Marks and Spencer Education Resources
The Marks & Spencer Company Archive has just launched a new online learning resource for UK schools to make elements of the company’s collection of over 70,000 historical objects, photos and documents accessible to students and teachers for the first time.
In partnership with My Learning, the M&S Company Archive eLearning Hub will be available to schools and educational establishments free of charge.
These themed classroom resources are inspired by objects, photos and documents held at the M&S Company Archive in Leeds. They offer a cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning by…
- examining the people who made M&S the high street name it is today
- exploring innovative practices and merchandise at M&S
- challenging students to think about their own values and ambitions
The eLearning Hub is an online portal comprising imagery, videos, documents and games that will allow children to engage with and understand the company’s rich history.
The materials have been selected to be applicable to a broad range of school subjects including business studies, history, science, design and technology, maths and English. Resources are suitable for KS2-4. All content on the site can be incorporated into interactive whiteboard resources.
It’s an interesting resource, and even better, it’s free!
You can access the M&S Company Archive eLearning hub here. Take a look and let me know what you think in the comments.
Read MoreDaydream Education Maths Content Pack for your IWB
Daydream Education have been making wall charts for 14 years and in recent years they have been converting these wall charts into interactive versions that can be displayed on Interactive Whiteboards.
Their interactive wallcharts currently cover 10 subjects, Business Studies, D&T, English, Geography, ICT, Maths, Music, P.E, R.E and Science. There are versions of their Interactive Packs for both Primary and Secondary (and Sixth Form), with CD or VLE versions available.
They have just sent me a copy of their new Interactive Content Pack for Maths, which they will be showcasing at the BETT Exhibition in London this week.
The Maths pack is suitable for key stage 3, GCSE (foundation and higher) and elements of AS and A-level. The software is very user-friendly and contains a wealth of curriculum-based content for both teacher and learner. it contains presentations, games and assessments and is ideal for starter, plenary and summary activities, providing for students of all learning styles and abilities.
The pack includes:
- 26 Interactive Charts
- 60 Worksheets
- 42 Fun Features – interactive games or puzzles.
- 60 Printable Quizzes
- 580 Quiz Questions
The games are Flash-based so they can be used on regular computers, but not on iPads.
It’s a pretty comprehensive set of resources that should be of interest to all Maths teachers. I liked the “fun features” which make the resources more interactive than just watching the a presentation. The quizzes are also very useful and could be played as a whole class as part of a plenary or revision activity. Lesson objectives can be clearly displayed. There’s also a set of iwb tools which can be accessed via a toolbox button. This gives tools like a pen, highlighter, calculator and a protractor.
It’s not a free resources. Prices start at £149 for a class licence and £199 for a site licence. VLE options are also available. You can get a free trial of their software via the Daydream website.
You can find out more about their Interactive Maths pack here.
Read MorePeace One Day : 21st Sep : Teaching Resources
Founded in 1999 by filmmaker Jeremy Gilley, the non-profit organisation Peace One Day drove the initiative that led to the unanimous adoption by UN member states of an annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence on 21 September – Peace Day. With the day in place, Peace One Day’s objective is to institutionalise Peace Day around the world, making it self-sustaining.
You can find some great Peace One Day teaching resources on Promethean Planet which could be used in a PSHE lesson or an assembly on Friday. For more resources, visit the Peace One Day Eduation area.
Video Lectures from Backpack TV
Backpack TV is a new website very much in the mould of Khan Academy and O2 Learn, amongst others. Like these sites it contains videos produced by teachers of lectures about particular topic areas. You can search by topic, subject etc. Videos range from 5 to 20 minutes in length. Videos are self-hosted rather than pulled in via YouTube, which some schools will find useful. Videos seem pitched at the KS4/KS5 range.
The site is clean, and free of advertising, although there’s mention on the home page of a “Backpack premium” in the future that’s ad-free, so I’m assuming this basic version of the site will end up with adverts in some way. Not a problem, as long as they’re not intrusive.
The site is currently in Beta, and as such only a few subjects are on stream right now – Maths, Science, US History, and English. I would assume more subjects will follow before it’s launched properly.
Like all these kind of sites, the videos are a mixed bag. They may not always be exactly what you want and there’s not a lot of supporting information apart from a descriptive paragraph for each video. There’s no text transcript, captioning/subtitles for accessibility, keyword tagging and no supporting materials such as worksheets. Maybe these will come later.
There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but if you are looking for resources to help your students revise particular topics you might want to add this to your list of sites to point them towards.
Take a look at : http://www.backpack.tv/
Read MoreInteractive Whiteboard Activities from Scholastic
The Scholastic website contains, amongst other things, a section with interactive activities that you can use on your whiteboard.
The activities cover a range of topic areas from languages to maths to science and they’re quite a mixed bag in terms of the type of activity.
You can access the resources here.
As I’ve said before a full-screen feature would be good – just to make these easier to use on an IWB, some of these are quite small and so would be fiddly to use.
Thanks to Liam M for sharing the link via Twitter.
Read MoreAdobe Education Exchange – resources for teachers
The Adobe Education Exchange hosts a range of free, peer-reviewed teaching and learning resources, developed by Adobe Education Leaders, educators who are already integrating technology in to classes with great success who also use the Exchange themselves to find inspiration for creative teaching activities.
For example the site contains guidance on teaching code for games design and app development which supports collaborative learning, or lesson plans for effectively teaching photography students panoramic techniques.
For more information or to sign up to the Adobe Education Exchange visit: http://edexchange.adobe.com.
UK Students invited to compete in Robotics Championships
Here’s a competition that may be of interest to teachers of ICT and Design/Technology:
Young robotics enthusiasts from throughout Great Britain are invited to compete at the first ever VEX UK National Championship during The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, held at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre on 15 and 16 March 2012. Interested students are encouraged to sign up as soon as possible, as competition slots are expected to fill up quickly.
Debuting in the United States in 2005, VEX competitions have quickly become the fastest growing and largest high school robotics competitions in the world, with 10,000 students from 16 countries taking part in the World Championships at Walt Disney World Florida this year. This Championship, which is the only World Championship qualifying event in the UK, will see battle commence as secondary school teams from around the country go head to head with their own robotic creations in hopes of impressing celebrity host and judge Robert Llewellyn, widely known for his role as mechanoid Kryten in the iconic sitcom Red Dwarf and as presenter of popular engineering show Scrapheap Challenge, in order to qualify for the 2012 VEX World Championships in California.
The VEX UK National Championship marks the launch of the VEX Robotics Design System in the UK, a science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) focused platform that inspires students across schools and colleges to get involved in co-curricular and extra-curricular robotics courses. The program, already hugely successful in the US, is in its first year in the UK and aims to bring brand new challenges and skills to school children across the nation. The VEX System encourages key teamwork, leadership, and problem solving skills, as well as the opportunity to learn about STEM areas rich in career opportunities.
Teams of 6-8 students aged 11-15 are eligible to compete in the Championship. For those schools interested, subsidised VEX Classroom Lab Kits are available for £550.
Please visit www.vexrobotics.com and www.robotevents.com for more information and registration details.
Read MoreYouTube for Schools Launches
Following on from Septembers launch of YouTube for Teachers, comes the launch today of YouTube for Schools.
YouTube for Schools “lets schools access free educational YouTube videos while limiting access to other YouTube content. Students can learn from more than 400,000 educational videos, from well-known organizations like Stanford, PBS and TED, and from up-and-coming YouTube partners with millions of views. Schools can also customize their YouTube for Schools experience, adding videos that are only viewable within their school network.”
School admins and teachers can log in and watch any video, but students cannot log in and can only watch YouTube EDU videos and videos that their school has added. All comments and related videos are disabled and search is limited to YouTube Edu videos.
It’s an interesting idea, and only time will tell if this will convince many schools and local authorities to unblock access to YouTube and allow access in this way.
Schools can find out more and sign up at http://www.youtube.com/schools
Read MoreFree teaching resources from EdComs
The Edcoms teachers website is a great free new resource site for teachers. The site initially launched with with 40 free, high-quality teaching resources, for both primary and secondary teachers with more to come each month.
The aim of Edcoms teachers is to bring together all the free educational materials that EdComs has created for various clients all together in one place, including their resources produced for BP which I’ve reviewed on this site in the past. The 40 resources available at launch includes online activities, resources for interactive whiteboards plus worksheets and games. New resources will be added monthly, so keep an eye on the site for new stuff.
It’s free to register with the site, and any teachers registering with the new site before December 15 will get the chance to win a free place at the Learning Without Frontiers 12 conference in London in January.
As I’ve said before; EdComs has regularly produced some excellent resources for both primary and secondary classrooms that are great for use with an interactive whiteboard as well as for supporting independent student work. It’s definitely worth taking a look at their site and seeing how you can use their resources in your classroom.
Take a look for yourself at : http://www.edcomsteachers.com/
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