Really Useful Book of ICT in the Early Years

A great book arrived for me this morning, 'The Really Useful Book of ICT in the Early Years', it is proving difficult to put it down and return to some of the more mundane tasks of my job. I noticed this Publication on the E2BN Foundation Stage ICT site, which I have often used to pull in resource for Early Years ICT. The site has had a bit of a revamp and all of the guidance and resources are linked to the revisions made to EYFS.

The book has guidance on lesson planning, curriculum mapping, tools for auditing provision, alongside other useful resources like sample letters for photography permission. Big names in ICT for Early Years, such as Harriet Price and Rachel Ager (Northampton) have contributed essays to this very comprehensive text, which is very readable and full of practical examples and fresh ideas.

This is essential for ICT Coordinators - particularly those that think ICT in reception is about all 30 children having 40 minutes in the ICT suite on 'Colour Magic' arrraggah!!

Update - been reading Chapter 2 - Heather Lowe looks @ Children's indpendance and ICT, this really makes you think about how we design spaces for children to access technology. Imagine you had to sit with feet dangling and pull you documents out of a printer you could barely reach!! -This is great stuff for those who care about early childhood education with embedded ICT.

More Foundation Stage IWB sites

Thank you to John Sutton, who pointed out/reminded me of a couple of other sites that are ideal for Foundation Stage Teachers and the IWB. The best of these is of course Poisson Rouge.

This site has puzzle, drag and drop elements and what I call interacts. These are areas which react in interesting wasy to a click or SMART Board push. For instance a click on a leaf might make the minibeasts spin or dance or rotate. This feedback makes this resource ideal for both Foundation and Special. 

By far the best aspect of this site  is the alpahabet area, here there is a very visual drag and drop activity for each letter of the alphabet, a great reinforcer.

Other site worth a look

Topicbox

Thanks to Gary @ Fullwood, who told me about his friend's site, which was covered later in the week by Ictopus magazine. The site is Topicbox and it provides access to reviewed primary links, undet phase and subject headings. it is fast and gives you more information than a google search would. It is good to see what others have chosen as the most popular resource and I like the fact that it tells me whether it is suitable for class use and/ or as a teacher resource. It is simple, clean and citrusy too.

Whiteboard Resources for Foundation Stage

I am compiling a link and review list of best resources for Foundation, if you have any that I have missed, then please let me know!

Snapdragon- 'Goldilocks and the three Bears'
A very Welsh on-screen text, click on the orange/red text to have it spoken back.

Body Parts Labelling Exercise

Drag and drop the correct name to the body part- each label is spoken, so there is no requirement to be able to read the labels.

Survival Guide

I like the idea of this resource. It allows a student to click on an image to make their request known. Clicking on picture of the toilet will speak, ' Can I go to the toilet?" and clicking on the milk image will prompt the computer to ask 'Can I have some orange juice?. I guess a student could use this almost as an interpreter or speech synthesiser, though as this is a little linear to navigate, it might better to use this with a small group as a way of modelling language.

This resource also has versions in Bengali, Urdu and other community languages.

For training sessions and general Whiteboard Pedagogy, I always return to the e2bn foundation pages. Here there are pages on all aspects of ICT in Foundation Stage, as well as an excellent Training Powerpoint and Photo-Gallery. click here to go their IWB in FS pages

Magic Desktop

I had read about this resources some time ago in Iram and John Siraj Blatchford's book on Foundation stage ICT. And if all this post amounts to is another shameless plug for their book then, so be it.











The Magic Desktop, allows an easily accessible environment for younger PC users, while also locking down websites to those that the teacher needs the class to use. Now I am not advocating heavy filtering or limiting children, and there are those that will try Magic Desktop,and argue that we are robbing children of the opportunity to experience real computing, but the Magic Desktop still requires mouse skills and conventional Windows navigating, it just means that some of the distractions are removed. This is ideal for Foundation and early Key Stage 1.

I hoped that this resource would provide the 'easy desktop' that I have been looking for both my Foundation work and for my boys @ home.

Why and what do I mean?
In some settings, children can be occupied by just gaming from miniclip.com or by the same 3 applications., the teacher could be oblivious to this or just lacking in the knowledge of how to change this informal ICT. While at home I'd like to gain greater independence for my children by making the desktop even easier to navigate. So that, they can find the relevant Clicker Grid, website or flash game.

I now think the answer is not the Magic Desktop, rather in a setting it is ensuring there are uncluttered desktops, while allowing for access to a range of good applications that meet DATEC criteria.Alongside this, we need to challenge the perception of the computer as baby sitting device, or a place to go 'if you have finished your work Joshua'. Gaming is not wrong, it is just that if this all that the children experience in a Foundation setting, then their experience is limited and they miss out on developing skills and exercising creativity. Boredom can also set in, if their computer or desktop account is only loaded with 1 or 2 Foundation Stage favourites.

While at home I too need to declutter the desktops and create meaningful icons, possibly with an increased screen setting.

But there may be another way.

But there are some downsides to this resources, firstly it costs around 30 euros a license and secondly

Foundation Stage / NQT Course

Links
Flickr- a good source of images

LGFL Content

• LGFL Content-

(note these will work in a London school but will not work @ home unless you log in)

• iboard- Excellent drag and drop activities ideal for Foundation and Key Stage 1. These activities cover aspects of the Foundation Stage Curriculum, along with Literacy,Numeracy, Science and some foundations subjects for Years 1 and 2. visit : iboard.lgfl.org.uk

• Virtual Experiemnts- each area of QCA Science is covered here with a virtual representation of an experiment, coupled with data charts to interpret and objects to be dragged into the correct place.There are packages for Year 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 Visit ve34.lgfl.org.uk for year 3 and 4, ve12.lgfl.org.uk for year 1 and 2 and ve56.lgfl.org.uk for years 5 and 6.

• Talking Stories- as mentioned these animated stories and non fiction text are a good means of showcasing multi-modal texts, what's more these texts come in a variety of community languages. Visit Visit www.stories3.lgfl.net ,stories2.lgfl.org.uk or stories.lgf.org.uk

Podcasting
Links and Resources

• A vast range of sound clips can be downloaded from the LGFL Audio Network visit: http://audio.lgfl.org.uk
  

• Podium has an informative website- including training videos and easier definitions of what exactly is Podacsting and how to use it

• Audacity can be downloaded from here

• A redbridge network of primary schools, that are creating and innovating with podcasts are recording their progress on a blog - click here

The LGFL have also put together a new mini-site of their own called Podcast-Central. This does not support Podium, but does give helpful advice on how to create video and audio podcasts. visit Podcast Central here

ESAFETY - Dongle the Rabbit

Youtube Clips shown

Software Review Live blogging

At the...

I have been looking @ various packages over the last few days and a series from Granada Learning/SEMERC has caught my eye.The "At the . ( Post Office, Toy Shop, Vets etc) is designed to work alongside the real role play area and could be inspired by a visit to a Toy shop/ Vets/ Cafe etc. At first glance these are not particularly amazing pieces of whizzy software and the navigation is quite linear, but for their purpose i.e. a small group activity sited in or near the role play area they work!.

What happens?
Children enter the shop or other setting and purchase items based on quantity and size. They end by receiving a bill, which they can pay for using a swipe card or cash.This bill can also be printed out. Each environment can also be customised, so that the name reflects the class, hence Ant's Toy Shop below.


At The Vets is described in A Guide to Developing the ICT curriculum for Early Years by Siraj and Iram Blatchofr.They mention this package in relation to some of the school work they were involved in the Northampton EYFS ICT Strategy. In chapter 1, we learn how 'At the Vets' encouraged emergent writing. The children were apparently 'desperate' to have a go at demonstrating on the whiteboard and during the use of the packages some 'excellent cooperative play' was observed.

Here is an example of an ICT application that is both accessible and in keeping with Foundation stage principles or play and emergent language development. QCA say this about role play in the Foundation Stage guidance:

Everyday situations such as getting dressed, shopping, walking or driving
to the setting provide rich contexts to encourage conversation and to
extend the use of language. Children’s surroundings offer natural
opportunities to look at and learn about printed language, such as on food
packets, road signs and labels.

QCA Foundation guidance 2000 Page 46

Here are some screen shots

My bill after spending some good money @ the Toy Shop

I was able to customise the name of the Garden Centre- the accompanying booklet suggests also changing the sign of the role-play area to 'open' when the software is being used.

ICT in foundation should never just be about computers, it should also be about learning about Information, communications and the technology that drives and dleivers theses in the real world. The Scottish ICT strategy appears a lot stronger at delivering this message than the often miscntrued lines in the Foundation Stage profile. By using such packages within and around the role play area, and by viisting a supermarket (with all its barcodes and scanners) , we are helping children develop good attitude towards ICT. they are seeing it in its real context and for a purpose. I ownder if they develop such good attitudes and associations towards ICT by sitting with 29 other for an hour in a stuffy ICT suite- 'doing Colour Magic'.

The notion of emrgence in ICT, that children should play, experiment and explore a wide variety of applications has been with us for some time. This has been strongley argued by Blatchford (see above) and in the European DATEC project. It was also raised in the INTERPLAY project from Sterling University and mentioned in the TES last week.

The Interplay report said:

"Desktop computers were originally designed for adults to use individually in the workplace. They are not ergonomically suited to very young children because of their size, position and fixed location."

At the Garden Centre and others in the series are available from Granada Learning `One Stop for Eduaction'

Magic School

I-Board is great-there stuff is like My World but without the fuss-sorry My-world fans- For London schools most of their content is online and free to use in class. There are lots of very intuitive and easy to use drag and drop activities to support Foundation and Key Stage 1. For those of you are not privileged enough to live within the glorious country lane, we call the M25, I-Board do allow users to demo some of their software online or download trials.

I thought I knew most of the I-Board stuff, until I came across the Magic school, or as I like to call it Second Life For Foundation stage. In Magic school the user has the option of customising a simple character or avatar and what's more, you could even import digital images, so that the character has a real face. I tried this with my tow boys and they loved watching Daddy move them around the virtual worlds on screen. I then got a bit carried away and manipulated images of my former parallel teacher and site manager. Well ICT should be fun.

Dylan and Leo in the Music room.

Dylan and Leo in the virtual Early Years setting

Then I got carried away..

Primary Strategy Day

The learning and teaching with ICT network met late last December. So, this is a very overdue Blog entry! It was another good day, though I was hoping we could have had access to the hotel wireless Internet, so as to blog live, but it was not to be.

I'll try to highlight some of the salient point that relate to ICT, many of which were covered in the recent ICT subject leaders meeting, which was far too crammed as it was!

Foundation Stage ICT and assessment documenting

From this presentation from teachers and consultant in this pilot, we learned about how some schools were using photographs, tablet PCs and talk in learning. Many foundation stage teachers take photographs for recording purposes, but this project hit upon how to best use these as a teaching/assessing/talking tool.

What happens is that the foundation stage teacher would take an image of the children involved in a child initiated activity (or indeed any activity) and he would then insert this onto a PowerPoint page on his tablet PC. Having this shot in front of him he could then talk to the children about what they had been doing, while annotating the image with their comments. This form of assessment/discussion goes against the tick box grain and is very real and immediate.

The images were all saved and used in a number of ways:

• A rolling slide show was shown just next to the parents entrance, in order for parents to see what had been going on- this really helped with parental links


• The images were stored in each child's folder for viewing between practitioners, sencos etc


• The images were used again later in the year as a discussion/ reflection tool with the children- we listened to one example of this where children looked back on a picture taken in autumn, but during the spring term.

There were comments such as

"Why is it dark?"

"Because it is night"

"It can't be night, we are in school'

"Maybe it was our night walk that we had"

"Who is that on the slide?"

These comments and questions, show how an image can be used, even with small children to develop reasoning and questioning skills.

Those involved in the project also found that they soon moved beyond the regular posed shots of children and into more reportage work, though they had not explored the children using the cameras as much.

The BECTA Self Review Grid

Many coordinators that have looked at the BECTA self review grid (srf), have felt daunted by the standard needed to reach ICT Mark status. That is, if you look at every area of the grid and compare where you are and where you could be, but the grid can be a very powerful tool for developing vision and action planning. It needn't be just for those schools that want an ICT mark.

The network recommended using the teaching and learning strand, as a tool to assess where a school might be at with their integration of ICT across the curriculum. This they said, would be helpful when auditing and action planning for the implementation of the new frameworks fro Literacy and Numeracy. If you haven't looked at the SRF yet, then I recommend you go to the BECTA site and register your school. This and Keys to Learning are two very useful tools to help your school move forward with ICT in the new frameworks for Literacy and Numeracy.

Keys to Learning

What is it?

This is what TeacherNet says:

What is it? a DVD and booklet package that supports teachers in making links between their own use of ICT to support teaching and children's use of ICT to support their learning. Keys to Learning covers 7 areas of Literacy and Mathematics:
Early reading
Calculation
Reading on screen
Problem solving
Shape and space
Writing Key Stage 1
Writing Key Stage 2
It offers a wide variety of resources, including:
Professional development meeting outlines, supported by video clips of classroom practice and all of the resources needed to deliver them
Spreadsheet workbooks, interactive whiteboard files and interactive teaching programmes
Reading and writing kits including teaching sequences, interactive and multimodal texts, templates, digital images, sounds and videos
Lesson outlines for mathematics
Support for using ICT to develop early reading
How can it help? It can be used by leadership teams to support professional development, or individual teachers looking to develop their use of ICT, and that of their learners.