been going through our Year 7 students’ heads the night before they started with us in September. It is easy to forget how stressful it is to start at a new school but I think our Year 7 students have coped incredibly well. I was lucky enough to talk with parents of our new Year 7 students at the recent Parent/Tutor evening and was pleased to receive such a positive insight into how they are getting on after their first month.

“I haven’t heard the word ‘bored’ once since he started” was the most significant quote I heard during the evening and it’s exciting to know that they are enjoying their learning every day. It is obviously a “step up” in terms of the workload and we know that some students find it more difficult than others to adjust to homework but we’re confident that they will adjust quickly to these new routines. This was one of the many positive comments we received from parents and students on the evening and it’s good to know that our students and their families have had such a positive experience in their first few weeks.

As I walk around school I see Year 7 students who are enthusiastic about school and learning. I was in a French lesson recently where students were singing a song to help them learn the names of the months. It was wonderful to see the energy and enjoyment from the group. I only wish I had a video camera with me to showcase this lesson to other members of staff.

This level of success doesn’t come easily and I’m sure that our students’ success is down to the hard work of their tutors, subject teachers and the pastoral team. Our older students have made our new arrivals welcome and have been helping them out by ensuring they know where to go and that they are able to move around the school confidently.

None of this would have happened without the hard work from the students themselves. They have ensured they are punctual, have all the necessary equipment and putting the maximum effort into their lessons. After such a great start, I am looking forward to seeing how they progress throughout the year. Well done Year 7!

Stuart Ridout
Assistant Headteacher

Errrrm security HBSC?

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:24:44 +0100

I was in the bank today with my wife at the counter service section. A girl goes to the next counter, hands over a card to withdraw money. The member of staff asks why she doesn’t use the machine but the girl says she’s exceeded her daily limit.

The member of staff asks for her to sign a withdrawal slip. The signature doesn’t match.

The member of staff asks if she has any other ID. She doesn’t.

The member of staff asks her to fill out her date of birth and memorable name. She gets the name wrong and goes through a few but still doesn’t get it right.

The girl then says to leave it as she’ll borrow the money from a friend at which point the member of staff says that she’ll authorise the withdrawal.

Errrm. What’s the point of all those questions and systems if you don’t stick to them?

Has everyone gone ga-ga for Google?

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:18:00 +0100

Recently I have seen increasing mention of Google Apps and its use in schools in my Twitter feed from my personal learning network. More and more educators are looking to switch their whole school across to using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office, GMail instead of Outlook and Google Apps with single sign-on instead of multiple login accounts for the various services.

Why have we suddenly gone Google mad and is it really better than the alternative?

A major advantage for Google Apps is that it is free … ish. It will still cost money in terms of people’s time to switch over and it will take time to administer the Google Apps set up, to create user passwords and to reset those passwords when they are forgotten. It is important to remember that free does not always mean free because of the ‘on-costs’ associated with it. However, it is significantly less than the licensing costs for Microsoft Office and the relevant upgrade fees.

Another aspect of Google Apps is its collaborative nature. We seem to see more schools getting students to work collaboratively and indeed working collaboratively across different schools. This certainly fits in the Google model much better and sharing is easily accomplished using Google Apps. Historically this has not been the case with the Microsoft Office suite which has been much more single-user centric.

Much more than Office

It would be easy to make a direct comparison between Google Docs and Microsoft Office but Google Apps is much more than just Docs. Schools can benefit from free email (with a large storage capacity!), free calendars, Google Groups, creation of websites using Google Sites and hosting of video.

All of this is backed up by the power of Google and they value your privacy and the privacy of the users. Use of Google Apps also means less work for technical staff in schools so they can concentrate on the hardware side of things. It also means you don’t need to implement a costly home-access solution to give students access to their files.

Offline access?

Google Docs’ strength is also its biggest weakness. You can access your documents from any Internet enabled computer, but if you have no Internet then you have no access to your documents. As a business tool this could be disastrous as you could have an office of staff twiddling their thumbs as you would have no access to software to even create new documents. Google have phased out their offline access to Docs so you could be left with nothing. This could equally happen using Microsoft Office if your network goes down but you would still be able to create new documents and it would not matter if the Internet was down. With the Google solution you would be scuppered either way and often the lack of Internet is out of your control, as was the case of a colleague who lost school Internet due to a workman cutting through a cable.

Solution: You can export key documents from Google Docs to work offline.

Mail Merge Missing

Although Google Docs has a wide range of features available it does seem to lack some of the more advanced features of its desktop counterparts. Although I could find mention of mail merge features on the Internet I couldn’t find anything related to mail merge on Google Docs when I searched. This is a big problem for schools where mail merged letters are commonplace.

Google Spreadsheet is a feature rich application and has all features that most basic spreadsheet users would need. It does lack PivotTables which I use quite frequently and I couldn’t find a way to change the zoom percentage to view large spreadsheets at a glance. The formula list on Google Docs is way beyond anything I would need and the graphing tools are simple enough for most basic users.

Am you ready to make the change?

Some wouldn’t be comfortable making the change to cloud based Office applications on a large scale across a school. The main reason for this is that some schools do not have the stability or bandwidth in their Internet connections, especially large schools or those in remote locations.

A better way would be to make a gradual transition from Microsoft Office to Google Apps. It is important to make sure that students are aware of, and can use Google Docs as I think it provides excellent facilities for those who don’t have Microsoft Office at home. I also think it is important that students learn to use a range of tools so they are not slaves to Microsoft and are aware of a range of applications so they are able to select the most appropriate ones for their needs.

#newleaders appeal - Please help!

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:09:15 +0100

So a while back we asked the wonderful people of Twitter to post their #newleaders tweets to help people who are taking on a new leadership role. The tweets came flooding in and since this time I have been working to strip out RTs, decipher meaning where people are limited to 140 chars and categorise the tweets to organise into an eBook.

There is a problem though, the #newleaders tweets are very different from the #movemeon tweets which could be summarised quite neatly in 140 chars. Whilst there are loads of #newleaders tweets there is a lack of depth in the book. So I am appealing for some short stories/anecdotes to use in the book.

I would love it if a few people could write a short passage (around 250 words) talking about a particular leadership experience they have had. We can anonymise them and we don’t want tales that would personally identify anyone.

We have split the tweets into these areas that might give you ideas

Making Changes/Change Management
Communication
Decision Making
Delegation
General Tips
Meetings
New role (advice for the first term of a new role)
Perceptions of others
Professional Development
School improvement

To contribute your story please email newleaderstweets@gmail.com and please tweet and RT this!

Thank you in advance!

Exciting new features for teachers in plannerLIVE! with video demo

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:00:00 +0100

Since I started teaching, students have had problems with homework - either getting it wrong … or not doing it at all! Students have homework diaries or planners but those students who need most help don’t fill them in properly or forget them. One solution is to use a VLE but for many staff the VLE has too many features for them and is too complex or not fit for purpose.

I started writing plannerLIVE! five years ago after using a message board for online homework in a previous school. In those five years I have made improvements and have now released brand new features that make it a brilliant tool for any school to use for homework. The best thing is that it is completely FREE!

The main guiding principles for plannerLIVE! were that it MUST be EASY for any teacher to use and there shouldn’t be any barriers for parents or students. As a result we don’t force parents or students to log-in and they can search the homework database without worrying about forgetting passwords (which can be a support nightmare for schools).

Searching homework

Searching homework is incredibly easy for students or parents to use. There are a number of drop down boxes and they can choose as many or few search criteria as they want.

Homework automatically disappears from the search listings when it expires so if users want to find a homework that they haven’t handed in they can click the “Search Past Assignments” to find old assignments.

Adding homework

Adding homework to the system has to be easy and I genuinely haven’t met any teachers who can’t use the system … it’s THAT EASY!

You fill in the form and it’s automagically added to the main search listings. The teacher doesn’t need to do anything else to make it happen.

You can also add web links or upload worksheets into the homework page by using the relevant buttons.

Don’t reinvent the wheel!

One of the main aims for plannerLIVE! was to save teacher time. Teachers are incredibly busy with more pressure being put on them to raise improvement. The Curriculum Library feature allows you to share and re-use homework assignments from other teachers. This allows the spreading of best practice and save you time!

Electronic hand-in and online questions

Last summer we introduced new features so students could register and are able to hand-in homework online or ask questions about the homework by sending a message to the teacher. Now we have hundreds of pieces of work handed in online.

New for 2010: Management overview

One of the features we were asked for a lot was a management overview of the homework showing what homework had been assigned and when by different members of staff.

We have now rolled out this feature on plannerLIVE! and members of staff who have been given the correct access rights can view a breakdown by subject or staff. By clicking the relevant number, you can view the homework that has been set in a particular month by any individual member of staff or in a subject.

New for 2010: School sub-units

A number of schools now separate groups of students into organisational units. These are different for different schools and could include

Houses
Halls
Bands
Campuses
or any other term a school uses

Schools have now got complete control over these sub-groupings and can name them to ensure minimal confusion for users.

The right price: FREE!

The best thing about plannerLIVE! is that it is completely FREE! No restrictions, no limits. Schools can register and start using the system immediately.

To sign-up your school visit http://www.plannerlive.com/new

Write just like me - iFontMaker Review

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:18:00 +0100

Admit it, you’ve needed a ‘handwritingy-looking’ font, trawled the web and then either given up or used the dreaded Comic Sans. What you really wanted was to use your own handwriting as a font … right?

Personalised handwriting fonts can cost $20 or more depending on the complexity of the font and your handwriting. Now it is quick and easy for you to create your own font using iFontMaker for iPad. You download the app for your iPad and you’re good to go.

The app takes you through the process step by step working through each of the characters needed in the font set. All you need to do is draw the letter, number or symbol using your finger. You can then type a sentence in the application to test what it looks like, re-do any letters you’re not happy with and create the font. It’s uploaded to the web and you can email a link and download it to your computer.

There are a variety of ways to create your letters, using a brush, caligraphy pen or a pencil … and you can vary the width of the output to create a fine or thick font. You can create a whole font in 5 minutes it really is THAT easy.

You can extend the font set beyond the standard characters and can include accented characters and other more ‘exotic’ symbol such as the Euro symbol in the extended Latin set. You are even able to create Japanese font characters using the extensive application.

It is a little more expensive than many apps, at £4.99 on the UK App Store or $6.99 on the US App Store but it is well worth the money as you can create a whole range of fonts and it is great for adults and children.

iFontMaker is a clever and different type of app to most of the others that are available and is a great way to show off your iPad to your friends!

Key information

Publisher: The 2TTF
Cost: £3.99/$6.99
Hardware: iPad only

… and if you really want to be able to write like me you can download my scrawly handwriting font by clicking below!

Hands On with The Early Edition on the iPad

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We all like news, we all like bed. What could be better than an easy way to catch up with the news whilst in bed?

The Early Edition is a brilliant app for the iPad priced at £2.99 from the iTunes Store. It is a aggregator that pulls in news stories from all your favourite websites and presents them in a newspaper format.

The best thing about this is that the dynamic newspaper updates every time a new story is published on your RSS feeds and include links to videos from the news sites themselves. Think of the moving newspapers from Harry Potter!

The app is REALLY easy to use and the recent update means you don’t even have to know the RSS feed address. You enter the website address and it searches for the feed address for you.

Want to create specific supplements to really get that Sunday newspaper experience? You can now group your stories into sections e.g. Tech News and assign certain blogs or sites to those sections so you can browse specific types of news.

This is a five star app and is definitely worth the £2.99 cost.

If you need any more convincing of how great this app is, watch the video hands-on review below.

Stantonbury Campus - a very special school

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:35:47 +0100

It’s finally come; today is my last day at Stantonbury Campus. It seems so long ago that I got the job at Ousedale School and I’m really looking forward to starting in September but I will miss Stantonbury … a lot!

Stantonbury Campus is different from other schools I’ve experienced. Not because there are nearly 2800 students on site, not because students don’t wear uniform, not because they call teachers by their first name, but because of the quality of relationships with students. Stantonbury’s ethos is about equal value and determined optimism and this is at the heart of everything they say and do. This equality also applies to staff; it doesn’t matter whether you are a teacher, cleaner, secretary or the principal … everyone treats each other with respect.

I don’t think students are always aware of how lucky they are. The school has excellent facilities, well equipped ICT suites, a swimming pool, theatre, athletics track but the real asset at Stantonbury is the staff who work incredibly hard for students to ensure they achieve. Students receive an interesting and varied curriculum and the cross-curricular Rich Tasks that students complete in Key Stage 3 are something to be proud of.

I’ve had a fantastic and dedicated ICT teaching team who are committed to students and achievement. They are hardworking and produce excellent outcomes. They are also an incredibly friendly and caring team who take care of each other and help each other out.

I’ll miss Stantonbury Campus as it was where I got my education about working in partnership with students rather than teaching to them. It really is a special place and I hope to take some of the ethos with me wherever I go in the future.

Logos quiz from TeachMeet Milton Keynes

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:53:00 +0100

In the words of the Big Breakfast from 1994 … “Don’t phone, it’s just for fun!”

We ran a table quiz at TeachMeet Milton Keynes to win Camtasia licences that had been generously donated by TechSmith. Congrats to the winners.

A few people have asked for the quiz so they could use it at school. So here it is, if you want the answers you’ll need to DM me your email address (my Twitter name is stuartridout) and I can send you the answers.

Download the logo quiz

Implementing electronic behaviour management

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:41:17 +0100

“Bees!” by Todd Huffman on Flickr

Learning is paramount in school. I know it is an obvious thing to say but it’s easy to forget and to get caught up with the day-to-day things like behaviour. Of course, if you have good teaching then it usually leads to good behaviour which allows outstanding learning, but that’s for another post at another time!

It’s easy to let your behaviour tracking system become more important than the behaviour itself and you can forget why you have the tracking system in place. Most schools use a paper based system (in my current school it is the yellow sheet, in my previous the green sheet) and these sheets of paper move about via pigeon holes and clutter up desks.

The problems with a paper based system are:

too many sheets of paper creating an unmanageable paper overload
it takes too long for actions to be carried out and the original incident becomes irrelevant
students can get so many yellow sheets that it can become a ‘badge of honour’ to collect them
it is easy for people to fill them in without taking any action and shifting the ‘teflon sheet’ to the pastoral team

The biggest problem with any behaviour tracking system is that it is easy to forget what the point of the system is! It is easy for the system to become an administrative nightmare that records actions but doesn’t effect change in students. It is important to record all actions that are carried out but …

… behaviour management systems exists to help students modify their behaviour so they can get back to the most important thing … LEARNING!

The next logical step is to move to an electronic system that links into your schools MIS. Most major schools MIS have a product that accomplishes this but there are external providers that will link into your MIS. We use Facility CMIS from Serco and are currently rolling out their electronic behaviour system using ePortal.

So far the roll out has gone extremely well and we are seeing more positive behaviours recorded centrally than negatives and this will be incredibly useful to share with students. If you are considering moving over to electronic behaviour management here are a few learning points that you will need to consider but we didn’t think about!

Everyone who comes into contact with young people will need access to the system including librarians, lunchtime supervisors, school nurse and other associate staff members.
All of these people will need access to a computer to record these behaviour events and need to be able to do this as part of their job. When, where and how does a lunchtime supervisor record an electronic incident?
Can you analyse the data in the way you want it to? We have halls (or houses) but our behaviour management system only allows analysis by years and subjects. This is a bit of a pain for us and we are finding a workaround.
Is the tutor aware of information throughout the process? It is very easy for the tutor to get missed out of behaviour management processes. The system we use puts the tutor at the heart of behaviour.
Eventually this information will be accessible online to parents. How are you going to ensure that spelling, grammar, tone and language is appropriate and acceptable to show to parents?

There are workarounds and ways to make all of these work but it is worth thinking about these as you prepare to move over to an electronic system. Already we have seen great success and I’m sure it will radically improve the way we manage behaviour in my school.

Are Facebook fan pages paving the way for viruses?

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:56:00 +0100

In the last few years society has become much more computer safety and virus savvy. That’s not to say that all viruses, spyware and malware have disappeared off the radar but people are starting to question content a little bit more. Many more people don’t open attachments from unknown senders although it is still easy to get caught by an email hoax.

The latest fashion of fan pages on Facebook is starting to erode all that good work on content awareness as they force people to click a link or Like button before they know what they are getting into. This is becoming more common and the characteristics are virus like.

How it works

1. The fan page publishes itself to your friend’s profile page and therefore shows up in your news feed.

2. You click on the “Hilarious” link to find out what it’s all about

3. You cannot view the content without signing up or clicking the Like button

4. You then get access to the picture BUT the page also publishes itself to your profile page and your friends’ news feeds

5. They click the link and the cycle starts all over again!

What’s the problem?

Some might say that this is no problem, it’s marketing and publicity. I have no problem with the pages themselves but the method used is desensitising users to ‘mindless’ clicking. There is no concept of questioning the content, it forces you to click/accept/like the page before you know what you’re getting.

This technique will lead us back to where we were a few years ago where people will click anything that is presented to them! It would be quite easy to spoof these pages and send them out as Facebook styled emails to get people to give up their Facebook passwords or download viruses/malware to their computer.

More information

See this BBC News article about ‘clickjacking’ (c/o twitter.com/xannov)