Today is Ada Lovelace day – a day to celebrate women not only in technology but also scientists, engineers and mathematicians, the aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM.

When I was younger and growing up one of my heroes was Maggie Philbin, who was a presenter on Swap Shop but also Tomorrow’s World, the latter was a programme that I loved it was BBC’s flagship science programme that mixed film reports alongside live experiments as well as examining the changing state of current technology and putting new inventions to the test.  It was great as a girl growing up to see a woman in such a key role on television.  I have subsequently been lucky enough to meet Maggie who continues to promote science and engineering for teenagers through Teen Tech which she created in 2008.

Currently there are two women who inspire me – the first is Dr Sue Black, who is a Senior Research Associate in the Software Systems Engineering group in the Department of Computer Science at University College London.  She has been campaigning since 1998 for equality and more support for women in tech, and also from 2008 to 2011 she campaigned to save Bletchley Park, which has been saved.  She also set up the goto Foundation last year, a non profit organisation which aims to make computer science more meaningful to the public.

The other is Emma Mulqueeny who runs Rewired State and Young Rewired state – a campaign to bring coding into mainstream education, an amazing organization that does so much to both engage and inspire youngsters around technology. As well as developing ‘hack days’ bringing digital innovation and revolution through rapid prototyping events.

All three of these women inspire me to promote technology,  - who inspires you?

Last week, I headed along to the Apple Store on Regent street for the launch of the book ‘Little Miss Geek’.  

The book has been written by Belinda Parmar , it marks the start of a new campaign to bridge the gender gap that exists in technology. The book is the culmination of months of research, discussions with leading industry figures and workshops with schools around the country, the Little Geek campaign is designed to inspire the next generation of female talent.

The launch itself started with four articulate young ladies outlining their aspirations for the future, we were treated to original songwriting, art, film and the next female prime minister.  What struck me while listening to all four talk was their passion for the subjects that interested them, but also the part that IT already plays within their lives. Their favourite gadgets covered an iPad, a MacBook Pro, an xbox and the Raspberry Pi – with these gadgets in their hands they are already able to use technology to push their passion for songwriting or film to a much wider audience than was possible 5-10 years ago, such is the speed that recent technology has moved at.

The discussion then moved onto the ‘Panel’ who were all given a minute a persuade the four that a career in IT was worth looking at.  The individual members of the panel were then judged!

First up was Lee Epting, former Global Head of content at Vodafone – she spoke about the fact that women are opinionated they don’t want to be influenced they want to influence and to have an impact – the biggest place for this at the moment – to have an impact and to influence was in mobile technology which was now everywhere and who knows where it could be in the future.  Next was Kat Grant, an ICT teacher at King Alfred School who spoke about the fact that often ICT itself as a name was a turn off, it should not just be about ‘office’ tools but being more creative, mashing things up and joining passion with ICT in order to create. Olivia Solon, associate editor of Wired was next who spoke about the fact that IT was permeating all sectors now and to follow your passion – linking IT with DT both involved making and creating things. Anna Fielding, on lie editor of stylist followed speaking of the fact that technology is an important part of any job, technology and the use of it  should be seen as part of the normal job and women should look a the depth of knowledge they already have but not realise.  Fast up was Laura Patterson, lead consultant at Thought Works who spoke passionately about the fact that technology is innovative creative and tangible but most of all technology is fun! it involves team work, collaboration and the thrill of solving puzzles.  Technology makes a difference.

I found all five talks informative but the last one definitely struck a chord – it is what I enjoy about technology the team work and the collaboration as well as most importantly making a difference however small.

For me any campaign that encourages females of all ages to become involved with technology is a worth while one – I see the enthusiasm from all children towards ICT at the primary level – and this needs to be encouraged as they progress through Secondary and into future careers.  They have started at primary and the love they have for using programs such as Scratch, Kodu and mine craft should be encouraged, at the same time realising that IT is more than coding, it offers a range of possibilities across all sectors and should be promoted.

The great folks over at bee-it have also written a blog post and offering five lucky readers the opportunity to win a free workshop with the Lady Geek team for their school, as well as a free copy of Little Miss Geek. To be in with the chance of winning this great prize, simply retweet their article  on Twitter or share it on Facebook. Winners will be chosen at random by bee-it on Friday 2 November 2012.

This year I am in year 5 again – the great thing for me staying in the same year group is reflecting on what worked well and what we need to change/adapt for the new cohort of children.

This year we have made use of the fantastic resource from the BBC Stargazing site, this includes a set of fantastic lessons plans as well as videos which help to explain more complex concepts.  Alongside these are a range of lesson plans and information sheets – a great resource for all those who are looking at the topic of Earth and Beyond.

In ICT we have been making use of Purple Mash which has a range of resources based on aliens and space – a large proportion of these are free and provide good prompts for the children for writing.  We have also downloaded SPEX Lunar onto our system – this is a great free resource.  The children used it to design their own moon base, thinking what astronauts would need for a base on the moon and designing it accordingly.  Another great resource is Google sky which enables you to look at constellations and explore the sky at night.

In Literacy we have once again looked at stories in space - this is the blog post I wrote last year about using Storybird and the picture book the Way back home.  We have also made use of the fantastic Literacy Shed - this is a great resource featuring a range of videos, we made use of the Sci Fi shed and started our topic with the lovely imaginations video.

We have also had a visit from a mobile planetarium and visited the Science Museum.

More great ideas for Space can be found here – a great blog post by Bill Lord

Last week the guys from Zondle along with Dr Paul Howard Jones came in to introduce Zondle Team Play to my class and to see it in action! The children in my class are used to Zondle as we make a great deal of use of it in the Autumn term creating quizzes alongside our space topic.

Zondle Team play is a new concept from the team at Zondle and is designed to be used on the IWB or projector and screen with the whole class.  Any Multiple Choice format style questions already inputted in Zondle can be used in team play, although in my opinion works slightly better with a ppt format – the ppt can then be used to teach/re-enforce the learning that has happened – can be sounds/pictures as well as information.  Dr Paul Howard-Jones is involved looking at the neuroscience behind the game and the value of uncertain rewards and how these are related to wanting to find out more – more information about the science behind Zondle play can be found here.

We used a Year 8 Tudor ppt as this would re enforce the work that my year 5 team had carried out in the Spring Term.  I used the powerpoint as a teaching screen reading information and linking it to prior learning.  One of the benefits for me about Zondle Team Play is that it encourages collaboration between the students, which was certainly in evidence when we played.  Also from the teaching point of view once the children had answered the questions, you then as a teacher can go through and look at all the options explaining why they are wrong.

To say the children enjoyed their first go at Zondle Team Play would be an understatement! It was like being on a game show! The children worked together, discussed options and gave their answers and cheered when they got it correct – all sounds like a normal use of multiple choice so far.  Zondle Team Play however gives the team an option before you reveal the answers you ask them if they would like to ‘game’ their answers – this means that if they get it right they have the chance to ‘spin the wheel’  spinning the wheel then gives them a 50:50 chance of either doubling their points or losing them totally for that question.  At first all four teams played it safe with no-one taking the chance to double it – however once one team had tried they soon all went for it.

Some of the questions included things we had not covered during our topic, they also had to use skills of inference and deduction as the answers were not always obvious. This is the beauty of using the Mutliple choice selection – they teacher can alter the type of questions that they give – there is advice on types of question on the Zondle Team play blog As the rounds went on – it is up to the teacher the amount of questions that are set and the points on offer,  the chldren became more and more animated when the scores were announced but also more focused when they were being given information.

For myself, it was insightful watching the children in different groups – listening to their thought processes and how they decided on their answers.  Also how they decided to game up their answers.  As the one at the front I did become involved in the ‘game show’ element of the play – it was brilliant! There is also the opportunity to put in bonus rounds – again all based on chance for the children to earn more points and move back into the game.

The children loved it – they could all tell me something that they had found out/remembered about the Tudors and really enjoyed working together as teams.

Here are some of the thoughts of the children:

“it was good to learn and find out more about the Tudors and work as a team but most of all it was fun – especially the challenge of gaming up”

” I thought the multiple choice was great as it gave all the players something to talk about and discuss, the questions ranged from being easy to being quite difficult -it was a great afternoon and a fun way to learn.”

Zondle Team play is a great new adition to the Zondle family and one that I can see using in my class next year.  The children were enthused and wanted to create their own quizes for next year as well as thinking about quizes they could do at home for family birthdays etc!

Really the possibilities are endless!

What not have a play would be great to hear your thoughts!

I am very keen to work with software developers in school – this has a huge benefit for both parties.  The children get to met/talk/work with real life programmers, coders and artists and for the company they get invaluable market research.  On Monday afternoon the team from Education Games Network, who run Wordia.com, spent the afternoon with my Year 5 class.

Wordia was launched a few years ago as a ‘living video dictionary’ (Wordia encourages users to explore the connotation of a word, on video and upload it next to the dictionary denotation).  They combine games with words – for children to improve spelling, vocabulary and keyboard skills.

Teachers can sign up and then are able to upload a class list – the site then generates user names and log ins which you are able to hand out to your pupils.

On the home page are a collection of both single player and multiplayer games that have already been collected by those playing in the Wordia community.  However, where I feel it comes into its own is that teachers can create their own games based on spelling lists and topic banks that they are using in class. These can then be set just for your class by issuing a unique url and a playcode that you can give to your class – or can be tagged and once approved, can be made public.

As well as building up the vocabulary it also enables the children to practice and refine their keyboard skills. . There are also videos on the site that define words as well – something that can for example be embedded in a blog and used as a word of the week within schools.

My class had not seen the site before deliberately as we wanted to see their initial reactions to it and how they thought it could be improved.  They started by playing the single player games on the home page created by other schools. Three topics were showcased: environmental words, geographical topics and America History – obviously the first two proved more interesting than the third! We moved on then to multiplayer games and the children really enjoyed the platform game – although they said that the controls were a little tricky.

They then moved on to create their own games with their own word lists relating to our current topic – which they could then all play – access through the dashboard, as class members are able to see other class members games as well as the class teacher being able to log in and see who is playing and creating. Teachers also have a dashboard that tracks a class, and pupil’s progress when they play each game.

During feedback the children said they would like to be able to play around with the characters and the backgrounds of the games more to personlise it for their games and also came up with a lot of suggestions of other games that they would like to see. When asked 90% of the class said they would use it at home and would help them learn their weekly spellings if we uploaded these each week for them to do at home. This was great to hear as a class, they are used to using games to help them.

As a teacher for me this is a great site to set up and set games and word lists for the class – also for them as a revision tool it is a great for them to compile lists of topic words across the curriculum. The video definitions also enable them to learn the meaning of any words they are unsure of. Games that are public are tagged with topic and age ranges from 7 – 14 – we will be using this now within the class and will continue to monitor feedback from the class.

Wordia on PhotoPeach

We already use a lot of ‘maths’ based games within class, but this site I feel starts to look at spellings and words, and I know that in development is a tool that would enbale children to have a vocabulary ‘age’.  To get started go to www. wordia.com to sign up.  It would be great to hear what you think.

So the Diamond Jubilee is almost upon us and I know that a lot of schools are celebrating in some way.  For our school it will be in the form of a joint garden party with our infant school that will then turn into an evening organised by the PTA.

Our overriding theme is Best of British and classes will be working on this theme now and on the run up to the Jubilee – I had a few ideas milling round in my head but as ever these days I turned to the wisdom of Twitter.  Below is ideas that we have already used – ideas that you could use and links to websites that may prove useful.  Would be great to hear what others are doing to celebrate.

Stamps – one of the activities that we carried out was to use 2Publish+ and the multi option to create a new stamp, that for them summed up the Best of British – we had already spent time in class thinking about what this meant, having discussions and brainstorming.  We also looked at the different ranges of stamps that have been created in the run up to public celebrations.  The children really enjoyed this activity, it led to some fantastic discussions as well as some great stamps.
Best of British Stamps on PhotoPeach

Menu – Cook for the Queen Also found this site looking a creating a menu for the Queen, it also links to produce from the local area, regal food and wan another great lesson that enabled the children to research, communicate and decide on what they would cook for the queen.  Purple Mash also has a menu apptivity as well as a range of others linked to the Jubilee.

Writing – The children could also choose a piece of writing based on the theme of Best of British and the Jubilee – this could take the form of poems, what it means to be British, imagining they were queen/king for the day and how they would celebrate, describe what gift they would give to the queen and why.

These are some of the ways that we have already started to think about the Jubilee but there are many others:

Other ideas

* Talk to family members – what other Jubilees do they remember and how did they celebrate?

* 60 most important inventions/discoveries of the last 60 years

* 60 photographs of the local area – old and new displayed in the number 60

*@bootleian also suggested England in a shoebox- what would you put in a shoebox to send to a partner school abroad to represent England?

‘What are your plans for the bank holiday then?”

“Well….”  I replied hesitantly “I’m going to Yorkshire for the weekend with Jamie and Tom to spend the weekend in a field with people that I know on twitter”

Hmmmmm

Yes you can guess the looks I got at that reply – in fact the only two in the household that were properly excited about the weekend were me and Tom.  Jamie was coming along to see what those twitter folk were all about – all I told him to bring was an open mind!

The weekend in the field was for #camped12 – an idea formulated more than a few months ago after a discussion about firstly the cost of a lot of education conferences and secondly that a lot of the great conversations took place over coffee or in the breaks or in the pub afterwards and so shed fest was born. Shed fest as originally the plan was to hold it in a shed – Tim Rylands shed of creativity! Although it soon became clear that a shed would be too small and so the Yorkshire triumvirate of Helen Daykin, Bill Lord and Dughall McCormick set into motion.  We soon had a venue – Helen’s mums farm – an absolutely gorgeous setting in Yorkshire.  Then with the help of tweets, hashtags and google docs plans started to form with the overriding thought – “if they build it, they will come”

So off we set – I had already been lucky enough to meet and spend time with many of those who were going along to #camped12 and was looking forward to continuing the conversations, building on the friendships and forging new ones! The 4 and a half hour journey up involved me describing to Jamie who all the twitter characters were – and to Tom what the activities would involve.

On arrival at the pub – we were lucky enough to book the family room in the Waggon and Horses at the top of the ‘lane’ (never has such a word been used in the wrong context! The lane soon became a hill which turned into a mountain!) The reception we got from the staff at the Waggon and Horses all weekend was first rate and friendly – although what they all made of us lot is anybody’s guess! Immediately on arriving we were greeted by a smiling face in the form of Dinah Lord – a lady I had never met but someone who over the course of the weekend became a friend and that really set the tone of the weekend.

We arrived at the same time as a host of others and wondered down the lane with the Bowen clan. I had met Dan on a number of occasions but it was a pleasure to spend time with his family – we both have tom toms – not the GPS devices but rather rowdy boys! Just hoping that the windscreen doesn’t stop us meeting again! We spent the first activity with them aboard the steam railway and huge thanks must go to Jo Badge who arranged a behind the scenes visit to the shed courtesy of her dad. I’m not sure who enjoyed this more the children or the adults but it was a great way to spend the afternoon, riding through Yorkshire and chatting.

It was then back to the pub for the football – am still not sure what the score was as it wasn’t about the football but the conversations. Great to catch up people and make new friendships as well as watching the younger generation make their own friendships – Tom and Alex were pretty much stuck together for the rest of the weekend It was then time to set off back down the lane for evening tea and singing! Dan Bowen, Josh Lord and Kevin lead the music with Bev belting out the tunes, Parkin’s percussion could grace any festival of the future and Alex’s songwriting skills were lauded.

Then it was back up the mountain to bed!

Day two dawned with beautiful sunshine, a lot of people had volunteered to run sessions and huge thanks to all of them – we all came away with at least one new skill/hobby to take away from the weekend.  We took part in the moor walk, geocaching, den building and a bit of limping seagulls – it was a shame we couldn’t do all of them – so the art and astronomy will have to wait till next year! The day finished with  great planning session with the wonderful John, Susan, Dughall, Jess, Jamie and Kevin – if Calrsberg did planning sessions then it would have looked like this!

Day 2 ended with us all retiring back up ‘everest’ for another fantastic meal where the conversations continued as the drink flowed.  It was a brilliant end to a fantastic night.  Then it was time to say goodbye – still not sure how two days went so quickly.

So what will I take from this amazing weekend, the warm welcome that was extended to Jamie and Tom from everyone – making them fell truly welcome.  The fact that a couple of years ago I had not met any of the people that took part in the weekend yet thanks to 140 characters I now have a fantastic set of friends from all across the country. The atmosphere throughout the weekend was fantastic – if it could be bottled we would make a fortune.  So thank you to all of those who are reading this who made it so special.  It involved not just those on twitter, but our families with the children at the centre leading and enjoying the activities – although how much Chris Mayoh enjoyed Tom offering to play football on the Monday morning is debatable.  But what about the views of those not on twitter who came along and were thrust into  this weekend of madness so over to Jamie:

Although a true City boy at heart I’ve always appreciated the countryside as demonstrated by numerous trips to the farthest reaches of West Wales & other areas over the years where the relative peace & quiet not to mention the rolling landscape always proved to be a great tonic to my weariness of the concrete jungle that is my workplace since I left school at 18 : The City of London

Being married to an avid Twitterer (or Twit) as I call her affectionately at times is awkward as when watching my favourite programs or when football is on all I can hear is Dawn chortling away to herself over some conversation stream or other that’s raging amongst her fellow Twits … Names & abbreviations aplenty,I’ve heard plenty about them all over time so although I approached the weekend with a little trepidation I felt that I had a flavour of what to come having been told on several occasions that ‘they’re all really great people’ … I was not disappointed on any front .

The drive was fine courtesy of Google Maps & we made good progress to the Waggon & Horses pub … a truly warm & inviting place that was to become our second hub away from the barn…The views were truly wonderful & as the warm sun beat down on us and the surrounding Yorkshire Countryside so began the tasks. I jokingly mentioned to Dawn that as this was  billed as an ‘educational weekend’ I demanded that I should learn something new … and I did

This was in no small thanks to all of the people who travelled from far & wide to come together in a barn & fields to share thoughts & views, to try new things & to basically have a laugh whilst doing it … Mission accomplished  !!!

Kids played, adults relaxed … and I think that being an outsider of sorts actually helped as it meant there were fresh eyes & ears in the discussions which I enjoyed sharing in. Meeting the people behind the name was also great fun too as obviously we’d all heard plenty about each other yet this (by and large) was the first time we had met & I truly want to thank everyone for their time, their patience & their friendship over the weekend. 

Was a truly memorable couple of days,and I very much look forward to meeting people again sometime,someplace …. I think I’m now a Minor Twit !!!!!   

‘Build it and they will come” – you did and we came and my thanks to you all.

It’s been a busy term – looking at this blog and realising that it’s been over two months since I last updated it with work that we have been doing in class, so here goes!

Within Year 5 last term we have been studying the Tudors and as part of this work our corridor became a museum – with children adding to exhibits.  To tie into this I decided to use the game Night at the Museum to provide an impetus to a range of writing that we were covering.  I was also inspired by the work carried out by @nickynewbury who wrote about her work with her Year 5 class using the Night at the Museum game here .

We wanted to use the game to cover a range of writing including job applications, leaflets, adverts radio, revision of story setting and instructions.  So this is what we did:

We started by talking about the ‘museum’ that we had created in our corridor and spoke about what was in in it how it was laid out and had a discussion about the roles of museums as well as what we liked about museums.  We began by watching the first 3 minutes of the film Night at the Museum 1 – all of the children had already seen the film and we were focusing on words to describe the setting and how we felt as we looked around. The task for the children was to describe the setting for someone who had never seen it.  There were some great descriptions as the children focused on being clear with their descriptions and vocabulary choices. We also spoke about Larry as the main character and what his role was in the film.

The following day we used Google Earth to fly to New York – the setting for Night at the Museum 1 before flying on to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington the setting for the Night at the Museum II and the setting for the Wii game.  We then introduced the Wii game to the whole class and explained that today we would be playing as a class – so that we got used to the controls, listening t each other, co-operating and understanding how the game worked.  As we ere playing – we had to note down what the controls did and suggestions for how to help each other in the game.  This was the first time I had used the Wii as a class this year – having only previously used it in groups in maths and it was great to see the level of engagement and talk that went with the opening session.

We then introduced the carousel activities that would take place during the week – we thought that a carousel of activities would work best while using the game.  The activities that we used were as follows:

Group A – playing the game – working through, finding and listening to the audio guides – making notes as they listened as well as solving problems that they encountered, they did this for 20-25 minutes and then returned to their books writing a recount of what had happened in the game as well as top tips for playing.  During the plenary they also had to explain what had happened in the game so far, what they had found  out and what the current tasks were so that the group playing the next day could continue.  It also meant that they had to think about summarising key information which we found very useful.

Group B – had to think about the qualities of a night watchman, we brainstormed these as a class and watched the interview of Larry from the first film, and the task for this group was to write a letter of application for the job of night watchman within our own Tudor museum.

Group C – Worked on a leaflet for our own Tudor museum, they had a selection of leaflets from museums around London as well as local museums to refer too.  As part of this task they also spent time in our museum thinking about what the highlights were and how best to appeal to their audience.  The audience for the museum were our Year 4 pupils who spent an afternoon with our Year  5s being shown the work and the leaflets and asking for their feedback.  We also displayed a selection of the leaflets for all our parents to use during parents evening.

Group D – were given a descriptive writing activity – to describe what happened on their first night as a night watch man – they had the choice of the museum that this was based in – this meant that the children could choose the genre of descriptive writing that they wanted to focus on. From our initial brainstorm they also had access to a vocabulary bank and used this task to link to their targets as well.

Group E – had to compose a short radio advert for our Tudor museum – again focusing on persuasive writing – we listened to a range of radio adverts first and wrote down key features.  The children used a range of devices to record their adverts – iPad, easy-speak microphones and recordable speech bubbles which we then attached the entrance to our Tudor museum.

At the end of each lesson as part of the plenary the children shared their work, they also talked about what they found easy/difficult and also tips for those who had not yet completed the tasks.

As a teacher – I really enjoyed using the game in this way – it enable me to cover a range of writing and also enable the children to work collobartively, driving their own learning and learning from each other.  As well as improving the quality of their writing it also improved their speaking and listening skills.

 
Night at the Tudor Museum on PhotoPeach

Yesterday I presented at the Inside Government conference. It was  a fantastic day and here are some of the highlights – this is not quite a ‘live’ blog but I did try to blog as the day went on :

Lord David Puttnam started of the day he spoke about the fact that  the world of education is about 10 yrs off the pace of where we need to be  we have no choice but to embrace power of digital techs at every level.  Life in uk has been  transformed in last 20 year – reshaped ways that we have connected and live – rightly or wrongly we expect a new relationship accessing old but also creating learning that does not have to happen in one place – there is a fantastic knowledge resource one click away.

The teachers  role in this is as a trusted learning guide schools have a central role.   Young people may be smarter in using new technology access to this not confined to small elite – anyone can set up blog twitter – distance no longer an obstacle – too often loudest voices drown out most reasonable choices – digital lynch mob that needs to be guarded against. Our digital society should be a society  thoughtfully balanced rights for respect and learn from each other – librarians crucial role to play in this.

For our children they will begin work in 2025-2030 – retire 2070 cant predict what world will look like in 2-3 years time never mind when they will begin work. One example pace of change – FB 850 million daily users paying 1 billion dollars that employs 13 people that has not existed for a year – this is the pace of change.  We need to prepare students for risks to equip them with skills that involve co-operation, agility and compassion to deal with challenges and changes.  Careers for young children will now be varied no longer just one career – but more than one.

Average is over today – every one today needs to find their extra!  Digital technology – needs a framework and vision – so that every policy decision across govt is able to compete with others - we are not living in victorian era our immediate task is to explore and harness these new opportunities. We are in difficult financial circumstance  - the question should be how can uk up its digital game? Change is  the only certainty .

Oracy strong feature of learning we need a quality quality discourse, teachers have to become better at listening and pupils more articulate it is fundamental to life, it requires pupils to talk more and teachers less  -traditionalists dont lik this goes away from 3 rs.  Technology can  help with assessment  gives us an insight into how and why things have been learned – simply have to know more about e learning potential of each child!

If all you do with tech is to use it to support existing methodologies – why are we doing it ? We need to look at the whole of the education system, no education system  can ever be better than the quality of teachers that it employs and finally the undisputed role of education of women across the globe.

Next up was Ian Livingstone:

Ian is the co-author of the Nesta next generation he spoke about how he had been involved in games form World of warcraft to Lara Croft  – he spoke about the fact that games have moved from the niche to more mainstream. We are the creative nation in the world?  The Uk is celebrated around world for its creativity  but do we empower tour students  to create?   Despite growing market the UK has  dropped from 3rd to 6th in the global league why?  Making games not easy it is a combination of art and technology and in the past we have  made pupils choose between the two – it should not be a case of STEM but STEAM we need coders and animators.  Problem with ICT- kids now know what computers are – creative learning outside the classroom. Historically from the  1980s children used the bbc micro it was the c cornerstone of computing within school with the  zx spectrum at home.  If we do not teach coding and programming skills we are effectively locking down computers and teaching children to read and not to write.  We can not build a digital society without digital skills.  It should also not just be about games – these skills are relevant to all creative industries.

Ian spoke about the next generation report – looking at all 11 year olds using scratch to create 2d animations in scratch and computer science becoming more of an integral part of the curriculum.  All the recommendations of the report an be followed by using the link above.

Matt Clegg spoke about procurement and used the case of Dudley as an example of what ‘good’ procurement should look like this was followed by the head of Roding Valley high School who spoke about their work with Precedence in creating an IT solution that worked with them and for them as a business.

I was next up talking about use of games within the classroom – just for a change! I will embed slides from this at a later date.

After lunch we had Valerie Thompson from the e-learning foundation  this is a national education charity – focus on digital divide and attainment gap so far they have helped over 1000 schools overcome barriers to 1:1 provision.  A lot more about their work can be found on their web site.  She spoke about the need for 1:1 provision to overcome the digital divide and to help overcome the attainment gap . Finding solutions to fund this that suits school – leasing and subscriptions/parental donation approach/.pupil owned devices and finding a solutions that works locally making the  most of pupil premium within schools to achieve this. Every March e learning foundation  conducts a survey  from parents they found that parents say they struggle with homework, welcome more support from schools and are prepared to contribute towards the cost if….. they can see skills growing and that they siblings don’t need to share.  They  resent paying for it  if schools have poor track record of maintaining and do not explain fully to the teachers what their use is.

Neil Selwyn – Insitute of education academic researcher spoke about digital literacy  he mentioned the london knowledge lab .  He mentioned the need to have a sense of history and that  there aren’t any simple solutions. What is digital literacy and why does it matter? There is a big danger that we take for granted that everything that we are talking about today  is a big issue – in the real world most of that stuff does not matter. Rose review – 2009 – lots of interesting proposals of bringing digital literacy – a lot of the press were against mainly from the daily mail – “exit winston churchill, enter twitter, yes its the new primary school curriculum” but also the head of NUt saying the same thing and michael gove – moaning replacing soldi knowledge  – a lot of hostility towards was shown at the time towards the Rose Review proposals.

Another argument  is that digital literacy not an important technology because children pick it up as they go along – another argument that digital natives are born into this and therefore do not need to be taught – young people know more about tech that adults – digital natives a good example of why we need to continue with digital literacy – because we don’t live in simple world where technology is ubiquitous.

Digital natives are a myth  - when we actually look at it – most students use of tech is low level sporadic not the creative c – oxford internet survey 16-24 research shows that the largest t group are the normative – use facebook, wiki but nothing more that that.

We do need digital literacy- but we have had every type of literacy competency that you can think of it is an area that is very messy and can be very woolly – very little changing on the ground – we need to be critical of digital literacy.  He recommended reading the following paper by Ivor Goodson – Computer Literacy as Ideology this can be found here.

We also need to look what are the values that are driving the current debate – obvious ec focus – but does need challenging – what skills are we talking about?  Idea of critical digital literacy – ideas of social justice help people be critical consumers – particularly  popular in Scandinavia – Dutch refer to it as digital wisdom.

4 points to consider in conversations

1 – what are the problems that we are trying to solve?

2 – there is no one size fits all solution – danger of finding one

3 literacy’s not literacy

4 the need for better debate and discuss – getting people in real world to care about it – involving people

if we ask general public what are the real issues that they are worried – what about the students?

Up next were Professors from Herriot Watt University who spoke about their Scholar programme – more information about Scholar can be found here: http://scholar.hw.ac.uk/England/

Next up was Miles Berry - who was representing Raspberry Pi his slides can be found here  it was a fascinating talk.  I recommend that you do go and have a look at this Prezi.

Up next were CC4G they are an after school/lunch time  IT club for 9-14 year old girls – e skills uk - reason behind CC4G is that IT is seen as  a boys subject – to do with gaming – gaming focused on boys games, it a solitary  lack of girl friendly materials lack of role models.

Girls career aspirations – girls  start thinking about careers from age 8 they understand that all careers are open to them but they aspire to traditional female roles – things that change these are personal encounters, mentoring activities and meeting professionals.

computer clubs for girls – aims to solve this – 8 islands that contain a different topic – designed specifically for girls aged 8-14 – designed by Aardman – used by schools as extra curricular activities. schools like it – club in a box

why it works – high quality content – guarantees time on the hard ware matches girls preferred ways of working bite sized and reward heavy and is seen as a treat, it has been around since 2005 – 3,8000 schools have run clubs with 135000members – 80% of members more likely to consider ITrelated careers.  This used to be a free resource but sadly has had its funding cut so is now a paid for service.

Finally Chris Binns from  21st century skills – spoke about the need to prepare students with skills and recommended the following book- the world is flat by Tom friedman http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-flat the competitive bar for students is raised and we need to think about skills that we are giving them.

All in all a great day.

Your help is needed to help fund  Mission:Explore Food, the latest in the series of children’s books which The Society of Authors have said “encourage children to explore the world around them, developing their curiosity, confidence and courage along the way…”.

Mission:Explore Food will be a revolutionary cookbook, guide, fieldbook and atlas to what we grow in the ground, chase around fields, put in our mouths, poo out our bums and plant our seeds in. The book will include scores of both delicious and disgusting recipes, missions, games and wisdom on good ways to find, eat and dispose of food.

Written by The Geography Collective (a team of teachers, academics, artists and explorers) in partnership with City Farmers and illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones, Mission:Explore Food will go where no other family food-related book dares!

n true Mission:Explore style readers will be challenged to complete missions which involve planting, digging, watering, finding, foraging, growing, investigating, testing, questioning, sifting, rolling, talking, throwing, climbing, harvesting, hunting, picking, sharing, learning, soiling, pooing, weeing, recycling, trading, singing, creating, cooking, stiring, boiling, grating, skimming, churning, thinking, mapping, eating, tasting, smelling, sniffing, burning, chilling, drinking, gargling, farming, playing and fooding.

This is a great example of crowd sourcing you can pledge as little as £1 to be part of something truly special and if it hits the target the Mission Explore team will give Mission Explore Food taster as a pdf free to every school so that they can download and carry out missions in school and home.