Kristianstill

Following a conversation with a colleague, I was asked about how they as parents could support/monitor their children’s online time, what the government refers to an e-Safety. So I posted a short answer on the Colleges blog. Here it is, can we add to it?

In reflection, I realised that this information may be welcomed by our students parents, guardians and carers. A full review is far beyond this forum, however I thought that I could share some links and tools with you.

Within College we have an infrastructure of whole-college awareness, designated responsibilities, acceptable use policies and procedures. We also have a range of tools to help us filter and monitor students online activity. What is readily available for you to use in the home?

Information: Parent Centre is a government support advisory service covering a wide range of topics. Simarily Child-net offers a host of projects, presentations and interactive materials designed to support the role of parent, guardian or carer.

During my conversation, the focus quickly turned to ‘Messenger.’ the hugely popular chat service. Interesting Microsoft have responded to parents call for assistance and recently launch their FREE Family Safety module offering safer browsing with Web site management for parents, including monitoring of MSN Messenger.

Now there are many more technology topics we could discuss, Thinkuknow outline the most widely used online tools. Should you have any further topics you think we should be discussing then emailThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it me.

This ties in nicely with my investigation of the WINDOWS LIVE options.

No, not ’shut up and move on,’ but a rather impressive in browser image editor, SUMO. Yes, I like our Serif draw, but more and more we (staff and students) are using GIMP as their image editor of choice. Now Dr Pic was neat for quick touch ups, picnik was good for photos, SUMO is designed for image creation rather than editing. SUMO offers selection tools, gradients, paint bucket, layers and blending modes and some filters as well. Add brushes, opacity and others (the symmetry tool is neat) and its an impressive tool.

What makes this site interesting to me, is the community behind it. Sumo has a fully fledged community and gallery. Will our students be able to share their art with more people than walk the corridors at Hamble College? Really, if you have time go and look at the art on show.

Memory 4 Teachers is a major new ICT initiative taking place within the UK education sector.

The project has been developed, in association with LEAs and Teacher Unions, to support teachers and educators in addressing their ever-increasing workloads by funding the provision of 750,000 USB memory sticks across the UK. Simply register and they will send you your FREE USB memory stick preloaded with a range of educational resources. The project launches at BETT 14-17 January 2009.

http://www.memory4teachers.co.uk/index.asp

The 3rd week, and the 3rd week of growth. Thats great news. This is a credit to Andrew Sangster, my colleague for all the hard work he has put into the project so far. More good news, on Monday we received positive feedback on the DMGC Leader proposal. While there is still work to do on the final pitch, it has been very well received ticking a number of key funding foci. We are addressing inclusion, attendance, leadership, encouraging low aspirational white working class males to get involved in extra-curricular studies albeit with the caveat of gaming at the end of the session and ICT for girls. Of course we get to write our own curriculum for the workshops, now thats fun teaching. No specification to restrict you, no fear of failure for the staff or the students, we can go where the learning takes us and there is no deadline. When the students exhaust the software, we will change or rather they will tell us that they have had enough. Watch this space.

Now a reminder to self – in GIMP we are trying to create the posters for ICT at Hamble College. What if we created the artwork for the next SSAT conference and sent it in??

Work is very demanding at the moment, on top of the curriculum, printer rationale, VLE, Website, ‘new build,’ and of course data management, we are currently hosting a PGCE student. The experience of working with a ‘teacher in training,’ has been very rewarding and today was the first day I saw education lighten up his face. The moment when his starter activity fully engaged the room and students were eager to contribute, excited and enjoying the lesson. The topic, ‘The Power of Images.’ The introduction, a simple picture reveal powerpoint slide created using disappearing shapes that revealed an image, deliberately obscure. Very simple but a real hit with the students. I wanted to publically compliment him on his starter activity today.

In the debrief the discussion moved onto question style, introductions and plenaries. There is a whole section on thsi blog dedicatied to this very topical, quizical. We noted some simple introductory ICT games, some new and some very dated, but they are gems! Following the discussion I realised it has been some time since I have made real good use of the tools posted here myself. It just goes to show you may not be able to teach a old dog new tricks, but you can remind him of those learnt previously. I hope to see them in some of his (and my own) future lessons.