Websites for Learning - KS2

I am back to ICT teaching across the school, following a spell as Year 4 class teacher. This change of focus has made me realise how I have not updated Adventures in ICT for ages. To remedy this, here are five websites used in the past week across KS2 - our adventures in ICT....

1. Pen.io

Children can create a webpage easily without having to log in to the site. They just have to choose a name for the site and add a password which they can use to edit it at a later date. It is not too fussy in terms of having millions of options for customisation - the focus is on the content here rather than presentation. Videos and images can be embedded, as well as hyperlinks. Children will be able to put links to their webpages on my second site of the week:

2. Edmodo

Just brilliant. The children are learning how to embed games, files and other documents they have created during their time at school. It is turning into an online repository of their ICT learning - a free online portfolio, in other words. Great also for teaching and learning about online safety and 'netiquette' - in a safe environment that doesn't look too much like a dodgy VLE! Also good to be able to check for posts from Edmodo's Iphone and Ipad app. Set your class up now...

3. Scholastic Story Starters

I had to cover a Year 5 class Literacy at short notice and found this was an int

eresting tool for generating some creative writing in a range of genres. The website presents a series of levers as in a fruit machine for generating a random writing task - 'Write a letter/ to a 1000 year old/ gymnast/ who has just discovered a new planet/ - would be one example of what it may create. You can fine-tune each section as some may not be suitable - especially some Americanisms (cantaloupe, children?) and then produce a document on-screen. A word of warning - children's work can be lost very easily as there is no 'Save' button - if you have to refresh the page all typing is lost. Still the website has huge potential and certainly no pitfalls when used as a whole-class teaching tool.

4. Sploder

I have been using this for a few years on and off now, but it is only recently that I have come back to it. There are some more types of games that can be made, including an excellent Physics Game section. Games can be made, saved, and then embedded in Edmodo, or wherever you choose. An amazing resource for stimulating creative writing, and also a relatively straightforward way into producing computer games.

5. Sketchup

OK, not a website but a great way of engaging and teaching KS2 (Year 6) the finer points of graphical modelling. Worth a mention - it's free and should be on every Year 6 ICT scheme of work in my opinion. Screenshots can be uploaded to Edmodo for comments all round!

QR Codes with KS2

The children will be using QR codes in the class from September. The children have so many different logins now - live@edu, edmodo, tutpup, superclubs etc. The QR code will be added to their lanyard so if [when] any passwords are forgotten, the password can be retrieved by scanning the QR code. A secure way for children to have all their passwords dangling round their neck. Any other ideas for QR codes in class welcome!

We will use http://goqr.me/

More details to follow on the progress of this new venture!

Using BigHugeLabs for photo IDs

So we've got the memory sticks, lanyards and plastic ID covers. The Y3 children are ridiculously excited to be having their own stick "just like the teachers". Back-up plan is in place. Ideal September task - taking their digital images from last week and editing online. (Year 6 used Picnik to edit and exported both to their stick and to a class Humyo account, so I did not have to trawl through all the sticks before printing them onto card).

Year 3 today were introduced to the Badge Maker - Name Badge (landscape) option. They were introduced to the term Header & Footer and had to think of something sensible to go on each. Names were added (with capital letters where appropriate!) and colour scheme selected. Plenty of time was taken explaining how to navigate to My Computer>ChildName(F:)>Photo.jpg to ensure a photo from their memory stick would be on their Badge Maker creation.

Finally they had to save their completed badge onto their stick. Also a huge deal was made about the Safely Remove Hardware icon, for obvious reasons.

I will post in future about my reasons for the seemingly retrograde step of introducing memory sticks into a primary school in the era of online spaces, cloud computing, etc etc.

First steps with Google Sites

I am looking at how to introduce Google Apps into my school this year. My thoughts are that it should start small and grow from there, in order to be both manageable and more likely to be successful.

I have chosen to focus on one year group, Year 6, and to this end I have created a Google Site page for this class - Year 6 2010-11 (catchy!). This 'landing page' has links down the side, one for each pupil. Each pupil will log on and have access to their own two pages from this space - a Filing Cabinet, together with an Announcements page.

To begin with, therefore, we will be using this Google Site in two ways. The filing cabinet will be used to keep a copy of important documents/work in progress that the children are working on. The maximum file size I believe is 12MB per file, so should be fine for the majority of situations. As they have a choice of various sorts of laptops, netbooks and Macs at their disposal, this will create a virtual memory stick for them to store their work, accessing their files from any device. This will complement their actual memory sticks (ordered pre-Google Teacher Academy!) they will wear round their necks. Well of course one can be seen as a backup of the other.

The other use will be the Announcements page for each child. They will use this as a form of personal learning journey, commenting on their work, what they enjoyed, what they would do differently next time, etc etc. I have tried this before with wikis and the children responded well to commenting both on their own work and their peers' work. It will be interesting to see what develops from this starting point. I will be posting further updates as the year progresses.

Go Animate - make your own cartoons

Used this with Year Sixes to create stick-figure cartoons. It's great!! We used MailCatch to create temporary email addresses to register our own accounts. The children chose nine suitable backgrounds from Google Images and uploaded them to their own space on Go Animate Animation Studio area. After showing them the basics, they were quick to help each other (and me!) work out more advanced features, like changing the length of time the speech bubbles could stay on the screen. Unfortunately there are guns as props, so a discussion on audience and suitability was useful before we began.

ZooBurst - 3D Popup books

This is a site for creating 'augmented reality 3d popup books' - Zooburst approves your application for joining (mine within 12 hours or so) and you are ready to create your own stories using photos, or creative commons pictures available from the site. You can control the timings of each popup element on the page, and have a series of pages to tell your story. Well worth a look and suitable for Year 3 upwards I would suggest.

Google Teacher Academy application