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Monday 26th November saw the inaugral meeting of the Global Families Project. A pilot group of UK primary schools are going to take part in a two year project which will see their pupils learning about Chinese culture and learning Mandarin.

The project is being supported by Professor Yong Zhao of Michigan State University (pictured above). He is going to provide schools with ICT and web based resources so that pupils can be immersed in the Chinese culture. Eventually pupils will be supported in learning Mandarin by Chinese pupils. If you would like further information about the project or if you would like to join the project please contact;

Rina Jain Nahar – rina.jain@ssatrust.org.uk

Richard Rule – headteacher@pluckley.kent.sch.uk

The Devon cluster spent a day on digital art and animation. Each school sent 6 pupils to learn the basics so that they could then go back to their own schools and teach other pupils. Peer tutoring can be a very effective way of sharing expertise. There are benefits for the tutors as well as the pupils on the receiving end. We had a great day working with the pupils and look forward to helping the schools further develop peer tutoring strategies.

Below is an animation created in just 2 hours!

if you would like more information or support with this, please email

dave.broadfield@ssatrust.org.uk

andrew.jones@ssatrust.org.uk

2020: Dawn of the “intelligent” classroom.

Futurelab have released a report predicting the school of 13 years hence. Intelligent school buildings will respond to pupils’ moods. Pupils will have 24 hour access to a wireless network that incorporates internet, television and telephone through tiny devices in the fabric of their clothes. Pupils will have the potential to look back at lessons at any time via special glasses that record their whole lives, creating a reliable “virtual memory”. (TES June 2007)

fact or fiction? read the full report here

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_education/2020_and_beyond.pdf

Some schools have started!

Intelligent buildings – Green End Primary Manchester – read more

Classrooms simulations – Greycourt School Surrey – read more  about this and other classrooms of the future.

Biometric Security – Venerable Bede School sunderland – read more

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Schooling for Tomorrow – OECD Scenarios

This document contains six scenarios describing the future of schooling in 2020. Theywere first published in What Schools for the Future? by OECD in 2001. The secondsection of this document contains a set of trends that were used by the OECD to create these six scenarios: read more

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Latest news from the Innovation Unit – read more

Listen to Stephen Heppell & Charles Leadbetter speaking at a “next practice workshop”

Innovation Unit – website

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Learn more from Sean McDougall by visiting the website Stakeholder Design

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Ty Goddard spoke about the impact of learning environments – read more at School Works and the British Council for School Environments.

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Ever wondered how to get the most out of Windows Paint?. Take a look at this resource written by us. It provides enough tutorials to act as a scheme of work for digital art in the primary school.

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See the work of Robin Hood Primary School Art Academy

| View Show | Create Your Own

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Ideas for Digital Art

Here are some examples of how you can combine drawings with photographs. You can draw on the computer or scan paper drawings. Draw the main subject and use a photograph as the background. You need to cut round the drawing carefully using a lasso tool (found in Photoshop, Gimp and Paint Shop Pro and other graphic packages).

Another idea is to combine photos, re-sizing figures to make the background appear very large. This creates interesting and fun ideas. We ran a project at school and called it ‘Bugs’ Eye View.

Some Tutorials for Windows Paint

Have a go at some of these tutorials for Windows Paint. They are in Word Document format – please feel free to download them and use them with your pupils. Let us know how you get on or even better send us some examples of the work your pupils produce.

The Snowman Tutorial

The Hungry Caterpillar Tutorial

Green Bottles Tutorial

Toy Train

On-line Video Editing

There are several programs that enable you to edit video on-line. This means that you do not have to buy expensive software to get pretty good results. This has particular relevance when you are away from your own computer, on a field trip with pupils fro example. You can upload your video directly to the internet and do a professional editing job quickly. The best two that I have come across are Eyespot and Jumpcut.

Eyespot

Eyespot is an easy to use yet sophisticated on-line video editing suite. Uploading your video is simple (up to 100mb limit for any one file) and you can even upload stills and music/audio. You can drag and drop clips to re-order them, you can apply transitions and apply a series of effects, like colour washes!. finally you can apply titles and credits. I have used this and it really is very straightforward.

Jumpcut

Jumpcut  is very similar to Eyespot. It has more transitions and effects to apply but is not as intuitive to use. It has the added advantage of being able to import directly from Flickr or facebook. if you were going to look at only one then i would suggest Eyespot, but if you have some experience of video editing then the extra range of effects might mean this is the on-line tool for you.

Make Internet TV

Came across a really good website called Make Internet TV . This is an excellent site that takes you through the whole process of shooting, editing, uploading and sharing video. It is easy to follow, aimed at the beginner and uses non technical language wherever possible. Even if you have no desire to upload video to the internet the step by step tutorials for Windows Movie Maker (on every Windows PC) are well worth looking at. If you are a Mac user there are tutorials on how to use Imovie.

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We have been running courses in animation and film making for pupils and teachers for several years. Here are our top tips for better animating. If you are interested in us coming to your school email us or visit this web site.

This animation was produced by Year 6 pupils at Robin Hood School art academy.

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See the work of Oscar Stringer, professional film maker and animator.

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Independent learning is a vital component of a 21^st Century skills set for all learners. Yet it isn’t even on the agenda in many schools. This may change in the light of the 2020 Vision Report of the Teaching and Learning Review Group. Dave and myself were members of the consultation group.The report set out the case for  Personalising Learning and made the following recommendations with particular regard to enabling pupils to be more independent:

2020 Vision 

• taking responsibility for, and being able to manage, one’s own learning and developing the habits of effective learning

• knowing how to work independently without close supervision

 Leading schools engage in the following:

• develop collaborative relationships which encourage and enable all pupils to participate and which develop pupils’ skills of working independently and in groups, enabling teachers and pupils to move learning forward together.

• develop pupils as active partners, with responsibility for participating in designing their learning and providing feedback.

• placeexplicit focus on higher order thinking skills and learning how to learn, using group work, including academic peer tutoring, paired and cooperative learningearning

The school system needs to change because too many youngsters are  totally teacher dependent and too much learning is totally teacher directed. This actually diminishes children’s natural learning abilities. See the excellent poem by Dr. John Edwards, The Things We steal from Children

Personalising Learning road shows – These SSAT road shows set the scene for personalising learning in the primary school. They encouraged delegates to think about answering the questions why personalise learning? and why now? (the short film animal school was used to help with this). The notion of the “nine gateways” and the “four deeps” of personalising learning developed by Prof. David Hargreaves,(see PL blog) were then introduced to the delegates and they applied the “criteria” to their own school situation. The use of ICT to support the personalising learning agenda now and in the future was also considered.

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Futurelab have published a learner’s charter – see it here. The charter (the full title is ‘The Learner’s Charter for a Personalised Learning Environment’) lists, through a series of bullet points, the expectations a learner should have of his or her teachers. These include, for example, “To understand and critically engage with the choices open to me in the education process” and “To have access to learning environments and resources that enable me to develop my understanding and experience in authentic and appropriate contexts.”

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Listen to some Trust Podcasts by following the links below. You will need realplayer to listen to them. The links take you to the Trust Podcast site. Scroll down to the required Podcast, right click on it and select “save target as”. Save it to your computer and play it in RealPlayer.

Deep Support

Deep Leadership

Deep Learning

Deep Experience

Student Voice

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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.