From the Centre: Well here we go with the final update for the project in this format. As I said in the March 9th update, this area will be replaced by a latest news section. Previous updates will remain on the site for some time to come.
We are very busy this week preparing for our termly ICT conference which takes place on Thursday. A lot of colleagues from the project will be attending so we will have a chance to catch up. The main item on the agenda will be implementing the NGfL in Lambeth. We were promised a speaker from the DFEE but all attempts to confirm details have met with silence. Looks like we'll have to make contingency plans.
From the Schools: Well it is nearly the end of term so only one update from the schools. Emma, at Hillmead Primary, emailed to say that all being well we should be participating in the Green Earth project i.e.decorating paper bags. She is going to ask the Body Shop whether they are willing to participate. I should hope they would be!
Well, for the last time - That's all for now.
Best wishes and regards and do keep visiting the pages,
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From the Centre: We got together on March 17th to put together our delivery plan for the NGfL. The outcomes are now being put together ready to go out to tender. A full update will be given to schools at the Primary ICT Co-ordinator's Conference on April 2nd.
At that conference, RM will be demonstrating their Schoolshare system. It is likely that the equipment going into schools will be very similar so colleagues could find it interesting. Attendees will of course get plenty of opportunity to use the Internet during the day.
From the Schools: Jef Fox, of Loughborough Juniors, emailed to say that they have logged on to the TES Web pages and located the Virtual Teacher's Centre. He found lots of useful information about literacy etc., and lots of free goodies. He hopes it will provide a ready supply of teaching material.
Colin, of Stockwell Juniors, emailed to say that over the last couple of weeks he has had my class publishing stories. He is planning on sending these to a school in Italy who are interested in forging email links with them. The main focus of the links are on cultural songs and music. The Year 5 topic is art and music and thus lends itself rather well to this link. He has also been training a group of children to use the digital camera and edit and publish their photographs - all in preparation for their Web Site.
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From the Centre: We had the second morning of Governor Internet training on Wednesday morning with nine governors attending. My former colleague Malcolm Neave came back to run the session.
We met again with Cable & Wireless on Friday. This time, several of their other departments were in attendance. They went away with our development plans and copies of our bid for NGfL money. They are confident that they can put together a reasonable offer.
From the Schools: Sharon, of Mostyn Gardens, emailed to say that she attended a conference last weekend on Microsoft's laptop project with her Headteacher. She was very excited with this and can see a lot of potential and pi falls though. Gina and Phillipa went on Tuesday and sorted out the server problem and uploaded their new website. They are considering the groceries project but will need to find out more and read the Easter Egg one.
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From the Centre: The Steering Committee of the Brixton Connections Project met for their final meeting on Thursday March 5th. They will meet as the NGfL Steering Committee, along with a few new members, at the end of April. I gave my final report to the meeting and they received an update on School Web site progress from EdWeb, and technical issues from Nic Mitchell.
Schools involved in the project will still receive advice, support and training for the next financial year. The Brixton Connections Web site will over the next term begin to evolve into the Lambeth Connections Web site as other schools come online through the NGfL. The weekly updates will cease at the end of this term and be replaced by a 'latest news' page which will be updated on a regular basis. It is hoped that schools will detail their own activities on their Web sites.The Lambeth site will maintain a link to Brixton Connections and all the work, updates and other links will remain for an indefinite period. Brixton Connections is not ending - it is expanding.
The committee approved the global project with one or two suggestions and I will be posting details in the very near future.
Cable & Wireless did get back to me on Wednesday and we will meet again this Friday with their technical people.
From the Schools: Jef Fox, of Loughborough Juniors emailed to say that they have had lots of positive comments made in regard to their new Web site and are actively trying to create two new Web pages.
Colin Edwards, of Stockwell Juniors, emailed to say that since their last update, they have found an exciting site which helped them with their display work for Ramadhan. They made Eid cards using the templates provided by the site. It can be found at www.islamicart.com . Colin is sure that colleagues will find it helpful around Ramadhan next year. The Year 5 topic is The World of Art and Music.
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From the Centre: The revision session I mentioned in last week's update took place as planned and I understand a lot was achieved. The remaining five schools are coming in for their initial training on WWW publishing and design on Thursday.
On Thursday the Steering Committee is meeting. The main item on the agenda will be the future of the project. Look out for an important announcement in next week's update.
I have emailed all schools with a proposal for this year's global project entitled 'How we got to School Today'. We hope to get the show on the road with this one soon.
Cable and Wireless are due to get back to me today on their feasibility study.
Nigel and Josie, of Stockwell Infants, both emailed to say that they have been doing some inter class chatting using email.
Anita, of Hillmead Nursery, reports that year 2 are writing to a school in Australia from the classroom e-mail project.
Clara, of Christchurch CE, emailed to say that one of the nice things that happened was one of the year four girls wrote to a pen pal that she found on the Internet regarding her class topic. She got a reply and is very excited about it. Clara found some information about Jamaica and especially about a development in the hometown in which she grew up. When she spoke to her sister she found out that she was the secretary for this particular project. Malcolm (ex Lambeth IT Adviser) has offered to come in and help them. The Reception class is going to bake him a carrot cake as part of his fee!
Jef, of Loughborough Juniors, reports that while he was visiting New Orleans at half term, he set up a link between Loughborough Juniors and Pittman Elementary School. He put the school's home page in their bookmarks so they are following their example closely.
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From the Centre: Last week was half-term so not a lot to report on. We had another training session on February 12th with 9 colleagues attending. It seems that most of them got something from the course, although they would have appreciated another tutor. Due to unforeseen circumstances I was unavailable, so Steve Oram (ITLE) had to run the day on his own.
We had a meeting with Cable and Wireless just before the break about cabling up all our schools with leased lines as part of the NGfL project. They seem to think it is a viable option and I hope to hear from them later this week. Schools participating in the Connections project will form the nucleus of the NGfL project.
The first four schools in the Web publishing cycle are coming back in on Thursday for a revision session. Gina and Philippa (EdWeb) will be running the day.
From the Schools: Hillmead Nursery have been in touch to say they are back online. Welcome back Anita. Also, Stockwell Nursery are putting the finishing touches to their Web site.
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From the Centre: We ran our Introduction to the Internet course for Heads and Governors but only one participant turned up. You would think that with the imminent National Grid for Learning (NGfL), there would be a bit more interest. We are running another session next month, so I hope the numbers improve. Talking about the NGfL, we ran an INSET day last Wednesday to help colleagues write their ITC Development plans. Fifty-three colleagues attended that one!
Jane Mackworth-Praed, from St. Helen's, has some news that she hasn't included in her email updates. She is pregnant. I'm sure everybody will join with me in wishing her all the best for our first project baby..
You will probably have noticed that I have reorganized our site a bit adding frames and new logos beautifully designed by our EdWeb colleagues Philippa and Gina. Do let me have any comments.
From the Schools: Sharon Rhooms, of Mostyn Gardens, emailed to say that development of her Web site in underway.
Josie Arnold, of Stockwell Infants, emailed to say that she has taken photos using the digital camera and Gina and Philippa took them away to put on the Website. She took photos of some of their classroom displays on pattern. The children drew lots of black and white pictures for the Website, which she had to scan in at home and then email to Philippa. Josie thinks that their Website is going to be a bit of an extravaganza. We look forward to seeing it Josie.
Jan Docker, of Loughborough Infants, emailed to say that she has had a response from the email classroom exchange, from a class of 5 year olds in Columbia South Carolina. She has also registered her school for Kids Chat. That proves that she does look at the Brixton Connections Hot Links from time to time !!
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From the Centre: Apologies for no update last week. I didn't get back to the office until Thursday and there was just so much to do. I did manage to update the hotlist though and the visitor's book.
The conference was very interesting and several of the participants showed a lot of interest in this project. In particular, the Our Day Today global project that took place on March 12th last year. We are now planning our next global project that will hopefully happen in March this year. We want a topic that is as simple for participating schools to complete and provides as many educational, cross-curricular links as possible. I hope to publish full details fairly soon. You'll read about it here first.
I mentioned last week that Jan (Loughborough Infants) and I were to meet a producer from Carlton TV. Well the meeting took place and he showed a lot of interest in the project and the work done by the children of Loughborough Infants. They are planning a series of school programmes, one of which will be on Technology. It is this prgramme that might feature one of the project schools or even the centre.
Tomorrow, we have a group of Headteachers and Governors here for an Introduction to the Internet course.
From the Schools: St. Jude's emailed to say that they are getting ready for EdWeb's visit on the 5th. Hopefully, they will get their new Web site up on that day.
Christchurch emailed their topics for the first half of the Spring term. Key Stage 1 are doing Toys and Games. Year 3: Invaders and Settlers, Year 4: Tudors, Year 5: The Victorians - The Industrial Revolution, and Year 6: The British Empire and it's Influence-Political, Religious and Commercial. It will be interesting to see how they use the Internet to resource these topics. Please let us know Clara!
Hillmead emailed to recommend a site: http://www.nj.com/yucky/. It is supposed to be the yuckiest site on the Web. Apparantly, kids love it and it is educational. You can find out why you get earwax and what cockroaches have for breakfast. Sounds lovely!
Loughborough Infants emailed to say that Myra Barrs visited their school with Phil the photographer. He took photos of their children's media related activities for an article in Language Matters that follows up from the seminar that Jan attended last year. Also, Sue and Class 7 are busy on their next Internet project and are going to host Baxter, a travel buddy from Australia.
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From the Centre: Our thirty-six visitors from Norway had arrived by last Monday evening so our planned visits went ahead on Tuesday. We visited four schools involved in the project who all did their best to accommodate so many people at once. I took some digital photographs of the group and you can see the results by following this link. Unfortunately, I managed to copy over some of the earlier photographs, so only the last five are available. Apologies to the Junior and Infant school involved.
On Wednesday I visited the BETT exhibition at Olympia in London. This gave me the opportunity to talk to several companies about our future project plans, in particular our plans to wire up the rest of the schools in Lambeth via the NGfL scheme. Hopefully, there will be a series of meetings in the near future to get things moving. We are treating this project as a sort of pilot for the NGfL. David Blunkett was there on Wednesday too. No, I didn't get to talk to him but I did get to talk to and make a fuss of Lucy, his guide dog who was not getting any attention. Yes, she was attached to Mr. Blunkett at the time, but he was surrounded by blue suits! Also at BETT I ran into my Norwegian friends a number of times.
From the Schools: Clara, at Christchurch, has finally got over her technical problems and all their machines are connected. One email from her was timed at midnight! Such dedication! She emailed today to say that a Virgin helicopter landed in their playground during their assembly this morning. Someone had fallen out of the window and apparently this was the nearest open space they could find. Not a lot to do with the project but, what excitement!
Josey, at Stockwell Infants Nursery, was working on Christmas cards with her children, then sending them by email around the school.
Jan, from Loughborough Infants, reports that Carlton TV are interested in featuring the school in a future programme. Jan hopes to meet the producer later this week and has invited me to come along. I'll let you know what happens.
Next week I am attending a conference at NCET, so no update until at least Thursday.
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From the Centre: Welcome back to the New Year. We got off to a good start last Thursday when colleagues from five of our schools spent a day at the Centre learning FrontPage and preparing for their presence on the Web. Our EdWeb partners spent the day with them and will start working with the schools shortly. As soon as they have posted anything, you'll find links on this page first.
Our cabling engineers reported that all the schools have now had their telephone extensions fitted so now they have no excuse. Although, we find that we are currently having to provide one day a week of technical support for the project schools. This is something we will have to consider when planning for implementing the National Grid for Learning. There will be more schools to support and more machines in each school.
Tomorrow, I am hosting 36 visitors from Norway at the request of NCET. They are a mixture of officials and teachers. They were due in London yesterday, but this morning my contact Helen Bagel, phoned from the airport in Oslo to say they were delayed due to fog. Hopefully, they are on their way as I write. They will be visiting four of the project schools. On Wednesday they are going to the BETT exhibition as will I. I wish them a warm welcome to London through these pages.
Colin Edwards, Stockwell Juniors reports that his year five have been exploring the Web and have found some great winter games on a Californian Website. Perhaps Colin will give us the address next week.
Jan Docker, Loughborough Infants reports that at the very end of last term she and Sue (class 7's teacher) frantically put the finishing touches to the Minds-eye monster project. They successfully scanned in and edited their pictures and uploaded them onto the Monster Gallery. To view these images, you need Netscape and a password. If any one would like to view them please email Jan at loughinf1@rmplc.co.uk and she will send you the details.
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