Ictopus

Ictopus is a brand new free resource for teachers and those interested in ICT in the primary classroom. Their pre launch documentation states;

“Sharing Good Practice is the weekly magazine for primary teachers from ictopus (ICT online primary user support). It is available, free to all, by signing up for it on our website http://www.ictopus.org.uk/. Each edition of the magazine will have 6 pages  and will comprise case-study articles, top tips for using ICT effectively in primary education, website recommendations and a variety of teaching plans and other resources. It will be available in a printable format that could be displayed on a staff notice board or coffee table, slotted into individual staff pigeonholes and stored in a ring binder for future reference. It is proposed to have a coherent theme for each edition and the overall focus is to be on disseminating good practice.”

Anglo-Australian Art Project

We are currently running an international art project for primary aged pupils in England and Australia. The children are using on-line tutorials to create pieces of digital art, using Windows Paint. Below is a slide show of the work submitted so far. I think the work is outstanding, particularly when you consider that they have had no experience of the software before starting.

Following the family tradition

My son recently graduated from uni with a first in computing. He has spent the final year at uni at home, only travelling in on days when he had lectures. In his days away from uni he has worked at my old school as a classroom assistant and “dinner lady”. This will undoubtedly stand him in good stead for his PGCE course next September. He has been supporting animation with pupils in year 2. He has set up a mini-website so that the animations can be viewed by a wider audience. View the animations here,

Robin Hood School year 2 animations

The children storyboarded their animations and filmed the sequences in small groups. They did the voice overs themselves and were supported in adding background music. The final outcomes were pretty pleasing!

The Outdoor Curriculum

Today I had the privilege of visiting Belgrove Infants School in Aylesbury. This turned out to be a remarkable visit as I can honestly say that I have not seen a school like this anywhere before. Bedgrove is a large 4 form entry infants school with nursery class. What is fairly unique about this school is the richness of its outdoor curriculum. Pupils spend approximately 50% of their lessons outside!

 In order to facilitate this the school has extensively developed its grounds. You can see examples of this development by visiting the school website,

Bedgrove Infant School Website

The outdoor classroom has covered seating areas for activities like writing, areas for creative work, physical activity,  science and environmental studies. The art trail was particularly impressive. This included paintings (created by the children) by Lowry, Mondrian and Whistler. As it was a kind of time line of the history of art the school made their own concrete cave so that the children could experience cave painting. A simple idea that has produced great results.

The school is also a training school and runs an impressive CPD programme. See the training arm of the school’s website.

Bedgrove Training

If you are interested in any of the CPD events you can contact the school through either website.

Free Software

 

If you are interested in using free software (particularly useful for linking home and school) take a look at our resource “Software on a Shoestring“.

Audio Tools

Audacity- This is  a free audio editing program that can be used to create audio tracks for films, animations or podcasts – get it here.

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FoxyTunes for IE – This useful program sits at the bottom of your screen and lets you access your music collection without having to switch between your music software and browser. It also performs web searches for lyrics and videos.

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Songbird – This is a mix of desktop media player, web browser and digital jukebox.  You can find, download and play songs directly from web pages and create mixes from your collection – get it here

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Graphics Tools

Paint.Net – Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

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IrfanView- IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter suitable for professionals and beginners alike. 

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Jetstream- Jetstream provides a powerful means of cutting objects out of digital photos by automatically tracing their contours.

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Phorest – Photo resising tool which lets you easily change the size of multiple images. Resised images are saved into a separate folder to avoid overwriting.

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Seasidesoft – A collection of image editing utilities and a very good program for creating digital photo albums that can be saved as exe files and distributed to friends.

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Video

Tube Sucker – Tube Sucker makes downloading videos from the internet and watching them from your PC quick, easy, fun and enjoyable.

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Utilities

Ad Aware – Ad-Aware Personal remains the most popular anti-spyware product for computer users around the world, with nearly one million downloads every week.

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Recuva – A great little program that recovers files after you have deleted them by mistake. It does this even if you have emptied the recycle bin.

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Sideslide – A desktop utility that gives you access to all your favourite files, folders, programs, links and much more – well worth a look.

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Flickr Desktop Wallpaper – Use your Flickr folder of images to produce a montage as a desktop wallpaper.