Naace has introduced a 'hot-seat' where invited colleagues field questions over a four week period. Our guest in the 'hot-seat' will either answer online at specific times, or at pre-arranged regular intervals. We look forward to hearing from you!

ICT Year 6: Creating Electronic Big Books

The Direct2U service was a weekly email subscription service for primary teachers from Becta, which ran during 2005/6. The scheme offered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service has now been discontinued but Becta have given us permission to use a selection from the plans in this magazine. A full archive of all the Direct2U activities can be found at http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u

Introduction

In this activity, children work in small groups to design and create an electronic Big Book for the younger children in the school. They will take into account the reading age and interests of younger children and the format of Big Books, and test out their books and modify them if necessary. There is not room here to give full details of how to use Big Book Maker but it is well supported with manuals and guides http://primary.naace.co.uk/activities/BigBookMaker/

An ICT resource for teaching mental maths

An ICT Co-ordinator in an infant school decsribes how she has set up an after-school Internet Café for children and their parents.

Focus: ICT Co-ordinator

We have two articles for ICT Coordinators this week.

In the first, Alison Ball tells us about the websites that she finds most useful. The second piece is from regular contributor, Philip Griffin and narrates the next step in his school's progress towards the ICT Mark.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

Focus: Adventure Games

Is there a role for adventure games in today's primary classroom?
When computers first came into schools adventure games were popular and innovative. Those of us who were in teaching in the early eighties will remember Mike Matson's 'Granny's Garden' and Anita Straker's 'Lost Frogs'. In the intervening years the National Curriculum has pushed such frivolities aside - how can teachers these days find the time for activities which do not easily tick the NC boxes?
I believe that this is a sad loss. Adventure games have a great deal of educational potential. In this issue of Sharing Success I am giving a fresh airing to an article written for the MAPE Focus on Thinking and ICT in 2002 by Steve Higgins and Nick Packard which describes the adventure - Logical Thinking with the Zoombinis. And then, to bring us up-to-date, Alan Rodgers describes Mission Maker, a piece of software for making your own adventure game, which he found at BETT 2007.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

Focus: Beyond and across the curriculum

ICT is a powerful medium for taking learning beyond and across the curriculum.

In the first piece in this issue of Sharing Success Dorothy Wood tells us about the after-hours Internet Café she has set up for children and their parents.

In the second article Lydia Johnson describes two activities which use ICT to make cross-curricular links. The spring 2007 edition of Naace Primary Focus (Teaching Through Topics) explored this extensively. An electronic version of that publication is available on the Naace website.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

An ICT Coordinator, Alison Ball, tells us about the websites that she finds most useful.

Focus: Summertime Special

This summertime special issue of Sharing Success is a set of activities appropriate to the last few weeks of the summer term. These include a piece by Doug Dickinson offering an art activity suitable for most age groups and a reprise of the summer activities published in Week 26 of the Direct2U scheme in 2005. The third article (which is not available in the pdf) is a collection of holiday photographs for use in the Y3 D2U activity - Make a postcard.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

Focus: ICT Coordinator

Welcome to Issue 4 of the Naace e-magazine

We hope to produce regular issues of Sharing Success which are aimed particularly at ICT Co-ordinators within primary schools. These will look at whole school concerns beyond the individual classroom. This week we have two key articles - one on Computer Clubs for Girls and the other looking at how one school has set about development toward the ICT Mark. This piece by Philip Griffin is the first of a series in which he will map out his school's step by step progress.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.