They are not intended to be purely useful to inexperienced teachers nor redundant for experienced practitioners.

The intention of the series is to offer opportunities to improve classroom organisation and therefore make a positive impact on children’s learning. I am not trying to suggest I have mastered it, far from it, I believe everyone can develop new strategies or refine existing ones to improve on their own practice, I certainly can. It is the process of trying something out, being reflective and deciding what worked for your children and scrapping what didn’t that will lead to a positive impact on learning, which is after all the entire purpose of classroom organisition in the first place.

The interactive videos that make up the resource can either be used whole class, in a group, for parents to support learning at home, for a child to go to during a lesson in order to support their learning or a teacher than needs help learning how to teach that skill themselves.

A package like Busythings lives and dies by the quality of it’s content. And it does not disappoint. Lively characters, engaging graphics and sound and a structure that clearly comes from good practice within the classroom creates an engaging and fun way for children to learn.

We have used Busythings consistently since the start of the year and together with Zondle, these two packages are helping support personalised learning and also give clear support to learners.

The control you have over setting exactly what you want your learners to engage in is fantastic. In the above screenshot all you do is click the phoneme/graphemes you want your children to learn up to and the software does the rest.

Another great feature is the ability to create your own resources linked to letters and sounds.

It is also important to mention Q&D’s excellent customer support. I explained a month or two ago that we were planning on investing in android tablets to use Busythings with and as the tablet technology was new I had found a couple of issues when using Busythings with it. They are now in the process of making it completely android tablet friendly

If your school are looking for a package that believes in the foundation stage ethos of each area of learning having equal weight (to be fair the four areas covered in Busythings are Creative Development, Knowledge and Understanding About the World, Problem Solving Reasoning and Numeracy and Communication, Language and Literacy) or if you are in KS1 and you have learners that clearly need additional early skills support, Busythings is definitely worth investigating.

Beyond questions Zondle has a unique Phonics Builder which allows you to create content to support basic skills in reading and writing and that is at the core of my use within our school. Below is a streamline way of getting Zondle making an impact in your classroom.

Getting your pupil data in

Send you the details of those you want set up to use Zondle to doug.lapsley@zondle.com using their specific teacher and children spreadsheets (At some point this will all be possible to do online from within the system). You can do this manually but they have excellent customer support and are very quick at setting everything up. Consider how you want to use Zondle in your classroom and across your school when sending off the details. I originally set up our school with 1 ‘group’ for each year group but am now extend this to have different ‘groups’ set up for each ability group in class. That way I can personalise the experience more and target specific content (topics) at specific groups of children. Don’t worry too much though as once the data is in the system you can change everything around later on as you can see from the school manager screen shot below. It’s all drag and drop with the handy feature on the list of learners on the right of being able to start to type in a childs name and the list will dynamically filter, only showing the child you are after which makes adding to groups pretty quick.

Setting up content for children to use Zondle

If you have made content you will see it on the left as soon as you log in. The other ways to find content (as you can use other peoples) is to click on ‘my friends’ in the green drop down list (top right) or to use the search box to search everyone’s public content. As I have created a huge amount of content to support Letters and Sounds using the phonics builder (if I do say so myself) the plan for my school is for all teachers to ‘friend’ me in the system and then they will have easy access to all the content I have made. The great thing is so can you. With anyone’s content, mine or otherwise.

Once you have found the content you want to add, simply roll over the green ‘+’ icon and click ‘class ready allocations’ and tick the group associated with you as a teacher to be able to have access to that content. Job done.

Removing content previously set for children

I have started to use Zondle on a daily basis in the classroom and so need to regularly change the content I am making available for children. To do this roll over the green drop down list (top right) and choose ‘my class’ then ‘learner progress’ and choose yourself from the drop down list of teachers in your school. A list of the content currently set for groups in your class will now be displayed on the left. To remove the set content, roll over the content (topic) green ‘+’ and press ‘class ready allocations’ and untick.

Getting the children using Zondle Junior

A major development of Zondle that I have been proud to be a part of is the ‘Junior’ element. This gives Primary children a more tailored environment to their needs. Zondle Junior removes all the Facebook, Youtube links of the standard version and generally makes everything nice and ‘Primary’. It allows children to use their username and password at home in a safe environment to carry on with content you have set for them. More than this though, If you login to Zondle Junior in the classroom with your teacher account, or choose Zondle Junior from the green drop down (top right) you will be presented with a list of groups that you are associated with which the children can just click to access their account. In other words there is no need for them to type in their username and password so their time actually learning on the system is maximised. It also means you don’t have to worry when children need support logging in as they just click there Zondle avatar after choosing their group.  To give maximum flexibility I would recommend hunting out a great function buried in your teacher options in the standard Zondle version. To get there, roll over the green drop down (top left) and choose ‘my profile’ then on the left click ‘my preferences’. Ticking the bottom option means that when you log in to Junior with your teacher account it will stay logged in. It also pretty much gets round the ‘time out’ issue as well. This means that if you load up the next day and visit Junior your children can hop straight on without you logging in. If you use Zondle then have lunch and a PE lesson before coming back to using Zondle, you are still logged in and the children can jump straight on. Your account is still protected as if you are logged into Junior and click back the the standard version, you are asked to log in again (stopping the children from accessing any other data). Below are screenshots when you log in to Junior with your teacher account and when you click a group:

If you would like to gain access to the content packs (topics!) I have created using the Zondle phonics builder (covering everything from phase 2 to 5) to support early writing and phonetic awareness, search for me (primarypete) in Zondle and add me as a friend.

So what are you waiting for? Get it set up and used in your classroom today!

This day seems to have been a long time coming. I’ve always wanted handheld devices in our classrooms but since the IPhone with its slick touch screen interface and fairly easy use of the internet there are more plausable reasons than ‘well it would be cool’ and ‘it’s how children learn these days’. Having a tactile and intuitive piece of hardware that brings the power of the internet and beyond (ie apps) to the classroom is a leap forward. Those saying what’s wrong with netbooks I would say they are cost effective at getting 1 to 1 devices into the classroom but I don’t believe them to be particularly tactile or intuitive and would go as far as labelling them a touch clumsy and frustrating (certainly for younger children). Although one word of caution is some Flash content is a bit touch and go with any tablet (generally drag and drop functions which make the tablet screen scroll rather than the flash content. I expect this will be generally ironed out in new content as tablets become more commonplace).

But you need more than a fantastic piece of hardware to impact on learning. I’m leaving the notion of enthusiasm to use the devices out of the equation here. I know the children will be engaged in their learning but long term any technology should be so integrated and familiar that there should only be a minimal ‘buzz’ in its use.

You need a clear strategic plan for how the impact will take place. Beyond ‘we can get some cool apps like Garage Band and they can make their own music’. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with Garage Band, IPads or schools using the app based approach as long as their plan stems from requiring the devices used to support cross curricular/creative/high engagement learning.

For my school setting the strategic  plan is slightly different. It’s true it would be great to use tablets for creative uses but the priority is to impact on basic skills, which I wrote about back in March here. I want our 2 form entry school to have a year group set of 6 devices which they can share between the 2 classes. Tablets in KS1 and either tablets or netbooks in KS2. The tablets would be used 1 to 1 but more often 2 children to 1 device. I have always taken the approach that sharing, collaborating and supporting each other’s learning is not only cheaper but also creates more effective learning than having a suite of computers 1 to 1. The devices would be used primarily for free based internet resources such as Zondle and ICT Games as well as specifically chosen subscription services such as Busy Things. This means that a tablet that runs Flash is essential (bye bye IPad). Which brings me neatly onto another reason I am taking the internet over apps approach. Apart from the fact they generally cost money, getting apps used well throughout a school will be more problematic than getting consistent use of quality internet sites. Teachers are not all familiar with apps, may require training etc whereas every teacher is familiar with using websites and therefore the fact that they are on a touch screen device as opposed to a laptop or desktop should create the minimum amount of barriers for teachers to use the devices to impact on learning. And don’t get me started on syncing.

I see the implementation of use as being short, frequent bursts of use where, for example, children go on for 5 to 10 minutes each day to develop, refine and consolidate either phonic, reading and mental math skills. Children need to over learn these basic skills and this approach would allow them to achieve success on a daily basis. So every day, in phonics and literacy sessions, children would come and practice phonics and other reading skills for 5 to 10 minutes. In maths lessons they would be used with a specific group of children for the session. In other lessons either phonics, reading or mental maths skills will be the focus for 5 to 10 minutes.

So what device will deliver all the above? In my mind it has to be an Android device. Whilst apps are currently not important, I would like to keep future options open and I think devices like the HP and Blackberry tablets are pretty much non starters for apps. The Android marketplace will mature. Now, there will always be something better just around the corner but right now (August 2011) the current crop are:

Motorola Zoom (way to expensive, heavy and fairly clunky)

Acer Iconia Tab (a cheaper Zoom)

Asus eeePad Transformer (not stylish or light but cost effective and with the option of a keyboard dock that acts as a second battery, a real option)

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (light, fairly cost effective, keyboard option and Honeycomb 3.1 but no second battery)

So it’s a straight shoot out between the Asus eeePad Transformer and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. A big factor in deciding was using the information the children I taught last year gave me (5 and 6 year olds) about the RM Slate and Motorola Zoom which I was fortunate enough to test with them for a couple of days. Their review? They loved the idea of the devices but both were far too heavy and the RM Slate was simply unusable. They had no such problem with the Zoom’s Honeycomb operating system. I assumed they would rather have a smaller device that they could hold in their hands but they were very clear that they wanted a large tablet that they could use with a stand but also have the option of having in their hands.

Where does that leave us? Basically, is the Galaxy tab worth £40 per device more? I think so. It’s got newer technology (it was based on competing with the iPad 2), looks better, is significantly lighter, thinner (easier for small hands to hold) and also has Honeycomb 3.1 which has the advantage of proxy settings being built in so that when you connect to a school network you have the option of adding proxy details. Any downsides? I’m not sure about it’s robustness so would need a decent case for each and has an IPad style non-standard connection (which we will not really need anyway) … and that’s about it. Other small things that help are the loudness of the speakers (on each side rather than the back or bottom or somewhere less than ideal for Primary children) and the headphone jack is on the top so it’s unlikely to be damaged. And the crispness of the display is rather lovely.

So I will be purchasing 12 Galaxy Tabs for our school after the summer holidays, 6 each for year 1 and 2. Our second mobile laptop suite will be disbanded so year 3 and 6 will be set up with 6 each and then if all goes well, next year devices will be purchased for the missing year groups.

So what do you think? Is now the right time to purchase a tablet over a netbook? Does the Galaxy tab do it for you? If you are after something smaller the 8.9 inch version is just around the corner. Do you have any concerns with the strategic approach being taken? I’d love to hear what people think.

Finally, below are some screen shots of the Galaxy tab running various things (click for bigger images). The children in our school when loading the internet will be taken to ‘Digital Wings’ (our custom built learning platform which is basically a set of links on speedtile).

Zondle (most games work with the tablet – a couple that use drag and drop or a spacebar don’t)

Busy Things (a few things don’t work work – dragging and dropping mainly but lots does as well)

Click here to watch a video of Zondle being used on the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Now I admit to being behind the game in terms of using blogging in school but it just hasn’t fitted with our school improvement plan and so even now we are taking things baby step by baby step. However I have done quite a bit of research into which platform would produce the response required to make blogging a success and impact on learning. In short, Posterous allows anyone with an email address to submit a post, which can then be moderated. This gives huge flexibility for children to post to a class blog and makes things incredibly easy for teachers to start posting. In other words if you can send an email you can and are blogging.

What’s the purpose? Well for us the primary reason to start blogging is to improve levels of communication between home and school. Previously this has been carried out through our old learning platform, text messages, posters on doors and letters. I want us to move to a place where letters still go out but are also uploaded onto our school website, text messages are sent as reminders for things and prompting parents to look at work on our school’s class blogs which would become a one stop shop for everything related to that class. That would be it. No more posters. No miscommunication. Everything in 1 place for busy parents to find. I know that once our staff begin to use the class blogs as a method of informing parents about events etc that it is only a small jump to them using it to share examples of learning. For want of a better phrase, a window into the classroom. The premise for impact on learning being that parental engagement will increase and therefore an increased dialogue will be created between parent and child related to their learning and subsequently the support of learning. Down the line I would love to regularly get individual children blogging by sending emails to their class blog, creating a real audience and purpose for their work, particularly writing. All this can be done using the simple elegance of the Posterous platform without having to spend hours training or administrating. Yes it’s true that because all the class blogs are registered under the same account that I have to moderate all posts but as things take off I can very easily set it so that teachers posts do not need to be moderated and/or I can set up teachers as moderators of their own class blog, whilst I can still oversee everything. There are other free and cost effective solutions out there but purely for ease of use and functionality, Posterous takes some beating.

Not convinced? Ok – here goes… Not only can you blog via email but you can get your Posterous blog to automatically post (Autopost if you will) to other sites you tell it to, eg the schools main blog or a school twitter account. So I have set up our PTA with a blog that noone ever sees but they can use by sending an email to an address and then it will automatically be autoposted to our school website. To be honest, I would consider ditching the WordPress school blog/website in favour of a slightly more limiting look of a Posterous blog if it wasnt for the fact that it has already been introduced!

Still unsure? Right – how about creating a good practice Posterous blog that any of your school’s teachers can contribute to by just sending an email. Or a Digital Leaders website where children could share their expertise in helping around school with various tasks or a child run school council blog all contributed to by the simplicity of an email?

Still not convinced? Ok. I have nothing left! Maybe you could add other uses as comments below?

If you would like to read more about the Kidsmeet structure or find out how to set up your own, visit the wiki here or website here.

Onto the event!

My parallel class teacher and I took four Year 1 children to meet up with a dozen other schools participating, not forgetting a school in Birmingham who were going to use Skype to connect virtually. We hadn’t practiced our presentation much before the day so there was a lot of hard work during the morning by the children, with a little direction from me, to get them ready to present to over 100 other children and teachers. The car journey was an excitable affair, as was our arrival but luckily @joga5 who had driven over 300 miles to compare the event had thought of every eventuality and brought along a superb selection of picture books to read. We arrived early in case any help was needed with setting up but the school’s Head teacher, @smichael920 and the aforementioned @tomsale and @mister_jim had everything well under control. The event itself kicked off with a presentation by children from Hawes Side and what stuck out to me was the impeccable behaviour of all the children in the audience, showing respect and a great attitude when listening to every presentations. I think this was due to the diverse range and style of presentations, the marvellous comparing by @joga5 and the intrigue for the children not knowing what was coming next.

In the first half school after school came and went giving good accounts of themselves with presentations ranging from Powerpoints written, created and read out by the children to singing and drama games to the virtual presentation from @oliverquinlan‘s class in Birmingham. Indeed after that virtual presentation it was our turn. We had decided to keep things geeky and simply go through how to use Aviary Education to edit images and create music, which we had used for our Cinderella and Pirate themes as well as for our school’s art exhibition. As the children were only Year 1 it was too much to ask them to do all this and explain how we used the package in our themes so we stuck to the geeky side of things. This allowed each of them chance to take control of the computer projecting to the room whilst the others explained the process using the provided microphone (a must have). After they had finished their presentation and received a very warm round of applause they strode off to receive goody bag items such as a t-shirt each from the ever awesome Zondle. The children were buzzing after this and when asked later about their favourite part they unanimously said ‘doing our presentation’, an experience which at 5 and 6 years old will stand them in good stead in further years. You can read and see more about our presentation on our class blog, here.

During the break there was a great selection of food an xbox stand to play on and a brief opportunity for teachers as well as children to chat before the second half began. a special mention has to go out to @chrismayoh’s class who had come all the way from Bradford to take part. Around about the same point, time had unfortunately progressed and so in true Teachmeet style the last few presentations were carried out with a smaller audience, which was a shame as they were 3 of the best. Luckily all the participating schools will be uploading their presentations and then having them available for viewing on the Kidsmeet website.

After closing comments including from two Australian Head teachers it was time to depart and return home. The next day I spoke to all the parents of the children involved and it was clear the impact the event had had on their child and the ability to give out the website containing pictures and a replay of the streamed event furthered the opportunity for parents to share in the children’s fantastic efforts.

So, in conclusion was the event a success? Yes. Definitely.
Will it need tweaking? Yes. Definitely.
Will it live long in the memory of everyone involved? Yes. Definitely.

A couple of stand out moments for me were Claremont’s braveness at getting up and singing individually in front of everyone (or year 1′s favourite of the first half), Chris Mayoh’s class’ ability when demonstrating Kodu and the last 3 presentations which were Tom Sale and @enomilies Mereside children talking about their digital pencil cases, @cjs76′s Flakefleet children who demonstrated pivot stick figures for animation and last but certainly not least, James Maloney’s (mister_jim) Staining children who had created a fantastic mixture of live interaction coupled with a clearly child driven video recording involving Brainpop’s Moby.

I was glad I could play a small part in organising the event, but huge credit in particular should go to @mister_jim as well as @tomsale and @smichael920 who were fantastic organisers and hosts.

Please click here to view and add to the document.

A conversation that goes on at 8pm every Thursday related to a variety of UK educational issues. Find out more here and here and here.

Why participate in #ukedchat

To connect with other educators throughout the UK and beyond. To reflect on your own teaching and children’s learning. To share your views. To have your views challenged in a professional environment.

How to participate in #ukedchat

#ukedchat is a twitter hashtag. To participate you need to follow the hash tag in a search. You can do this in a variety of ways, for example on http://twitterfall.com or on the twitter website. By following all the tweets that occur with the hashtag #ukedchat you are reading all the conversations that are occurring concurrently. To join in and have your say you need to post a tweet and include the #ukedchat hashtag. If you want to reply to someone you need to also reply to them.

Example #ukedchat tweets

To get high SATS results you can be bored out of tiny mind and get there. To become a learner 4 life you most definitely can not. #ukedchat

@colport there is enough time to reflect. Just as with everything else it depends where you as a T put your time. #ukedchat

What to do after #ukedchat

Sometimes that is it until the following week. However nothing is stopping you or others continuing to use the #ukedchat hashtag and furthering a conversation beyond the fixed time. Sometimes other ideas come out of #ukedchat and filter off in their own direction. You really can get whatever you want out of it.

But the original Flips had a couple of massive limitations. 1: Batteries. Simply getting them out, charging them, replacing them etc can be too much hassle for some, especially when other devices started using integrated rechargeable batteries. 2: (and this is the big one) still images. The Flip has never allowed individual photo’s to be taken on the hardware, meaning that you would either need a dedicated separate camera or have to take a snapshot of video footage using the provided software (no chance).

So. What to do now? In my experience video and photo have a considerable part to play in the classroom. You want 1 device to do both. You want it easy enough for children to use unaided throughout school. You want it robust. And you want it cost effective.

Well that narrows down the field considerably. If you are prepared to do without the Flip’s ‘arm’ and plug in either via an SD Card or a usb lead to transfer the data from your device to your computer in my opinion it leaves you with 2 choices. 1: IPod Touch 4th gen. 2: Kodak Playsport. I am lucky enough to have both in my classroom and below is my thoughts (purely on the above criteria):

IPod Touch: Not robust. Could be easily damaged via dropping, sand, water etc. Not cheap at £150 (but cost effective if you take into account the possibilities with APPs – which i’m not here!) Does shoot still images and video very easily. Still images can often be blurred when taken by children. Battery doesn’t last long.

Kodak Playsport: Robust (water proof and pretty much drop proof). Not ‘cheap’ but I think cost effective at £80/90 + an SD card as it takes both stills (5 mpixels – which I have found is fine for classroom use and a lot better than the iPod Touch) and HD video. It can be mildly fiddly to switch between photo and video but not prohibitively (2 button presses). You get a little blurring on photos in the arms of a child but nothing compared to the Touch and video footage is excellent. You can leave the Kodak off for weeks and come back to it and it still won’t need charging.

I think the best way to explain how highly I rate it would be to say if I had to ditch either the IPod Touch (with all it’s lovely APP goodness) and the Playsport, I’d ditch the Touch.

Here is a link to the Playsport for more details.

As a school, as the Flip camera’s started misfiring we have been replacing with Playsports, so far in 3 classes. Staff response has been extremely positive. What else is left to say?! Oh ok, below if you click on the image below, it will take you to a a full res image created by the 5mpxl camera:

In short, Zondle is a platform for learning (through answering questions) where you can play short games between questions. In my opinion it has 6 aspects which make it a game changer.

ONE: The beauty of the games element is that you can drop whatever content you want into the learning part and still give children the option of playing any of the games, so with 10 topics (sets of questions) and 10 games, that’s 100 possible combinations. This really increases the longevity of any of the topics for Primary aged children. My year 1 class are currently addicted to ‘creating pizzas’, which I really didn’t see coming. However if they get bored they have plenty plenty more to capture their interest.

TWO: Topics can be shared. This is massive. Every single one of the sets of questions that you create can be shared in the platform. So for example, my primary focus for using Zondle is to support phonics and spelling development. We use Letters and Sounds. I found a few resources to support different sounds but wanted a complete set, so I’m in the process of going through every sound in every phase to create a system I can get our school to use. And it’s shared. So any other school can jump on and access the same topics. I.E. Instantly accessible pre-created, high quality (if I do say so myself) content.

THREE: Sticking with the same example, the platform is extremely innovative. I have been able to go further than simply creating a spelling program where the word is on screen, disappears and then you spell it. That is just one of the several (and growing) possible ways of creating a set of questions. I chose to use one of the special ‘phonics’ question builders which allows you to upload a sound file and then specify the individual phonemes that make up the word. Children then hear the word and click on a range of individual sounds (which play – that is all built into the system) to create the word, giving them the opportunity to use their phonic knowledge to help them spell. A critical basic skill. Unfortunately I work in the lovely North West and have a southern accent so there is that dialect issue (for me), however the children are so used to hearing it in other programs that they get it without any problem. And even if they did…

FOUR: Zondle customer support is immense. They are planning lots of exciting things in the future, e.g. different dialects. They listen to teachers and want to build a system for teachers and are extremely helpful when it comes to getting data into the system and supporting use of the platform.

FIVE: Assessment. I haven’t had a chance to use that element yet as I have only just got individual logins today (yes, a Saturday) for our school (we used a shared class login previously). My understanding is you can review performance in each of the topics, for each of the children (in the topics where there is a ‘right or wrong’ answer). Therefore you could set topics to users (you can definitely do that) and then using the assessment element, pin pointing class support based on performance.

SIX: Did I mention Zondle was free? I believe there are additional elements that you can pay for, but keeping the main platform free is the model they are following. Therefore it makes it a great platform for teachers to use, see the impact and then buy in elements that are of particular use.

The system seems to be well used in secondary, particularly for Maths and MFL and whilst I think the possibilities there are giant, the impact Zondle could have on basic skills in Primary education is even greater. One small word of caution is the platform currently has a login button for Facebook and by nature, anyone can create content so some could be created by children that were inaccurate or inappropriate. Zondle clearly takes E-Safety seriously though, with a CEOP button on the homepage and the ability to log issues with topics. Referring back to the 4th aspect, personally I think a completely separate Primary login page would minimize possible E-Safety concerns. And the fact that Zondle will undoubtedly listen to this kind of advice is one of the six reasons that for me, it’s a game changer. <– Update*** I’m not surprised to say that the Zondle team have now implimented a ‘Junior’ login section! You can visit it here: www.zondle.com/junior

However, we have not been using ICT to regularly impact on basic skills beyond the occasional use of www.ictgames.com etc. There is good use of matching an objective to class computer use but the 3 computers in each class often lie dormant (including mine). The cold hard fact is that in general, we as teachers still believe that if are doing whole class sessions, then children are ‘missing out’ when they doing something else and would need our support coming back to independent learning without teacher input. We set up activities to support independent learning on class computers (not forgetting the interactive whiteboard) when we find something appropriate and more effective than what is possible without computers, so when we don’t, computers are not used. The extent we look for those little specks of gold dust will depend on individual teachers and the structures (their ‘go to’ sites) that they have been built in to their planning process over time.

In my opinion, this needs to change if we are to make a significant impact on basic skills. I’m talking phonics and spelling in Literacy, number facts and basic understanding of number in Maths. With the right software will the children really ‘miss out’ by using a class computer for 10 minutes each? Can their table partners not go through the modelling process with them? (Helping them check their own understanding at the same time) If this is the case you could set up class computers all day to focus on basic skills with the occasional switching to a well chosen objective focused learning activity. Personally, I’d have the focus being on Literacy as standard practice and switch it to Maths during a Maths lesson before switching back to Literacy for other lessons. Really all I am saying is just as with a teaching assistant, do we use them to support a learning objective with a specific group during a specific lesson or do we get them to support specific skills whatever the lesson, aka intervention groups etc. I’d love to hear from schools who already do something like this and whether it makes an impact, i don’t think what I am proposing is new or innovative, it just makes sense if a focus needs to be on basic skills.

Which brings me to the second part of this post. Hardware. With the finical constraints schools are now facing, as an ICT Leader I have a responsibility to ensure that every penny counts. We currently have no fixed ICT suite, instead we have 2 laptop suites with RM Mobile 1′s. These are used extremely well but inevitably, with PE, swimming or other lessons where laptops would not make a difference to learning, they are not used at full capacity. One of these trolley’s have laptops that are 4 years old and starting to creak. Which leaves me with 3 choices to put forward to our Head Teacher. Firstly, replace like for like as they die. This will ensure continuity of ICT Skills but be very expensive. Secondly, downgrade over time to 1 laptop suite. This will still allow ICT Skills to be taught (it would mean KS2 have laptops for half a day a week rather than a full day) but inevitably some of the cross curricular uses that were mentioned at the start of the post would suffer. It would also keep costs down. Thirdly, disband the older trolley, put 6 laptops in 2 year groups (2 classes in each) and as they die, replace with netbooks or as the hardware matures, tablets. This would be cost effective in terms of turnover of hardware at that stage but could end up being as expensive as 2 full laptop suites if it was then rolled out across all year groups to have 6 machines each. These machines could then be split between classes or each class could have the full 6 for particular lessons or days. It would also enable the basic skills provision outlined above to occur on more computers and therefore have a higher impact on learning. Either that or the 6 mobile devices would not be used along with the 3 class computers not proving good value for money! Of course, it is my job as an ICT Leader to ensure that does not occur and the use of the mobile devices sparks use class computers into life. It’s pretty clear which of the 3 I favour. I love the flexibility of mini mobile suites and am sure ICT skills would still be taught well with the one ‘high performing’ set of laptops in the mobile suite. I’m imagining a future with good value tablets, probably Android or Chrome OS based (Flash support all the way for me – sorry IPad lovers) and therefore primarily used for internet based free and well chosen cost effective sites such as Zondle and Sumdog as well as classics such as www.ictgames.com. I’d love to add something like The Bug Club which would turn the tablets into an engaging, structured independent reading device.Of course use of these devices would not be limited to basic skills support but to make a fast and large impact, this has to be the primary concern.

So what do you think? Have your school been supporting basic skills like this for years already? Do you think there are any significant reasons not to follow this path? All comments and views welcome!

Image Courtesy of robynlou8