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!

The blogging platform chosen was Posterous. I’d heard good things about it but never really looked any further. It’s main advantage is it’s elegant simplicity. Basically, all someone has to do to create a post is send an email to a particular address, with any pictures as attachments. So in other words, the only thing a parent needs to be familiar with is how to send an email.

The children have been extremely excited about taking Chekov home and we have currently had about an 80% success rate in terms of blog posts sent after a weekend. Now, i’m not saying children’s writing is going to magically improve but anything that gets children and parents discussing writing has got to be a good thing, right?

@ianaddison has put together a ‘Blogging Zoo’ set of links where class pets have blogs. A special mention has to go to @Markw29‘s awesome ‘King Julien the Lemur’.

I needed to extend the story for a week or so beyond altering lines, changing types of food, who said what etc so I thought, why not create a Twitter Ben Biggins account and set up some tweets for the children to respond to, developing their understanding of E-Safety, social skills and writing. Over the course of a week I used http://futuretweets.com to set up some automatic tweets from Ben Biggins demanding he be fed with tasty morsels. The class through shared writing and then independently wrote Twitter replies on strips of paper to Ben. We discussed how we should reply and gave a framework for our responses. The children seemed captivated by the fact that at the start of the lesson Ben would tweet, we would tweet our reply (overseen by me) and by the end of the lesson or later that day, he would reply. Unsurprisingly, Ben mellowed towards the end of the week as some of our writing added in adjectives and the children loved that at the end of the week we had convinced him to eat his peas and carrots and improve his manners. Several children were asking if they could reply to Ben during their playtime, always a good measure of how engaged and excited they are in their learning.

I even had a parent who was given the impression by their child that there was a new child in our class with very bad manners! A quick word with the parent and when I got home the same day I saw that they had actually started following Ben Biggins on twitter, continuing the myth and getting excited with their child.

In reflection, the writing the children produced was of a high standard, they had a purpose to their writing and I actually think twitter or no twitter, it is the purpose and audience that was key in their enthusiasm… using twitter to create an imaginary friend just heightened this to a mild fervour and made finding a purpose and audience easier!

(I have since deactivated the Ben Biggins account as it has fulfilled its purpose).

Shared Writing with DIMDIM from Peter Richardson on Vimeo.

The video shows how the writing process can be modelled but with the added benefit of allowing for a simultaneous triangle of communication between the pupil, their peers and the teacher. When trying this, apart from creating a buzz around the room due to the novelty of being able to be at a computer rather than watching a big screen, then participate afterwards, the pupils were able to be active throughout the process whilst still benefiting from the modelling. It’s great for ‘stealing ideas’, real collaboration between pupils during the ideas and sentence development stages and giving more reluctant writers a vehicle to speak. If you have tried doing something similar, or have used Dimdim or Twiddla for another purpose related to developing writing, please add to the pad below or click here to add to the pad.

When I first trialled using it I initially let the children play and they loved the freedom that Storybird gives them, whilst still supporting them structurally through the artwork on each page. For frequent classroom use however, it needs to be used for more than just a creative outlet.  It needs to support objectives and skills development. So I used it myself to create a whole class text to try and see where it could be used in the classroom. Here is the book I created:

I found it surprisingly difficult to structure the text as its very nature is a page by page story that doesn’t necessarily have a way of creating a story mountain type structure etc (this makes sharing a story between collaborators easy to continue). However, this actually offers the opportunity for a great position in the classroom for Storybird. To be used as a tool for children to practice a developing skill. During the book I wrote, I tried to pack it with as many adverbials as possible as that is currently our sentence level focus in Year 4. Over a few days, during whole class sessions we worked on how to start a sentence with an adverbial clause. I then set an assignment related to adverbials, instructing the children to try and fit in an adverbial to each page. I deliberately didn’t give them any more structure as we were at the stage where they just needed to practice the skill. Using Storybird allowed this to happen but in an engaging way for the children. Here is an example:

Beyond writing, Storybird has fantastic potential for MFL. @lisibo has written several Spanish stories and converted them into video files here with her reading out the story in Spanish – How awesome is that?! @wizenedcrone has created a fantastic resource which is a collection of MFL storybirds here (French, Spanish, German and Italian).

If you have any other ways you have or are thinking about using Storybird in the classroom I would love to hear about them, please leave a comment below. If you are thinking about using it, give it a go – it’s well worth the effort!

To set up Voicethread for your class, I would recommend creating a year group educational account and sharing the log in details with the children. Under settings, create an ‘identity’ for each child.

You can add multiple pages, such as in this peer review example. To play each page, click the right arrow (bottom right) and then press play (bottom middle). Alternatively, once on a page with comments, you can jump to a particular person’s comment by clicking on them.

Below is a video example of using Voicethread in the classroom to support writing:

Peer Review from Peter Richardson on Vimeo.

Please share how you have used Voicethread in the classroom to support writing. Was is motivational? Was there an impact? What worked well? Would you use it again? Would you do anything differently? What other areas could you use it? Were there any technical problems?

Please share your use of by typing into the pad below or click here to add to the pad.

Useful Links

Interesting ways to use Voicethread in the classroom

Voicethread and peer reviewing blog post

Quick video on the use of Voicethread in the classroom

There are several other sites that offer the same or similar functionality. For simplicity, I would recommend worditout or ABCYA Word Clouds or tagcrowd.

Education uses of wordle

Interesting ways to use Wordle in the classroom

Please share how you have used Wordle in the classroom to support writing. Was is motivational? Was there an impact? What worked well? Would you use it again? Would you do anything differently? What other areas could you use it? Were there any technical problems?

Please add to the pad below or click here to add to the pad.

Here are the links to the series:

Chekov the Hamster

Ben Biggins, an Imaginary Twitter Friend

Writing & Dimdim / Twiddla

Writing & Storybird

Writing & Voicethread

Writing & Wordle

Image courtesy of Stephanie.

Support videos for Primary/Elementary school teachers on collaborative projects started on primarypete.net. The album also contains general videos related to teaching and learning such as teachmeet presentations.

Web 2.0 and Software Album: Support videos for non-techie Primary/Elementary school teachers on websites with possibilities to enhance teaching and learning and software.

GONE IN 60: Videos in under 60 seconds to support teachers quickly getting using ICT.

To subscribe to an RSS feed of all the videos click here.

Other great video tutorial sites for Primary School Teachers:

www.ictvideohelp.co.uk

www.undertenminutes.com