ICTeachers - The Independent Voice of Teachers

ICTeachers Magazine September 2006

Definitely the best almost monthly independent ICT newsletter in the world!

Circulation 11k including Educational Organisations World-wide

If you know colleagues who would appreciate the independent-minded thinking behind this magazine then please pass it on.

What is ICTeachers?

ICTeachers is a bunch of teachers or ex-teachers still involved with education committed to giving colleagues good service at the lowest possible price.  They have accepted that they will never be rich and that fulfillment through materialistic means is an illusion.

Except on birthdays that is...

Message from the Editor

Greetings colleagues! 

I've been thinking, very hard, about trying to up the ante of my editorials by writing something deep and meaningful but I have unfortunately come to the conclusion that I'm just not that sort of guy!  I have been watching all the episodes of Sharpe, back to back, over the past four nights having been stranded in a hotel room.  The hotel life seems glamorous from the outside, and I sure do enjoy some aspects, but it's a pretty grim reality over a number of days.  The world looks very different from someone else's sofa. It's just like being back in a bed-sit again!

One thing, I am overwhelmed by the feeling of my own inadequacies. I'm sat on the train coming back from helping to present to 50+ expert presenters.  I was the last on before lunch and finished with three minutes to spare...I was a hero! : )

The NCSL's new Leadership Pathways product is being rolled out at the ends of next month and it looks like a real nice piece of work (I am biased of course!).  The online aspects of it have been finely crafted by the BBC and the Centre for Educational Leadership have designed and written the course.  Being on the inside of the building and design of the course has been fascinating.  The amount of work that goes into it is incredible.

Have you visited www.kidsonthenet.org.uk ?  It's one of the sites we support.  We pay all their hosting charges as they have to have a very special sort of server thingy called Cold fusion. It's a wonderful site, at least we think so, which is why we support it. : )  The site encourages children to share writing about their lives or fictional genres with each other through the web. You'll see our banner on the site, we didn't ask for it to be there as we don't tend to shout about what we do to help others, but Helen who runs it but it there voluntarily.  How kind. : )  That's what I like  about our profession, we are a "kind" profession.

TTFN

The Editor
md@icteachers.co.uk

The comments of the Editor in no way reflect the views of ICTeachers Ltd and do not claim to be either well researched or even vaguely coherent.  They are, though, intellectually dubious. 

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School Websites

Sites include primary, infant, junior, secondary, community and special schools.

Here's what our customers think...

"Bob gives wonderful follow up service and uploads the stuff I send him without fail. He gives me tips and advice and I really feel that I am an honoured customer. Nothing is too much trouble and he never makes me feel dumb or ICT illiterate." Headteacher

"Thanks for the info and the cost! It is well within my current ICT budget and I am very interested. I have already gathered a lot of photographs ,info etc but can't seem to find the time!! I will speak to my head on Monday morning and will be in touch. Thanks for help."

For a no obligation discussion contact our sales consultant Fiona
fiona@icteachers.co.uk or phone 01934 811132

Go to www.icwebs.co.uk for more information

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Is there such a thing as an "educational game"?

Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

Is there such a thing as an ‘educational game’?

Some people claim that kids don’t like history. I don’t believe it. Some of the best conversations I’ve had about the ancient Greeks and Romans, medieval life and battle strategies have been with primary school-aged children. And why were they so interested? Because they played computer games like Age of Mythology and Age of Empires, and became curious to know more.

Unfortunately though, they generally had to play these games out of school, as they were not seen as ‘educational games’. I wonder how helpful that term is, or if it is just for marketing. What place do ‘computer games’ have in the curriculum? How can play help teachers and students learn? Here are just a few ideas that teachers have successfully used.

No matter what the content, literacy in a broad sense is supported by game playing. Three and four year olds have been caught keenly learning to read important game words like Play and Quit because they have a purpose. And from a very early age their knowledge of number is developed as they follow their score.

Playing chess is a great way of developing thinking skills and spatial intelligence. It requires players to build up a system of knowledge and experience, and to store that in their memory. With its rules and principles for success, players have a framework for improvement within which they can take risks and try out new ways of doing things. Sounds a lot like learning, doesn’t it? A useful website is www.chess4kids.com, or if you want to play chess with a computer, the Thinking Machine at http://turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/chess.html even shows through animation how the computer is thinking about a move.

Alice Cahn of Cartoon Network encourages play, arguing strongly that humour and optimism support learning and development. She also talks about the various roles people can take in relation to computer games: from Viewers, to Players to Creators, and it’s a useful way of looking at reasons for including games in the curriculum. As learners progress in their knowledge of how games work, they often want to create their own, for business or pleasure. Seymour Papert observed how this type of constructionism—making, rather than merely using software—is often so motivating for students that they are able to concentrate for much longer than their teachers expect.

As a new game was loading on his screen, a ten year-old chatted with me about careers that suited his interest in computers. ‘Perhaps I could be a computer game tester’ he suggested. In my imagination, Papert replied: ‘Perhaps you could be a game designer’.

Some teachers are now using console games to motivate classes and achieve curriculum goals, but at the moment, most game designers are male, and the games reflect their particular interests. To balance this, websites such as Computer Clubs for Girls (www.cc4g.net) show ways to encourage girls in a wide range of activities, and to encourage them to see a link between their use of technologies and the possibility of rewarding careers in IT. Sites such as Game Gal http://www.gamegal.com and Women Gamers http://www.womengamers.com include game reviews, articles, discussion forums and even employment opportunities for women interested in becoming part of the rapidly expanding games industry.

A good example of a games project that supports learning is Nottingham’s E-Games League, which was set up in 2003. This model suits young people with a wide range of abilities and interests, and can be run within a mainstream class, a Learning Skills Unit, or as an after school club.

Jenny Murray (one of the leaders of the project) explains that students work in teams—known as clans—on weekly tasks linked with the games and designed to build literacy, numeracy and ICT skills. Clans gain points on the league table when tasks are completed. A structured programme including elements of key skills, enterprise education and development options covering three terms is available on CD. It shows teachers how to establish an inter-school competition using a range of games, how to set up a company owned and managed by young people, and how to develop their entrepreneurial, team work and analytical skills.

E-gamers from schools around Nottingham have said:

I’ve enjoyed working with other people and meeting new people.

I’m really proud of what we have done at E-Games.

It’s been a privilege.

I’ve enjoyed doing research on the Internet for the project.

I hope that there are more leagues like this.

Where do games fit into the curriculum? Darren Wood, manager of a LSU in Nottingham says ‘E-games touch every aspect of Basic Skills: Literacy, Numeracy, Relationships, Leadership, Careers… it's all there.’ Jenny Murray suggests that as well as using E-games to improve motivation, develop social skills and teamwork, they can be part of a alternative curriculum, ASDAN or other accreditation or to gain the OCN units designed specifically for the project.

Acknowledging young people’s interest in computer games is a way of showing we value them as people. Building on this as part of the curriculum provides added value. As

E:games in Nottingham has shown, they can be an important tool in re-engaging young people with education, providing accreditation opportunities, key skills development and fun! 

E-games is now expanding across the country. Peter McConnochie, Assistant Head at Henry Mellish School and a leader of the project, says ‘I am excited to see the project being implemented nationally and know that it will lead to learning opportunities for many young people who may otherwise miss out’.

This October sees the launch of GameCity, an interactive festival that brings together the games industry and gamers through a series of debates, seminars, workshops and cultural events in Nottingham www.gamecity.org . A conference on October 26 and 27 in association with this festival will showcase the place of games in education www.handtoeye.net .

Yes, there is a place for many games in education, not just those labeled ‘educational’.

For more information on the E-games model, the CD or the October conference, please contact Jenny Murray: jennymurray1@btinternet.com.

Elizabeth.Hartnell-Young

elizabeth.hartnell-young@nottingham.ac.uk

Elizabeth Hartnell-Young is a Research Fellow in the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a member of the organising committee for MLearn 2007, to be held in Melbourne, Australia.

She is keen to hear from teachers interested in games in learning.
elizabeth.hartnell-young@nottingham.ac.uk
Further information is at www.nottingham.ac.uk/lsri/ehy

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To VLE or not to VLE - that is the question!

A request for help:

One of our colleagues, Cintia Stammers, requires help and advice…is there anyone out there?

“We've been teaching the KS3 ICT National Strategies Units for the last 3 years. So far it's been OK in Years 7 and 8. (Year 9 still needs some thinking.)

Now ICT has been incorporated into Business Studies, and the BS teachers have decided that all the schemes of work and programmes of studies should be changed. Instead of using the units, they want to teach ICT skills, not Key Skills as such, but practical skills, divided into Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Database, etc. It is like going back in time: there won't be any projects, but tasks for each skill and an assessment task.

Has any school done this, i.e. abandon the KS3 ICT National Strategies Units completely? If so, were they successful? How did they measure Attainment Levels?”

I am pleased that Cintia has raised this issue and I hope that someone out there can help as this may well raise issues globally…If you can help and offer advice then contact me at my email address askbrian@icteachers.co.uk .

 VLE or not to VLE that is the question….

Sorry for paraphrasing Shakespeare but I do feel that this is a classical example of old and new not working together, and even worse, not wanting to.

I noticed over the past few years that there is a huge cavern growing in the movement of ILT and VLE’s in particular. Schools and colleges are, I feel, in one of two camps, totally embrace the idea and it becomes a cornerstone in their teaching or they are working towards it…re: paying lip service to it for the inspector’s sake.

But the two camps do have one thing in common, they all have a problem in measuring how good or how successful they are in actually raising attainment. As a manager it is my responsibility to ensure that we are ensuring that the students are getting value for money and the best education possible, but how do you measure the effect on using a VLE on attainment and achievement? Especially since the use of VLE’s is so new.  I look at this from two perspectives, personal and student perspective.

I find that the use of a VLE really does help with course organisation. I am extremely keen on seeing courses planned out over the year, and this allows me to do this. Setting out and planning over the next term what I am doing and when, is a real help. You can actually see the course growing and evolving. Also I love the spontaneity of it.

Recently we have been following the case of Gary Mckinnon, the hacker being deported to the US. Every time a new development was published on the BBC technology website I would update the forum which I created to discuss this matter, the resulting discussion grew over a matter of weeks, and this is something which I am certain could not have been done without the use of a VLE. What I witnessed was really unusual. How opinions of students changed over time, about the deportation and hacking in general, also how students actually commented and listened to what their peers had to say on the matter. Also there is a leveling of the pyramid here. The quieter, more reserved students in class would feel confident in putting forward their views. This paid off in their classroom contributions as they became more confident to contribute in class. Also When I set a research assignment they really enjoyed emailing it to me via the system. I can safely say now that the use of a VLE has become my cornerstone of teaching and learning.  As from now on all my homework’s are set in this way and to my dismay the amount of missed homework now is minimal.

I find that issues arise from three main areas in the lack of uptake of such teaching technologies.

1) Senior management of the old school. They will change their opinions about the use of such technology, but only if you can convince them with hard evidence of success,

2) Old school staff, they get good results so why change,

3) Reluctant Network Administrators. Why is it that they think that you are after their job? When in truth you are just trying to do yours?

Evidence of the VLE success is anecdotal I know, but it has to start somewhere and so lets share our experiences. What do you see as a major advantage of using VLE’s? Do you think that they a make a difference? How do you see them making a difference to the student experience? Need advice in how to change the mindset of Senior Management? Or have you got any ideas of how to change their minds? How have you used a VLE successfully?

Let me know at the usual address.

Lets change some minds…TODAY!

Brian - askbrian@icteachers.co.uk

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Making Online Learning Work for You

With teachers increasingly being offered online learning as an alternative to face-to-face CPD, how can you make sure that you get the most out of it? Whether you’ve signed up for a full year’s MA module or a short course of just a few hours over half a term, here are some tips to make online learning work:

Negotiate time to complete the course. Online learning is billed as anytime learning: “learn at a time convenient to you”.  That shouldn’t mean when you’ve finished the marking and preparation at the end of a long day’s teaching. If you want to log on at dawn or at midnight because that’s when you learn best, that’s fine – but it shouldn’t be because that’s the only time available.

Protect the time you’ve negotiated. Silence your phone. Put a do not disturb notice on the door.  If you were away on a face to face course they would have to manage without you – let them do so for the hours you’ve allocated to engage with the course.

Don’t be put off by the unfamiliarity of the environment .  However ICT literate you are, entering a new learning environment can be challenging. Finding your way to the learning resources, working out where to contribute to forums, even deciding what to say, are all new territory for most of us.  Explore like a child by trying things to see what happens. 

Ask for help if you need it.  The course facilitator is there to help you to get online and to participate in the course.  If you don’t understand the instructions – say so! You are probably not the only one and your question may help others. The learning environment may also offer a telephone helpdesk or a space online for technical questions. 

Get to know your fellow participants. Online learning offers wonderful opportunities to meet and learn from people from a wide spectrum. Use anything that the environment offers to make contact with the other participants beyond the course itself. There may be an instant messaging facility  -  say hello if you see people online at the same time as you. You may be able to send personal notes to people.  If there is a learning blog facility, visit and contribute to other people’s and then experience the delight of someone contributing to yours.

Enjoy your course!

Gillian McCalden

Gillian McCalden is an e-learning consultant with Blue Box Learning Ltd. Blue Box Learning offers training and consultancy in creating  and facilitating online learning environments. Contact her at gillian.mccalden@blueboxlearning.co.uk.

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News from the Vaultman!

The Vaultman writes:

I have recently been checking and updating the pages in the Teachers' Links collection. I have weeded out lots of out of date and broken links and added quite a few new ones. There are still a few pages to do but most are now fairly current. You can tell by the date next to each page on the menu.

Thanks to those who have submitted resources and photos recently. These have not been added yet because we are in the process of renewing the whole look and feel of our site.

One of the key features of the new look will be the ability to search for photos and resources by keyword. Most of our efforts down here in the vault are currently focused on transferring all of our resources to a new database. Work proceeds apace!

Mike

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Optimizing your school website

If we aren’t actually responsible, we have all seen them – the lively school website, all flashing gifs and paragraphs of information...from 2003. The trouble with school websites is that they can sometimes take so long to create and structure, whoever is responsible for them loses momentum, and things slowly grind to a halt.

I put my hands up here – I am a guilty of this as most. Or rather, I was. In order to improve things, I looked at ways to ensure the site stayed fresh, interesting and above all, active. Here are my top ten tips for optimizing your site.

1. Know your stats

If you have a website, then you have statistics. It is fascinating to look at the actual hits your site makes every day/week/term, and will help you to gear up your site for even more success. Here are some mini tips for you to bear in mind:

Don’t be despondent by the apparently small number of visitors your site gets. Find out the number of families at your school there are (for example, my school has 150 children from roughly 100 families), and mentally match each visit to a family. If a family visits your site once a week, that is a really good start! Of course, they need a reason to visit.

Find out which pages are your exit pages and destroy them! Exit pages are the last page a visitor looks at before leaving. If an awful lot of visitors are leaving on the ‘Summer Fayre’ page, try and work out why. The way to cure this is to add more links, and change the content of a ‘popular’ exit page. We discovered that our news page was a strong exit page, so we added the fortnightly bulletin as a link, and we have lost fewer visitors from that page as a result.

Measure and build popularity. If your site is categorised, look at the different sections and measure their popularity. Expand the most popular ones (for example, breaking the Sports page into several smaller, and interlinked, sports pages), and finetune the content of the less popular ones.

2. Create comebacks

The best sites are ones that are worth another look. Look at your site objectively, and consider whether there are any interesting-enough draws to revisit the site soon.

The best way to do this is to archive old content and promise (and deliver!) new content. If parents know that all the old PTA minutes are on the website, they will be more inclined to visit the site for reference.

More importantly, if Class 3 knows that their poems are going to be on their class page this weekend, you can almost guarantee a visit!

One great, and free, comeback for a site we have discovered is something called Clustrmaps. This is a tiny piece of code you add to your site, which then shows a little map, indicating where the website’s visitors have come from. My pupils have loved this, and are fascinated about all these overseas visitors!

3. Know your audience

Your site must cater to your chosen audience. In fact, Google has refined this edict by adding in some form of equation to its search system, that ‘weeds out’ content which deliberately looks like it was written to be found on a search engine.

Your main three markets for a school website are as follows:

·        Children

·        Parents

·        Teachers

You might also consider:

·        The local community

·        Prospective parents

·        Other schools!

When designing or adding content to your site, ensure that these markets are clearly catered for. Children’s content generally needs to be image heavy, easy to find and not take long to download. Content for parents needs to be up to date, accessible and possibly with the facility to download. Content for teachers might need to be password protected. All of these are considerations.

4. Think of your routes

So you promise Class 3 that you will put their poems on display on the pages of the website; consider how they will find this. Will there be a link to new content on the front page, or is there a direct link to their class page? Will they be found on the English page instead? In short, what route will they take to get to their poem?

Make this as easy as possible. An Australian bus company realised that their website was too complex to use, and set the designers a task – make every page available in three moves or less. They figured that people would start giving up after three moves, if they couldn’t find what they wanted.

I would suggest that for schools, we change this rule to two moves or less. Instead of:

Home > Children > Class 3 > English > New Work > Poems

Make it:

Home > Class 3 > Poems

(The way to do this in HTML is to divide each class onto subfolders, with the main class page as ‘index.html’. Every time there is new content to add, rename the index.html, and add a new index page. You can then add hyperlinks to the old content, or add a search facility to your website. You can pick one up for free at google.)

To check if you have the formula right, set some challenges for someone who (i) doesn’t know your school, and (ii) isn’t hugely confident using the internet. Can they find the Head’s email address? How much was made at the Christmas Fayre? What charities are being supported? What is the current History topic? All of these should be easily found and answerable.

5. Answer all questions

As all teachers know, the most important people at school are the caretakers, secretaries and caterers! Grab a minute with each of them, and find out the most common questions they are asked. You will be surprised with their answers!

Try and ensure that, if possible, these questions are answered on your website. Make it your aim that parents check the website before calling school to check/confirm/query something, and add a sign to tell parents your website does this too!

We discovered, the long way, that one of the most common questions parents want to know are the term dates, and more specifically, when school breaks up! We added this to the front page, with a link to the term dates for the next year, and we subsequently get asked a lot less!

6. Create page jigsaws

This is similar to the comebacks written about earlier, but site jigsaws are brilliant for boosting hits, particularly at key spots in the term.

The idea is simple – to encourage children and parents to visit your website, you add website-only resources. For example, in a recent Book Week competition, we had a character competition which was given out. A colour version was available, but only online. As a result, lots of children went to the site and downloaded it.

7. Search engine Savvy

The majority of popular search engines now operate using a mixture of key words and links to/from other sites. In order to find out where you are in the ratings, try seaching for your school site using different search terms (or let nichebot do this for you for free; google ‘nichebot’ for the link).

If you appear quite low down in lists (page 2 onwards on Google), look at your key terms again. Are they included on your pages? Why would someone type those particular words in?

Much has also been made of the value of creating linked pages to and from your site. The idea below offers the potential for massive growth, but in terms of search ratings and hits for your site.

8. Create shared-content

If your school is a ‘centre of Excellence’, or even is pretty good at its Creative Arts Week, get this message out to others. To benefit you even more, create or reuse resources made during this time, and let other websites know about them, saying they can have them for free, provided they offer a link back to your school site. It is rare that a website will refuse donations of resources, and you will benefit from the extra links!

9. Make your site resource-rich

Does your website cover all media bases? Do you create a podcast every week, or are your pupils particularly talented artists? Ensure your website reflects and celebrates this. Don’t hide your laurels and make visitors dig deep to find praise – sing it from the rooftops!

Of course, not all schools can do everything, but look back over the past few years at school and question what you really excelled at – then smother this all over your site!

10. Interact

As Chris Cardell, a famous online marketing specialist once said, no-one has ever been sent an email from their dentist! Think about all the ways that you interact with your pupils and parents, and consider how this could be done online. Do you accept replies for the school disco using an online form (freedback.com). Do you sell tickets for the Parents Disco using Justgiving.com (and earn more than they contribute using the Gift Aid scheme). Do the children vote for their school council using web polls? All of these can be done and much, much more, very simply and almost all for free. Imagine the smile on the office staff’s faces!

© Stephen Lockyer mr.lockyer@gmail.com

Stephen is an IT teacher, web enthusiast and sometime site editor.

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Teachers TV - Modern Foreign Language Programmes - European Day of Language

It is never too late to learn a language or improve an existing language skill. Incorporating languages in the school system is giving our young people the skills they need to better understand diverse cultures as well as increasing employability and career progression. Foreign languages lead to improved communication, understanding of each other and increased job opportunities.

To mark the European Council’s European Day of Languages on September 26th, Teachers’ TV will celebrate lifelong language learning with a day of programmes demonstrating good practice and great ideas for foreign language teaching at Primary and Secondary level, along with documentaries following an inspirational award-winning language teacher and visiting a school where plurilingualism is embedded into the whole school culture.

All programmes are available to download and watch free at www.teachers.tv .

Here are just some of the programmes available to watch on the channel and website as part of European Day of Languages:

Inspirations: A Love of Languages

Inspirations: Mind Your Languages

KS2 Modern Foreign Languages: Introducing MFL into Schools

KS3 MFL: Why Learn a Language?

KS3/4 MFL: Actions Speak Louder

KS3/4 MFL: Pupil As Teacher

Primary MFL: Resource Review

Niamh Collins
Web Liaison Manager
Teachers' TV
Phone: 020 7182 7486
Email: niamh.collins@teachers.tv
website: www.teachers.tv

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Contact: md@icteachers.co.uk
Copyright ICTeachers 2006