LEA GREEN HIT!!!!! PARENTS ON LINE!!!!!!

WHAT A TRUE SUCCESS!!!!!

I honestly cannot get over the three days we spent at Lea Green!

We took netbooks with us, each evening we set up in the conference room and shared the days events with our families, friends and teachers back at school!

Some of the above was created before we went - some afterwards!!!!

Seeing the excitement in the faces of the children when they saw that their parents had added to a discussion or commented on a blog post was amazing!!! A great opportunity for learning and experiences to be shared with their families and opportunities to continue their learning outside the classroom, extending their literacy skills and esceeding expectations - truly fabulous!

After the event we blogged about our best bits...and I presented them with virtual awards!!!!!

All I can hope is that this is the start of a really good school/parent virtual partnership!

KLPing from Lea Green!

Hi all...
Not seem to have blogged in a while...

Off to Lea Green for three days tomorrow with 18 wonderful year 5 and 6 children...
We are taking our netbooks with us!
I have created a page on KLP for us, the school and the Parents - so we can keep in touch whilst we are there!
We have the timetable on the page so that everyone knows what we are up to!
A discussion area, a blog that the children are going to post in, news and slideshow ready to take our action shots!
We are all so excited...we are taking our flip cam too, so we shall be uploading video.
Hopefully, we may even get to web conference if anyone else is online when we are!!!
I shall let you all know how we get on!

Jacqui

WOW MOMENT!!!!!!

We had to close the school today - burst water main down the road!!!!

I promptly logged on, added news to explain, targetted it to members

(whole school site as EVERYONE has permission to view that)

...the news soon spread as one or two people logged into KLP to see what had changed or to do their Home Learning/extend their learning...

behold, they saw my message as soon as they logged in!!!!

One person rang to check that the message on KLP was corrected...

BLESS!

Techno power!!!!

Creating for new year...

Gosh, I shall miss my techi children from last year - they were brilliant!!!! So ICT skilled and capable - year 4 and 5!!! However, life (as they say) moves on, and so does the learning team!

These last few days been busy creating new things:

RE Interest Space!

Our RE coordinator has made the decision that the whole school will focus on a particular religion each term - easy to manage, resource, coordinate, evaluate... As one of those difficult to teach topics we thought it would be great to have an RE interest space for the whole school so that great online resources could be shared; children can collaborate on a common theme; older children can support younger; everything would be 'stored' in the same place...

A generic 'home page' if you like has been created (incidentally by a new member of staff, who was given a quick tour of KLP, shown where all our DCC How to sheets were, and he was off!!!!), with links to a seperate page to all religions, a multi faith calender and a very interactive game where a cute teddy explains the basics of each religion to the children (this is added in page viewer -the site is safely 'nuzzled' in KLP!

The animated links above, transport the children to different pages for each religion...we are studying Judaism this term, therefore that page is being populated with video, slideshows, links, games and interactive pages to support the learning and investigating the subject.

To top it all...just spent the day installing new pc's at school!!!!!

KLP is going to be even better from now on!!!!!!

CAn't wait!

Holidays - what holidays?

A perfect time to get all those niggling ICT jobs done...completing/tidying up from last term...

• Added images of evidence to the children's eportfolios - I use a flip cam all year round (excellent bits of kit!), filming away for showcasing, annalysing, reviewing etc...it is also so easy to take a snapshot off the flip and use in the children's shared files! Taking pics off the flip also means that the snapshots are actual real evidence - not contrived or posed - natural learning taking place! What I have done is created a slide show for the class - ending up with 2 pages per child. Each useful snapshot is added to the pages for the child, a statement to acompany (AF where appropriate), and the 2 pages then added into the child's shared files in a folder depicting the year group the child was in when the evidence was gathered. Great evidence for us; super place to share with Parents, next teahcer, next school...
• Ensuring all IEPs and Gand T profiles are up to date, reviewed and reniewed ready for the next teacher (we carry ours over from July to about October, as we feel the previous teacher knows the child better in the early stages). These are then placed in the SEN folder, IEP folder, inside the child's folder (all past IEPs are there too for reference/comparison etc) These are all located in the Staffroom on KLP so that all staff have access - easier too for the SEN person and head to access! The individual IEP for each child is also uploaded into their Education records so that the Parents can also view it.
• Discussions about certain things for next academic year going on in the staffroom discussion area...yes we can email...but this allows us to keep a log of all things said in the discussion, keep everyones ideas together in one central space, great evidence and memory jogger...what did we say/agree?
• Removing/hiding from view pages/wikis...or whatever things that the next class do nood need! It is brilliant that the permissions can be changed so that the children cannot see things...and great for us as we can keep those pages/web 2 items....for future reference (and of course, remember where they are!!!!!)

I have no idea if anyone reads any of this, or is interested in any of this, but some comments would be great!!!!

Next Blog will include what has been created for the next term!

Wall wisher!

Successfully embedded Wall Wisher into our Draw me into the world cup learning! Embedded into a page viewer so that it stays in the confinds of KLP. As it is so easy to use and another collaborative idea - the children have been asked to add any comments about their country onto the wall - could be news of the team; any amazing facts they have discovered about the country; longest whatever; population; festivals and traditions....anything that has wowed them during their research!
I gave the wall a green grass back ground so that it looked like a football pitch!
It is also a great and very easy way for me to praise the children on their hard work!

APP and KLP!

Just had a brain wave!!!!
Create a presentation for the class - one page per child!
Each piece of photographic evidence added to the child's page.
AF whatever description and level typed under the photo!
AT the end of term/year the page relevant to the chils is added to the shared files of the eportfolio on KLP!
Accessible by staff, child, Parent...even Mr Ofsted!
Job done.

Video evidence - added into shared file folder, with title slides added (movie maker) that share the APP and level indicator for what the video shows?

Unless any one has a better idea!

Brilliant learning!

KLP certainly ruled the waves again last week! Our Numeracy lesson was electric!

We had been learning about fractions for a few sessions and I had discovered some gaps in certain childrens learning - they needed to do some more work on the basics of sharing our the fractions; my average ability children needed to consolidate their equivalent fractions learning and the higher achievers (having grasped everything I had taught them) certainly required extending!

Ok - the challenge arose!

I created a Learning Space using the VLE, assigned various things to the children, created visual hooks and a set of teaching and learning resources!

Warm up to maths through our KLP link to sing up and our Multiplicity song! Great - singing and moving to the beat - great brain gym! Oxygen flowing.

The lesson was all linked to our theme - 'Draw me in' with a sub section (so to speak) to the world cup!

fraction bingo - hyperlinked to internet!

working on a problem of fractions of coloured shorts in a box!

They were given an activity to do whilst I explained HA mission...

they all had work due that took them to an embedded interactive world map that gave them data they needed on the coutry they are learning about in the world cup! Children then chose data regarding the players in their team; they had to find the average weight of goalies, defenders, forwards etc. Great use of tables again! They all had netbooks to access this through their work due widget and carried out the maths with skill! complicated divisions meant the use of a calclator and sometimes rounding the answers.

My lower ability accessed a smart board mission through the Learning spaces, where they were creating pizzas for different members of the England squad. Sharing the ingredients out evenly and working out the fractions for each person wanting that pizza! Excellent interaction with the software and with themselves!

All children except one. progressed through the session! Not bad going! We were all 'well chuffed!'

At the end - of course - out came the flip cam - videoing the children explaining their learning and demoing - I wonder where that will go?????

Perfect APP evidence! E-portfolios eat your heart out!!!!

Job done!

TEACHING AWARDS

I am on cloud 9!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for their support - I feel so privalidged and honoured to have won the Midlands BECTA award for Next Generation Learning. This is the way forward for teaching the future adults of our world. We need to give them the opportunities to succeed in a technological world; everywhere we go, everything we do in this day and age involves technology somewhere alonfg the line...and their jobs probably don't exist yet!

We owe it to them to provide opportunities for them to use technology to enhance their learning.

I feel very privalidged to be touching the lives of some of our digital natives in this way.

Just had to share this!!!

Half term hols - or so I thought!!!!
I was visiting a store to buy food for our hens this morning and spotted one of our families from school - a girl from my class!
After a chat, inside the store I find her brother - no how are you Miss...or anything like that!
Straight to the point...Miss I cna't get my user name and password to work on KLP!!!!!!
I thought that was priceless!!!!

So proud of my children!

Yesterday we were lucky enought to be visited by a Deputy Head from another Primary School who wanted to see how we are using KLP! My children really did me and themselves proud! They showed our visitor around our Interest spaces and how we use KLP to sujpport our learning across all curriculum areas in our creative curriculum, their e-potfolios, and all the web 2 technologies that we use through it! They were extremely articulate, full of confidence and totally enthusiastic about the love we share for our Learning Platform. they also explein with great passion about our web conferance earlier int he week with America!
WOOPPPEEE!!

Talking to America!

Our web conference yesterday with St Annes School, Charlotte, North Carolina was amazing!
We synchronised watches – 8.30am there; 1.30pm here!!!
We were soooo excited - don’t know who was worse – me or the children!
It was so fab – a great experience – we had prepared questions to ask our Global cousins, they had done the same – when we spotted that they had logged into the Conference room we almost collapsed with enthusiasm! They could see us and hear us – we could only hear them as they hadn’t organised their web cam very well! Nevertheless, what an absolutely super event!
We chatted, laughed, shared and learnt quite a bit about life over there and the similarities and differences between the schools! We even showed them our class pet – Heidi.
They break up for summer soon, but we are going to resume contact after the BIG holiday!!!
What a memorable occasion!
Can't wait to the next one!

BURTON MAIL ARTICLE - local press!

http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/News/Two-teachers-in-line-for-top-national-awards.htm

Eureka is a small Primary School in the south of Derbyshire; 5 learning
zones; 145 children. Early adopters of KLP, now well into our second year
and loving every minute of it. In our school, KLP is a driving force for our
creative curriculum where it engages all stakeholders. It is used daily
by staff effectively, for reasons as described in this case study.
Objective: to facilitate communication and collaboration between school staff, tapping into the potential of KLP to support teaching and learning through, offering opportunities to make resources and data available 24/7.


Objective: to facilitate communication and collaboration between school staff, tapping into the potential of KLP to support teaching and learning through, offering opportunities to make resources and data available 24/7.


Motivation
To reduce the paper shuffle; to ensure that all staff are informed at
all times; to keep a record of all decisions; documents and
discussions in a central area that is safe and accessible by all
necessary members at a time suitable for them; to provide an evidence
base for county advisory/Governors/Ofsted etc; to eventually reduce
workload…

Impact and Benefits
· Staff informed earlier about meetings and content of them
· Any absent staff can keep up to date
· All staff can contribute to discussions; even if they didn’t attend
the initial meeting
· Tracking data is at hand 24/7 – thus informing planning
· Policies available 24/7 - to make reference to as appropriate
· Discussions kept as an aid memoir to decisions made
· Once embedded, staff fully informed 24/7


Hints and Tips
Introduce one section at a time to avoid overload
Manage the change carefully – have a strategic plan in place
Little steps, make great gains…
Make sure that your Leadership team are fully engaged
Remember, this is a big change, but if you continue to do things
‘the old way’, the benefits will never be seen!

The video is to promote discussion and thought about the children’s use of technology – changed frequently to promote thought!

Document Library!
In the document library we have created folders in which to upload important documents that are used regularly to support teaching and learning, tracking of progress, policies as they are updated, information about groups…

Think of it as folders of information that may be required by any member of staff at any one time. Everything to hand, in one easily accessible place.

DAY BOOK!
We had always had a ‘paper’ day book, which needed to go if KLP was going to support staff communication! We trialed initially, with staff checking the NEWS daily, but this wasn’t too effective, but adding an announcement and changing the title to DAY BOOK – was a hit!

All staff can add any important information that needs to be shared for that or the following day.

STAFF MEETINGS!

We also use Work Spaces to tie together all of our staff meetings in one, easily accessible space.

All meetings are added to the calendar at the beginning of a term, by adding a repeating event; a Meeting Space then added.

This gives us the opportunity to add agendas, minutes and any other documents useful to the meeting.

Again, all together, in a centralized area that can be straightforwardly, added to by the person leading the meeting and accessed by all staff.

Web-links: safe and useful sites that staff have identified to support staff; sites linked with our school; anything else as appropriate.

ENGAGING PUPILS WIKI!
For all staff to share their ideas as to how they have engaged the pupils with KLP.

Next steps When we can do our own provisioning, set up a similar space for Governors. Hurdles Getting staff to log on initially… Once they are, and fully engaged with it, organization and communication can be thoroughly supported!