. A new addition to our pages last week was a fairly clumsy (but it works) attempt at a visitor's book. If you have the time, please sign.
Not a lot to report from around the schools this week as everybody is gearing up for Christmas. (See several Christmas links on our Hot Links page. Lots of schools productions and parties etc., going on. However, Beth from Santley reports that some of her children have been emailing Father Christmas and are eagerly awaiting replies. Jan from Loughborough Infants has been busy making contacts in New Zealand, Australia and America ready for next term.
We were very sad to learn that Jill Wells one of the teachers on our project is having treatment for cervical cancer. If anybody anywhere in the world wishes to send greetings, please send them to me and I will pass them on.
This will be the final update this term unless something dramatic happens between now and next Monday. So may I wish all our readers that celebrate Christmas a merry one and I look forward to the New Year. The next update will be in early January.
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Paul Westlake from Caldecot reports that last week during his assembly on helping hands, the children came up with the idea of collecting for the Blue Peter Paper Chain Appeal. Not knowing much about it, Paul suggested they find the relevant pages on the Web. They did this, then printed out the relevant pages, displayed the information and then presented it to the rest of the Junior department during the next assembly. The display was then moved to the central area of the school to encourage the children and remind them what to bring in etc.
Barrington Brown (see October 31) came to visit Jane at St. Helen's RC on Monday afternoon, which the children thoroughly enjoyed. They are currently working on replies to Jef Fox's (Loughborough Juniors) children's request for information on their school dinners project and they hope to send him their replies early next week. They are doing a big geography project next term. One of the places to be studied will be St Lucia and Barrington has offered to help them research this.
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This week, all the news is from the schools. Hillmead Infants want to find links with schools in Europe and the Southern Hemisphere to compare Xmas traditions and customs. If anybody can help please email them at: hillmdin@rmplc.co.uk.
Jan at Loughborough Infants reports that this week some of the children she works with answered some questions on what the internet is, how it works and how they have used it. They drew some wonderful pictures of the machine and showed their work in their class assembly.
Jef Fox of Loughborough Juniors tried to get a local survey going on school dinners. Unfortunately he received nil response. Perhaps he might do better internationally. His email address is: loughjun@rmplc.co.uk.
Beth at Santley has been working on her school's home page. To see how she has been doing, follow the link on Brixton Connections home Page. All the home pages constructed so far can now be selected from the table on that page.
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The Primary IT Coordinator's Conference I mentioned last week took place and seemed to go very well. Barrington Brown (see October 31) came at lunchtime and was able to meet with several of the project participants. I can't say we were inundated with messages from around the world though.
At the Conference, colleagues were shown the draft plan for extending the project. All Lambeth schools are today being sent a letter inviting them to participate. Unfortunately, there are no central funds available for the necessary equipment, but the suggestion is that schools write to local businesses looking for sponsorship. If any companies reading these pages would like to help, please get in touch as soon as possible.
At the Conference, Peter Cowley of Videotron, the local cable TV company, spoke of the services they offer to schools. These include free installation of a telephone line.
As mentioned last week, Maureen McTaggart of the Times Educational Supplement visited two of our schools last Thursday afternoon. She is planning a piece about the project for either this or next Friday's issue. I'll keep you posted.
One of the schools visited was Loughborough Infants. Jan has been taking part in an international food survey. During the visit, three 6 year old children were busy emailing a school in Australia with details of their favourite food. Four samples of their pictures have been uploaded to Jan's WWW area. The other school was Stockwell Infants. There, they have found the World Wide Web to be a valuable resource for their Special Needs Co-ordinator. She was particularly pleased to find some very useful information on dyslexia from links on Eduweb.
One thing I noticed from visiting these two infant schools was the difficulty the teachers faced in getting the children to understand the workings of email. I might add that not only children have difficulty. There is an obvious market for a more intuitive, graphical email interface that might, for example, include animation effects to show what is happening. That is, a visual representation of the mail being sent. If anybody knows of such a program, please do get in touch.
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On Wednesday we have the Autumn Primary IT Coordinator's conference here at the Centre.
Many of the colleagues involved in the project will be attending. Although the main thrust
of the day will be on preparing for OFSTED inspections, there will be a session on using
the Internet during the day. If any readers would like to send messages to conference
participants, please email them to lawnlane@rmplc.co.uk, or if your browser
supports email, by clicking here: .
Peter Cowley of Videotron will be attending and will be discussing with me how they can help the project in the future.
Also being announced at the conference are our plans for extending the project to other schools in the London Borough of Lambeth. More news on our plans after the Conference.
A reporter from the TES (Times Educational Supplement) will be visiting some of our schools on Thursday afternoon. As soon as I know if, what and when anything will be published I will post details here.
I was visiting one of the schools last week and noticed that they had received email from the Nickelodeon channel in New York inviting them to participate in a global email project. One of the children around the computer asked how they had found the school. I explained that they had found the email address on the Brixton Connections home page. She then asked if there was a New York Connections. Now that is a very good question. Is there a New York Connections or any similar project running in any inner city or other area of the USA or the World. If there is - please get in touch.
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The main news this week is that three of our schools now, at last, have their own home pages. They are: Stockwell Infants, Loughborough Infants and Caldecot Primary. Please have a look and let them know what you think as they have all worked very hard.
Paul at Caldecot reports that he has been holding workshops for his staff after school and that many of them are showing a keen interest in using the Internet. He is also starting a computer club to facilitate access to other children in the school besides his own class.
San Andrea school in Malta have been in touch by letter and email. They are very keen in establishing links with our schools so we are exchanging dialogue to set this up. They regard such links as being of great importance as Malta is such a small island that it is quite possible for the children to feel the effects of insularity.
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The Project Steering Committee held it's second meeting on October 18th. Attendance was excellent and the meeting was very constructive with lots of ideas generated for funding and expanding the project. Many innovative ideas were discussed and hopefully some of these will come to fruition. I will report on these as they happen. Following this meeting, all Lambeth primary schools will shortly be receiving a letter inviting them to join the project looking to local businesses to sponsor their costs.
Eight colleagues attended the workshop for HTML editing mentioned in the last update but unfortunately the Eduweb registration system was still not functioning so still no school's Web pages. I am making no more promises now but I will tell you when they are up and running.
This morning I had a meeting with John Meadows and Barrington Brown of South Bank University. Barry is working on his PhD and will be working on various projects alongside teachers and children in the classroom. Some of these projects will involve developing Web pages so that younger children will be able to communicate graphically with European schools where the first language would be different. They already have contacts with a group of schools in Paris who are ready to cooperate on this.
Jan Docker of Loughborough Infants reports that one of her classes has sent off a recipe to their contact school of something they made with her. They are hoping to start an exchange of recipes to further their topic. She has also made contact with the Welford & Wickham school through their web page as their humanities postholder wants to start a compare and contrast project with a school in a different area. They have had a favourable reply and may pursue this further. They have also made contact with an Australian school regarding a food project which they hope to get involved in.
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This week you are getting two updates for the price of one. The folks at RM have been upgrading their Eduweb server and it has not been possible to upload pages this week. Apologies to anybody who has been inconvenienced.
This week all Lambeth schools who have not yet been inspected by OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education for our non-UK readers) have heard that they are to be inspected during 1996. In other words, what should be a four year programme has been rolled into one. As many of the project schools now face an unexpected inspection, work on the project may well be affected in some way. The project was mentioned in the Council's press release: "There is a cross-party commitment to raising educational standards. For example, Brixton schools are some of the first in the country to introduce the Internet and teachers are currently receiving comprehensive training in its use.
Several of the project schools have been emailing one another as practice before casting their net wider. Jan Docker from Loughborough Infants reports that she has made contact with Jon Kurda from Roehampton Institute about maths on the internet. Also Jan has received answers to the children's surveys from our contact school in North Carolina. Another class she works with faxed them some drawings and pictures today to make a comparison between fax and email.
Jill Wells at St. Andrew's school has started a computer club who have been communicating with other schools in the Project for example children at Mostyn Gardens school. Ron Mclean at that school has been extensively using the World Wide Web with children. James Walker at Stockwell Juniors had also been using the World Wide Web to enhance children's geographical and data handling enquiry skills.
This week the Project Steering Committee holds it's second meeting. A full report next Monday. Also, today several teachers are coming to the centre for an HTML workshop following on from September 26. The aim is to get some home pages up today, so look out for some links next week.
Next week is half-term so the next update will be at the end of October.
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We had a further training session on the use of email on Tuesday attended by three colleagues. Altogether, nine colleagues have taken up the offer of this extra training. Unfortunately, a number of colleagues have been having problems with corrupted configuration files preventing them from accessing their Email at all. Troubleshooting connections has not been part of the training although through necessity there has been some input in this area. Colleagues have attempted to put things right themselves but in the end, a school visit is often the quickest solution. Most schools have now upgraded to Chameleon 4.5 so we will have to see if matters improve.
As UK readers will probably know by now most of the project schools will be due an OFSTED inspection during the next two terms. It is impossible to say how this will immediately affect the project but I will keep everybody fully updated.
This week Stockwell Juniors report that they successfully used the World Wide Web to download information from a wide range of sources to do with weather last term. This term they have been using email to communicate with children at Mostyn Gardens.
Beth, at Santley reports that children have been collecting information for their topic, The Earth and Beyond.
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Seven colleagues were able to attend the HTML training last week which was tutored by Jim Owers of RM. Everybody went back to their classrooms keen to have a go at creating their home pages. A further session has been organized for later in the month which will take the form of a workshop. The aim will be to actually upload some pages on that day. Many thanks to Jim for his help.
The children at Caldecot school have been working in groups emailing Paul (their Teacher) at home. Paul replies to their messages and they retrieve them the following morning, read them, reply and send the replies back to Paul. In other words a local practice before connecting with schools abroad. They have also been browsing the Web using local bookmarks. Jan at Loughborough Infants is taking part in a survey on fall (we call it Autumn).
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The email training last week went pretty well with 6 colleagues attending. I am hoping for the same number tomorrow for the HTML session. Jim Owers will be coming as Sarah has been unwell. We are still relying on the Headteachers' goodwill for training at the moment as we wait for clarification over funding. Proper training is essential if the project is to succeed. As Michael Heseltine (the Deputy Prime Minister) said last week, "It is not simply enough to connect schools with broadband communications. We must have proper training, materials and technical support."
Unfortunately, the session with London Weekend Television did not take place as schools approached felt it was too short notice. Perhaps next time!
Loughborough Infants report that they have contacted a school in North Carolina and have bombarded them with questions. All schools have been sent details of projects being run by the Chatback Trust so I hope some of them will get involved in those.
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The Project schools have had a couple of weeks now to get settled with their new classes, so I hope there will be plenty of in-school Internet access this term. Two further training sessions have been organized for the teachers - a session on getting to grips with email tomorrow, and a session on HTML with Sarah Gattiker from RM on September 26. After this session, some of the schools will be uploading their own Web pages.
Several of the schools have been emailing around the world and are in the process of making contacts with the view to participating in joint projects. In particular, Jan Docker of Loughborough Infants (loughinf@rmplc.co.uk) has been trying to contact schools with Infant aged children and has made contact with South Bank University.
I received the following today from Hillmead infants: "In order to be eligible for Socrates funding, it is necessary to have links to two other schools in Europe.We have selected France and Spain, the selection based on staff languages. We want a French school in the Calais area (inner city please). We want a Spanish school in the Malaga area, a port or working harbour, or countryside." Any such schools reading this page, please email them direct: hillmdin@rmplc.co.uk.
The project continues to attract a lot of interest. London Weekend Television contacted our press office today asking if they could film in one of the schools tommorrow. I made a couple of suggestions and am now waiting to hear the outcome. Full update here next week.
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