One of the project targets for next term are for all schools to have their own pages up and running. To help them accomplish this, we will be running a basic HTML course this Wednesday. We have been fortunate to obtain sponsorship from our local TVEI unit who are meeting the costs for us. In return, colleagues from some of the schools participating in their project will be joining us for the day. As part of the course, each participant will receive a licensed copy of Kenn Nesbitt's WebEdit, a HTML editor. I will let you know how they get on in the next update.
Gilly at Sudbourne reports that they are still linked to the NASA project despite some technical difficulties they have been experiencing with their hardware. Nic, from Stockwell Infants reports that he has just received an email from an ex-pupil in Trinidad. They will be in correspondence soon.
St. Jude's school had an IT fair last Thursday. Marcia reports that it was very successful. They received emails from all over the world in response to as request posted to the EdNet mailing list.
This will be the last update for this term as I go on leave on Friday. The schools are back on the 22nd April but I'm back on the 16th. There will probably be an update on or around the 16th and then it will be back to Mondays from the 22nd.
Have a good Easter
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Last weeks Conference went well although there were not as many attendees as usual at such events. The main speaker was Martin Kilkie of Barking & Dagenham and ACITT who talked about schemes of work. His input was very well received by colleagues. David Gregory of Microsoft talked about Microsoft and Education and in particular their view of Educational Resources over the Internet. They have a policy of offering their Internet access software free for educational use. David mentioned their new HTML editor, Frontpage. Whether or not this program will be free for educationalists he could not say. He also showed the Encarta '96 Resource Pack. This looked to be an excellent product.
I mentioned a Christmas Card competition the other week. The idea is that all the Connections schools will take part and publish their best cards on their WWW pages. One selection from each school will be displayed on the main project pages and readers will be able to vote for their favourite selection. The Challenge committee will take these votes into account when they decide the winner. Each school that takes part will receive either a hand scanner or graphics software to the same value. The prize will be a piece of equipment - perhaps a computer if we can find an additional sponsor. Anybody interested in sponsoring, please get in touch.
Do check out our Visitor's Book if you have a moment and if you are using Netscape. It's only a simple thing but over 50 people have 'signed' so far from all over the world. This week we had an ex-Brixton Police Constable now living in Australia visit and we were delighted to hear from Ian Scott, the Premier and his Cabinet of the Tasmanian Government in Australia.
Jan at Loughborough Infants reports that they are beginning to receive photos and stories of Claude Clown, they certainly look very different from each other. Hopefully, we can upload some of these to her Web pages soon. They are also making the final preparations for their bear to be sent to the States to take part in the travel buddies project.
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Hillmead Infants are the first of the project schools to get Netscape 2.0 up and running. They will be using it for both mail and browsing the Web. Other schools will follow as soon as we can organize things for them. Please watch out for future reports on their progress.
We have our Primary IT Co-ordinator's Conference here on Wednesday so life is pretty hectic here preparing for it. One of the speakers is Dave Gregory of Microsoft who is going to talk about their strategy for education and the Internet. Full report next week.
In the schools, Nic of Stockwell Infants reports that children at Stockwell Infants have been reading Dr Suess stories on the Cyber Suess page. The URL for this site will be included in our hotlist which should be updated later this week.
Jan of Lougborough Infants reports that they have completed their clown and very fine it is too. Also, they have written a story and posted this as well as photos to the States, Canada and Australia. They are sending their travel buddy to a school in Indiana and are sending another to a school in New York.
Jan also commented that she is having increasing difficulty in connected to the Internet service, particularly in the afternoons. This is a problem that I have often encountered myself. There is nothing more frustrating for a teacher to sit down with a group of young children to work with them, and then find that they can't connect. We have been promised that an upgrade to the service is imminent, hopefully very shortly. The sooner the better as far as our schools are concerned. On the plus side however, links to America do seem to be getting faster.
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Sorry I'm a day late with the update but I was in a school all day yesterday and just didn't have the time. Today, I've just come from a meeting with Brixton Challenge where we discussed, amongst other items, a Christmas card competition for the Challenge Schools that will be run over the Internet. More details will appear in future updates.
Readers in the UK will be aware that AOL UK have offered free connection to all UK Secondary schools. They have also offered free connection to all the schools in the project. Project schools are being encouraged to take up the offer and try the service alongside RM's. Obviously, I will report on how they get on.
Jan at Loughborough Infants reports that the Claude clown project is nearing its final stages. They will be making up the clown this week using the descriptions they have been given. Also she has passed a travel buddies project on to Catherine their section 11 (bilingual pupils support) teacher. They are looking through a list of contacts and will make a decision this week.
One of the other classes is writing to 2 schools in the US, one in Nevada and the other is the same school as Hillmead Infants but a different class. They have been asking questions about their school and this week did a survey of school dinners which they passed on and have requested that the other schools do the same.
Finally, they have had messages from a secondary school in Islington who read their web page. They are interested in writing to younger children so if any one is interested they can contact Jan.
Anita and Cheryl at Hillmead Infants have further news on their American Governor. Their contacts have looked him up in their year book and are sending his school photo to them. They will return a photo of him as he is now.
Beth at Santley reports that they have just finished their OFSTED inspection. Normal service will be resumed next week. Barrington Brown is going to visit them on Wednesday.
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Half term over and back from sunny but windy Spain to the real world, there are several items to report this week. The Steering Committee met on the 14th and once again funding for support was a major item. Several ideas were floated and everybody is going off to see how these may be turned into reality. However, the good news is that it appears that we do have a source of minimum funding that will at least ensure that the schools can be supported over the next three years. This support will include visits and INSET. Other news from Brixton Challenge is an Internet Christmas Card Competition and plans for Internet demonstration facilities at the Lambeth Country Show in the summer.
In the last report I mentioned I was meeting somebody researching an educational cable TV channel. It turned out to be a system allowing the downloading of software through the cable point. Nothing to do with the Internet at all.
The project has received a good write up in the March issue of Internet Magazine (see page 45). The author writes, "Companies interested in helping with sponsorship really should take a look at the site (http://www.rmplc.co.uk/eduweb/sites/phil/index.html, because it could be money well spent." Each day I download my email with bated breath!
As for the schools, Hillmead Infants report that they followed up one of the links I forwarded to them and contacted a school in Evansville, Indiana. Would you believe it, but one of their governors is American and actually went to that school. He is now getting his mother to take photographs of the school to send over to the UK. Quite a coincidence.
We will shortly be trialling Netscape 2.0 in a couple of schools to see how it goes. We want to see if colleagues prefer to do their email and browsing all in the one program. I will give full updates on how this goes in the future.
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As mentioned last week, the photos taken at Loughborough Infants have now been uploaded and can be viewed by clicking here.
Flicking through the UKIT forum on Compuserve this morning, it was interesting to see the project get a mention. A member had asked for help concerning a forthcoming talk he was giving and asked if anybody could help with information about primary schools and Internet access. Another helpful reader had suggested he should look at the Brixton Connections pages! 'Tis indeed a small world!
Last Tuesday we had an Introduction to the Internet course attended by 15 colleagues including two from South Bank University who are working with the schools. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed the day and hopefully two more schools will be signing up.
It's a busy week for the project this week. On Tuesday I am meeting someone who is researching the possibility of an educational cable channel with fast links to the Internet. On Wednesday the steering committee meet once again. A full report on these in the next update.
Next week is half term and I'm off to sunny (I hope) Spain. The next report will be on Monday 26 February.
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Issue four of the .net Directory contains a reference to the Loughborough Infants site on page 154. Although they say, "There's not a lot of information on the page." They do add, ". . . the page is in a continual state of evolvement." Indeed it is. Last week I visited the school and took some photographs of an exciting display detailing work the children had done on the Internet. Hopefully, these will be added to their pages sometime this week.
Jan, from the school reports that a school in Egypt make contact with them about their clothes project and she has also e-mailed a school in Japan through a web page I gave her. One of the classes has made contact with a school in the States through Virginia Warner a friend of John Meadows (University of the South Bank).
Also, the children have been sending messages on a weekly basis to New Zealand.. The children there are still on holiday but their teacher has been answering the messages. They have found out that the seasons are opposite to how they are here so the New Zealand children are NOT wearing jumpers. Finally, they are starting their Cyber Clowns project this week. This looks really exciting. Jan and I will keep everybody updated on this as the project progresses.
Anita at Hill Mead reports that they are now corresponding with a school in Indiana, sharing a 5 year olds view of school life. Also, their reception (4 - 5 years) class is corresponding with a kindergarten in Los Angeles and are getting very excited about it.
Finally, Gilly from Sudbourne reports that they are subscribing to receive NASA information about life on the Hubble telescope. She will be reporting on how they use that information in a future update.
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I received the following email message the other day from Nick Hall in California. It was so nice, I thought I would share it with you.
He wrote, "Just a quick note to compliment you on a great Web site for people interested and involved in education. Your web Site reference list has some great places to go - I should know, I just spent the last two hours happily going to many of them!!
I've been out of teaching for 20 years but with two children (15 & 11) I still have a real interest in what's going on - and these are exciting times as we try and figure out how best to deploy IT. Our local elementary (Vista Grande, Danville, CA) is just now coming up on the Internet - we're connected but haven't put up our homepage yet. I'll be reporting to our next IT Committee, so perhaps we'll be able to contact one of the Connections schools soon."
Jane of St. Helen's reports that she finally seem to be getting things sorted out. Her class are in the process of replying to correspondence with Gilly's children at Sudbourne and they have contacted Barrington Brown (see October 31 update) to organise contact with schools or organisations that can help them with their distant places topic this term.
This afternoon I had a meeting with Samantha Linton who like Barrington is a research student at South Bank University. She is going to do some research among the project schools. I hope to give details of her results when they are available.
Finally, I had an interesting meeting with James Jewiss of Microsoft Ltd. about the project and other matters last Monday. I am hopeful that this will result in some support for the project. We'll just have to wait and see.
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Most of the news comes from the schools this week. Jan at Loughborough Infants and Anita at Hillmead Infants have made contact with Linda Murray at her Los Angeles Kindergarten school. Linda was appealing for contacts through the Kindergarten Mailing List.
Also, Jan is doing a project on clothes with one of the classes she is working with and would like some contacts with non western countries such as Japan or India??? If you can help, please email her direct.
Cheryl and Anita from Hillmead are also trying to respond to a maths project termed the Mighty M&Ms maths Project. They think that their children may be a little young but the idea of eating the sweets!
Beth at Santley reports that they have been busy looking for information about Ancient Egypt. They are also thinking about trying a Winter weather project.
Nic, at Stockwell Infants made a posting to IECC looking for Portuguese speakers for the many Portuguese children at the school to communicate with. So far he has had four replies of which two seem to be worthwhile. Nic has also registered with the M&Ms project since it has some other relevance to the curriculum. I hope they save some for me.
Finally, Gilly at Sudbourne reports that year 3 and 4 (7 - 9 yrs. old) children would like to make a connection with a school in Calcutta (if possible) to exchange weather information. Again, if you can help, please email her at the school.
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I did my bit at BETT last week and I hope I have made a few new contacts. Now it is a case of waiting for the phone to ring or the email to arrive. I also spoke to one or two people about the idea of an email editor designed specifically for young children to use. Some interest was shown in this idea so let's wait and see what happens. There was quite a lot of interest in the Internet in general at the exhibition and all the Internet related stands were very busy. There were quite a lot of machines around all with fast ISDN lines connected, so plenty of opportunity for browsing. This site received quite a lot of attention despite the fact that some of the links were broken. This I only discovered on Friday afternoon!
Only one school has reported to me this week. Jan at Loughborough Infants is working with a new group of children and they have been in contact with their colleagues in New Zealand. Jan is always looking for new contacts, so please email her if you would like to work with her.
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Welcome back to a new term to all our readers and a Happy and Successful New Year to everybody.
We are now entering the third term of the project and hopefully the most exciting. Although the term is only a couple of days old, we already have some news. On Friday, an article appeared about the project in the TES (Times Educational Supplement). For those with access to this publication, it is on page 10 of the IT review section and a pretty good report it is too. It focuses on two of our Infant schools participating in the project, Stockwell Infants and Loughborough Infants. Talking of Stockwell Infants, Nic has recently uploaded a page full of help for the Valiant Roamer product. Very useful for schools that have one.
This week sees the annual BETT (Technology in Education) exhibition at Olympia in London. I will be attending on Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday I will be giving two short talks about the project for Research Machines at their Net@BETT stand, and on Friday - a similar effort for NCET (National Council for Information Technology. I look forward to meeting colleagues there and I will be browsing around searching for a major sponsor for the project. A full report on this next week.
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