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 MoreSerif DrawPlus X5 Review
I’ve always been a big fan of Serif products* – they provide a much more affordable alternative to the likes of Photoshop or CorelDraw. Just out is version X5 of their popular DrawPlus vector drawing package.
As well as creating standard vector drawings – SerifDrawPlus X5 also lets you generate both Keyframe and StopFrame animations which you can export as either animated .gif files, or as Flash .swf files.
DrawPlus X5 contains all the drawing tools you’d expect. There are lots of pre-set document types including posters, greetings cards and banners, to kick start your designs.
New in X5 is The Shape Builder Tool which can be used to combine simple shapes, including the built-in palette of QuickShapes, into more complex shapes. Dragging between the shapes combines them, and clicking on shapes that overlap will split and create new objects. It’s quick and easy to use.
An instant 3D conversion tool lets you convert simple objects into 3 dimensional shapes. There is also new Styles tab that lets you quickly apply various preset shadows, glows, bevels, feather edges, textures, text effects and more. The user interface has been improved, including the option to display larger tool icons if you wish.
Serif DrawPlus X5 is an excellent product when compared to similar products produced by Corel and Adobe. It can’t do everything these can, but it does enough, and the price should make it very attractive for schools. A single licence for DrawPlus X5 is about £80. It’s also worth looking at the Serif Design Suite which packages up DrawPlus along with MoviePlus, PhotoPlus and WebPlus. A 100 user licence costs around £2600 plus student licences are also available. More info here.
ICT Teachers should definitely take a look at the free teacher resources for using Serif products to support/teach the OCR Nationals, 14/19 Diploma, DiDa etc. These include ideas for projects, step by step guides, pupil worksheets and course materials. It’s an excellent set of resources, and much of it is free if you contact Serif. You can also download some free samples immediately. Take a look here : http://www.serif.com/Education/CurriculumCourses/
As an aside – you can also download and try out free versions of older Serif Software here.
*Disclosure – Over the past few years I have written some of the Serif training materials for the OCR Nationals and 14/19 Diploma, namely the Multimedia, Computer Graphics and Web Design modules. I was sent a free copy of Drawplus X5 to look at, but I have not been paid for this review.
Read MoreRising Stars Switched on ICT Scheme
This is a slight departure for the blog since I usually talk about online resources, but I think this is something that will definitely interest Primary ICT coordinators so I thought I’d share it here.
I have been taking a look at the Switched on ICT scheme from Rising Stars. This is a set of ready-made ICT plans that cover Years 1-6. Key Stage 2 is available now. Key Stage 1 will be published in the Autumn.
Each pack covers one year group and comes with a teachers guide which explains content and coverage. There’s also a step by step guide to each of the 6 activities. The guide covers important information such as e-safety points, things to think about and statements to help decide which level the pupils should be working towards. You can access a sample unit here.
Each pack comes with a set of laminated cards for the pupils to use. A DVD-ROM contains electronic copies of all the resources as well as free resources and “Software in 60 Seconds” video demos.
The tasks are varied and interesting. For example the year 6 book covers activities such as creating Geotrails with Google Earth, A charity fundraising task using spreadsheets and DTP , creating an adventure game with a branching database (or PowerPoint), modelling climate change, creating e-safety websites and publishing a yearbook. There’s good coverage of different skills over each year, and progression from year to year.
Switched on ICT has been written in collaboration with some of the great and the good of the UK ICT scene such as Terry Freedman, Miles Berry and Tom Barrett. If you’ve spent any time on the educational blogs or twitter then you’ll know about them. There’s also been input from the Havering School Improvement Services team.
The scheme takes into account some of the new web 2.0 websites out there, as well as old favourites such as Publisher, Movie Maker and PowerPoint. Even experienced ICT users will find ideas in here that maybe they hadn’t thought about.
Overall I was really impressed with the scheme – it’s packed with ideas to support teachers whatever your degree of experience with ICT. Don’t forget that any scheme is not going to fit your school exactly – but take these ideas and adapt and adopt them to your own school schemes – even if it means moving them up and down year groups. The scheme isn’t cheap (£125 per pack, £395 for all of KS2) – but each pack comes with a site licence for all the electronic resources, and it might save money in the long run in terms of teacher time.
Key Stage 2 is available now. Key Stage 1 will be published in the Autumn. Find out more here.
(Edit : Bee-Digital are doing a special price if you buy it in the next week or so. More details here)
Read MoreICT Magic Wiki
Martin Burrett is a primary school teacher who maintains an excellent wiki chock full of links to useful websites. You can find his ICT Magic wiki at : http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/
There are a stack of links, covering a range of different subject areas. I spent ages looking through them. Definitely worth a visit to take a look. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/
You can also follow Martin on Twitter at @ictmagic worth following for more useful website links for teachers.
Read MoreLearning with Visualisers Video
Discover the benefits of using a visualiser with primary pupils, along with useful tips and resources in this handy video from Teachers TV.
This video shows how you can use a visualiser to take photographs, how to create videos for pupils to reference, and how to use a visualiser to encourage pupil self assessment.
Year 3 teacher and ICT Coordinator Dave Orritt travels to another primary school to get see how they use visualisers to aid teaching and learning. He observes a Year 4 teacher using a visualiser in maths and art lessons, including showing a video to the pupils, and using it to help pupils assess their own work.
After getting advice on using the technology from fellow teachers, Dave heads back to his own school to see how he can use one effectively in his own lessons.
Thanks to ICT in Havering for the heads up.
Read MoreFree Labskills Science Software
LabSkills is an interactive software resource designed to help teachers and their students get more out of chemistry laboratory sessions at A-level and GCSE levels.
Available as a USB stick, a teacher can use the material to prepare students for a laboratory session. LabSkills supports and encourages the student and enhances the practical work. It is not designed to be a substitute for practical work in science. It can however play an important role in promoting best practice in lab skills in a stimulating and engaging way.
This resource helps to develop problem-solving skills and encourage a life-long learning approach to education. Created by Learning Science and the University of Bristol, and promoted through the Discover Chemistry Programme run by the RSC and Pfizer, these resources are available to all state secondary schools and FE colleges across the UK throughout the spring and summer of 2010, free of charge. One USB stick for each school or college.
Schools can register to receive the free resources at www.discoverlabskills.org. Register now to receive your resources before the end of term. Any teacher or technician can register their school.
Schools that do not qualify for the FREE Resources can purchase them from www.labskills.co.uk at a cost of £34.99 per USB stick.
Read MoreiPrimary ICT Guides and 180 Tech Tips
Here are two very useful websites to bookmark if you are looking for basic computer help on a variety of different topics.
Chris Thomas has put together iPrimary : www.iprimary.co.uk which features video tutorials he has produced to support teachers who wish to develop their ICT skills, and extend the use of ICT within their classroom.
The site covers tools such as Edmodo, ActivPrimary 3, Flashmeeting and Wordle. It’s a growing site, so check back regularly.
Russel Tarr on (@russeltarr) tweeted a link to 180 Tech Tips: www.180techtips.com which also looks quite handy. 180TechTips.com offers 15 hours of free computer training in 180 easy to follow 5 minute lessons.
Both the sites are well worth taking a look at.
Read MoreThe Great Wordle Crisis
I’ve mentioned before that I am a big fan of Wordle. It’s a fantastic tool for making word clouds – and as such can be used for text analysis (try it with some written work and see what words you over-use) or just for fun image creation.
There was a ripple of outrage yesterday on Twitter when it was discovered that Wordle had been taken down, apparently over a trademark infringement involving the Wordle name.
Luckily, after a brief outage, the site was back up and running yesterday evening, but this does demonstrate the need when planning to use any web tool in the classroom to have a “Plan B”. Just because a website was working when you planned the lesson, does not mean it will be working when you actually deliver it. Free web apps can be quite transient and may not always be there when you need them. ( I have also had a few issues in schools where the Wordle java code gets blocked, so an alternative is handy that actually works in that school)
I’m really hoping that the chap behind Wordle gets the trademark issue sorted, so that Wordle does not get threatened again. It’s good to have some alternatives bookmarked just in case though.
By way of an alternative – here are a selection of other Word-cloud generators – none are anywhere near as good as Wordle, but they might fill a gap should the site go down again.:
- http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm
- http://tagul.com/
- http://tagcrowd.com/
- http://worditout.com/
- http://www.imagechef.com/ic/word_mosaic/
- http://wordsift.com/
I’ve collated a list of these sites on Delicious here: http://delicious.com/dannynic/wordle. Some are better than others, but most don’t quite do what Wordle does so well.
Here are just a few ideas on how you could use Wordle in the classroom:
- Use to introduce a topic – pupils could guess what they will be learning about.
- Comparing different newspapers – look at the same story in a Broadsheet and a tabloid newspaper (website) and compare the wordle clouds produced – how do the words used differ?
- Self-reflection on work – as Wordle makes a word larger the more frequently it is used, pupils will be able to see at a glance which words or phrases they are over-using. Are they using the word Nice or Good too often?
- Use to analyse the content and gist a longer written text, especially with exam or higher level groups
- To introduce new vocabulary or to memorise new vocabulary/vocabulary lists
- Revision of key topics and vocabulary – pupils can create their own worldes or they can be given them to use
- To give presentations without reading from a sheet and just using prompts
- Encouraging creative writing from a selection of key words from a word cloud
- See results of a class survey visually – maybe use an Etherpad to collect the text first, then paste into Wordle
Here are some more great ideas for using Wordle in the classroom
23 Ways to use Wordle in MFL – from Language Resources Blog
10 More ways to Use Wordle – from Wordle users group on Google
43 Interesting Ways to use Wordle – From Ideas to Inspire
Five reasons to use Wordle by Terry Freedman
Read More2 Create a Superstory Archive
2Create a Super Story (2CaSS) is a creative piece of software from an amazing company called 2Simple. It is designed for use in primary schools and allows pupils to create their own activities and games. They launched it at BETT this year and it looks likely to become a firm favourite of primary ict teachers everywhere!
In its most simple form, children can simply click, drag and insert elements of an activity on screen and then save their work as a flash (.swf) file that can be inserted, or embedded, onto a webpage (blog/wiki/VLE etc) or kept locally and played through a web browser. It’s great for KS1 ICT.
The software even allows for lip syncing audio with characters and augmented reality with a webcam!
Take a look at the archive- and hopefully get inspired. Get a copy of 2CaSS and try it out for yourself!
Read More
About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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