Project News: The tender evaluation panel met on Friday and considered the contractors' submissions in response to our questions seeking clarification of their tenders. We were able to recommend a supplier and provided they meet the financial criteria, they will be awarded the contract. Further details will be posted in September.
Project News: The tender evaluation panel meet again on Friday 16th July. We met with BT this morning who have been awarded the contract for the communications links.
Phil Redman went along with Lansdowne School to Arsenal Football club where they were presented with a Sportsmark Award by Minister for Sport, Tony Banks. Here are a few pictures of the event.
Project News: Yesterday, the Lambeth Connections project was officially launched by our Executive Director of Education, Heather Du Quesnay and Chair of Education, Ty Goddard. Around eighty Heads, Teachers and Governors were present at the event along with four of the contractors who have tendered to provide the equipment and services.
The Summer term ICT Co-ordinator's Conference was also held yesterday. The main speaker was Tim Tarrant from the DFEE who delivered a most interested speech on the NGfL and teacher training. Lewis Bronze, from Espresso Productions demonstrated Espresso and invited five Lambeth Primary schools to participate in a pilot scheme funded by the European Space Agency. Representatives from the ITLE, BECTa, TAG, NTS, RM, Granada Publishing and FutureKids were also in attendance.
School News: Jeremy Beadle, of You've Been Framed fame, presented Lansdowne School leavers with their National Records of Achievement on Monday. Follow this link to see some of the pictures taken of the event.
Tracey Shailer (see June 29 below) won the under-11 category of the STEM awards and was presented with a Toshiba desktop computer at the ceremony yesterday. Here are a couple of pictures from the event.
Project News: The tender evaluation panel were unable to reach a decision at their meeting on June 25. A list of questions has been sent to all parties seeking clarification on several vital points. All contractors have been invited to attend the launch on July 8th.
School News: Tracey Shailer, formerly of Caldecot school, has been shortlisted for an award for a resource produced for the STEM (Students & Teachers Educational Materials) Project. The ceremony will be taking place at the Science Museum on July 2nd. The resource is a web site detailing work carried out by pupils following a visit to the Science Museum. The site can be viewed by clicking here.
Project News: Seven colleagues from schools participating in the Brixton Connections project took part in a Web publishing course yesterday. They all did lots of work on their school sites. Results should be published as soon as RMs public Web Server is available for uploading again.
NGfL - ILS: The tender document was sent to all interested parties on Friday. The evaluation panel meets on 25th June and the P.I.G meets on the 30th June.
School News: Triangle Nursery are involved in a European Project involving schools in France and Italy. They launch the project on June 20th when they will video conference with the Italian school from IBM's video conferencing suite at the South Bank. Many thanks to IBM for the loan of the suite.
Loughborough Infants are back in action. Jan writes; "Class 1's Travel-Buddy, Zoe Panda has arrived back safely from the States with an interesting journal about her travels. Unfortunately the partner school failed to respond to our e-mails, but never mind. The latest edition of "Language Matters" features articles from the Multi-Media conference that I attended at CLPE last year. It also has photos of some of our children.
We had a visit from Nick who designs web pages for the BBC. He took photos of children working on ITC in the school and of some of our internet displays for possible use on their web site.
Baxter the wombat is continuing to thrive in Class 7 and is enjoying his stay there. Sue and class 7 are busy trying to get his journal and photo album up to date so they can send him back to Australia.
NGfL - ILS The Project Implementation Group met yesterday and had a very productive meeting. They meet again on June 25th. The Education Committee have approved the tender specification and copies have been sent to all parties who have expressed an interest. The tender evaluation panel meet on June 22. The project will officially be launched on July 8th immediately following the Primary IT Co-ordinator's Conference. Heather du Quesnay, our Executive Director, will be doing the honours.
We met with Lewis Bronze of Espresso Productions yesterday afternoon. Lewis was formally a television producer working on Blue Peter. He demonstrated a most exciting product that downloads multimedia curriculum material from satellite. Lambeth hope to be one of the Authorities piloting the system in the near future with help from a Space Agency grant. Lewis will also be demonstrating the system at the Conference on July 8.
Tim Tarrant from the DFEE will be speaking at the conference on the NGfL and its implications for schools.
School News: A training session for Brixton Connections colleges on Web publishing took place on Thursday 14th May. Our EdWeb colleagues sent in a detailed report. It seems that everybody had a very productive and enjoyable day. Some of the results of their efforts have been posted already with the rest to follow shortly. Do visit our school details page to visit their sites. The attending schools were: Loughborough Infants and Juniors, Mostyn Gardens, Hillmead (Junior dept.) and Christchurch.
NGfL: The next meeting of the Project Implementation Group takes place this Thursday.
School News: Josie and the children have been very busy at Stockwell Infants Nursery as her email shows: "For most of last week the nursery spent the session 'on line', and towards the end of the week we were downloading and printing website pages like mad! I have a small display next to the computer of our own website and immediately connecting pages, linking them up with arrows. Although the print out of pages is small, it's been a successful tool to show the children how the pages link together. Also when a page has come on screen the children have been able to match it to the page on the wall.
I concentrated initially on introducing the main vocabulary: website, Internet, download. I also showed them that when the hand appears on screen you can click it and it will take you to another page. I printed out the home page for each child as they came to explore! They took these home and I think that was useful for informing parents how technologically advanced we are here!!!
Towards the end of the week we spent alot of time looking at Bertie's Best Sites and we printed pages from the Beanie Babies, Kitty Club, Dog Kennel Pals etc! The children also liked the video clips from Theodore the Tugboat, although the quality wasn't brilliant. Anyway, we are going to have a rest from the Internet this week in order to let the rest of the school get on line, as we have been hogging it!"
NGfL: The first meeting of the Steering Committee took place on Wednesday April 22nd.
Invitations to tender are in the current edition of the European Journal and we meet on May 7th to shortlist the candidates.
Letters informing schools of our plans and detailing the equipment they are likely to receive are going out to the Headteachers today.
School News: The Reception classes at Hill Mead decorated paper bags from the Body Shop for Earth Day, an American internet project. The Body Shop staff were very helpful.
St. Helen's have signed up on the Mindseye Monster project. One class has found a partner in the USA and the other is still trying to find a suitable match. They are also going to contribute some children's work to Linda Mockford's website about Lambeth.