We are very pleased to announce a number of training sessions across the south-west on using the South West Water Espresso Computer Modelling resource. This training session, delivered by Espresso, will allow delegates to explore the range of resources available as well as gain ideas of how to implement them into planning and use them creatively across the curriculum. The course will run for half a day, including plenty of time for ‘hands on’ exploration of the module.The morning session runs from 9am to 12pm and is repeated in the afternoon from 1pm to 4pm.

This session is open to any classroom teacher or subject leader currently working within a primary school. It will particularly interest those with responsibility for Maths, ICT or Geography.

Click here to find out more and learn how to book.

Voicethread is a Web 2.0 hosted service that takes slide-type presentations to a whole new level.  It makes it so easy to create presentations with either audio or video support tracks. It is even possible to record live annotations while recording a presentation. So you could use it to annotate over a science video to explain your view of what is happening, layering your narration over the top..the forces involved in a PE recorded clip? The end result is a streaming presentation that makes explaining your thoughts so much easier, alongside others' explanation too, it could really enhance the learning experience. One educator spoke of Voicethread "creating a warmer teaching-learning experience". Thinking about it, it is so versatile, it must be useful as a learning tool in many contexts. I know some teachers who are experimenting and may present at our ICT Conference. I'm really interested in listening to that.

 

Everybody is talking about Comic Life but there are many free comic strip applications online. Have you seen Artisancam's Super Action Comic Maker? MFL? "Pow! Je suis un homme avec les pouvoirs sensationnel !" Does anyone know of any others?

Have you seen the new SWGfL text service? Ja.net txt is an ideal solution for instant messaging, where conventional communication channels aren’t practical or possible, and offers the potential to make learning more engaging and interactive. Using an intuitive web-based interface, you can send and receive text messages any time, anywhere. The service is scalable, meaning that it’s just as easy to contact an individual as it is a large group of people. Enhanced services also offer the ability to receive incoming messages, schedule message sending, set automated responses to incoming messages, run polls and votes, run subscription information services and integrate text messaging into other applications. Find out more about this on the SWGfL ja.net txt page, including who to contact.

Have you often wished you had access to a video-based site like YouTube where you could quickly, easily, safely upload educational films that your children have created? It may be your class have created an animation; it may be a short film with a digi-blue camera. Have you seen Films for Learning? You don't need a lot of expertise to upload. In fact, here is a video tutorial on how to upload. There is a growing library of educational films (its all moderated) and the interface is very high quality. Find out more.

Great to see our friends Radio in Schools launched last week, after some exciting pilot work in Bristol schools (read the reviews). Radio in Schools is very community-based with great links to local radio. With its fantastic Virtual Studio interface where children can drag and drop the sounds they need, it offers a safe podcasting platform to allow schools, children and a new generation of listeners to get their voice heard.

 

SWGfL is organising a regional Film Animation Competition across the south west at the end of 2008/9.  There will be three categories: KS1, KS2 and Special. Entries from schools will first go forward to your local authority event, and then on to regional finals. To support teachers with this, we have funded full day animation workshops for teaching staff with Oscar Stringer. Click here for information on how to book a place on the training, in your local authority.

We have arranged for Oscar Stringer to run a full day film animation workshop in each local authority. Oscar will go through the technical aspects of animation, especially sound; techniques that ensure success when using animation with children and lots of advice gained from years working in this creative medium. He proposes using, as far as possible, the particular equipment that the the teacher uses in school to teach with, so teachers should bring this with them to the workshop. Teachers will work collaboratively, in the same way as children in the classroom will do. The course is not just for teachers new to animation, there will be many opportunities to reflect on current practice and improve in an approach to teaching with animation. Oscar is based in the south west and has run many of his hugely enjoyable workshops with south west teachers. See his Animation for Education website for more details on how he works.

Find out more about all the Regional Film Animation Competition and the resources available from our partners TAG Learning, Kudlian, TTS, 2Simple and Newplast Products at our competition minisite.

I have just come across an online document processor called j2e, which stands for "just2easy" apparently. It looks fantastically like Textease, (these are the Textease developers), so is highly suitable for education. I have really liked the online collaboration of Google Docs, but it is very MS Word-like. j2e has all the Textease-type features. It seems that j2e has been shibbolethised, so will work within Merlin. What a fantastic tool this would be in Merlin. Interesting to follow developments on Geoff's blog