17 ICT Newsletter March 2010

8/14/2019 17 ICT Newsletter March 2010

1/8

ICT Capital Refreshver the coming months, all primary PCsthat are Dell GX280s or older will be

replaced with new PCs running Windows

7 and Office 2007 as part of the refresh. That

represents 73% of the total primary estate.

PCs that are newer than GX280s still have life

in them and will be upgraded to run with

Windows 7 and Office 2007. The change to the

new operating system will bring benefits other

than ensuring that we are using the latest

technology in our schools in that it works farmore efficiently than XP or Vista and should

enable us to reduce our carbon footprint.

To obtain most efficient use of the desktops, it

is essential that we replace the servers which

are now coming up to 5 years old. This will be

done for all primary establishments.

In addition, we have allocated funds to

support ICT Corporate Services Infrastructure

Team to update key items of equipment thatwill benefit all primary establishments: a core

switch for Municipal Buildings, new switches

for all primary schools, funds for rewiring, new

cabinets and power supplies and kits to help

with bandwidth upgrades.

We have been able to commence the upgrade

of bandwidth to our establishments. All

secondary schools have improved bandwidth

and before the end of this financial year

Carronshore PS, Comely Park PS, Grange PS,Head of Muir PS, Stenhousemuir PS, Victoria PS

and Westquarter PS will all have improved

bandwidth. Early in the new financial year we

should see St Margarets PS, Camelon

Education Centre, Moray PS and Beancross PS

upgraded. Discussions continue with ICT

Corporate Services regarding the scheduling of

other upgrades not only for the next financial

year but for 2 or 3 years taking us to 2014.

In addition, all primary schools will receive

two Easi-view visualisers to support work

across the curriculum.They are desk-basedcameras that

allow

teachers to

share

whatever

comes in

front of the

lens - an

object,

document or

even a

person - on a large screen as either a photo or

video image via their digital projector. So they

can be used with or without whiteboards.A review of the secondary PC estate has

highlighted large numbers of old PCs. To

commence a programme of updating there, a

capital allocation will be made to begin a

process of refresh in the secondary schools and

will enable the replacement of around 300

PCs.

At Antonine PS, a pilot is being undertaken to

enable wireless to be flooded across the whole

of the school. To date we have been able to

use wireless laptops to access the Internet

using what is commonly known as Class in a

Box approaches whereby the laptops and

wireless access point are taken from classroom

to classroom as needed. However, this

exercise at Antonine is beneficial because it

gives our corporate colleagues an opportunity

to learn how to integrate wireless with the

council network this is something we have

not been able to do before. The work is

nearing completion and early indications are

that extensive use of wireless within a school

is not stable with XP as the operating system

but very robust with Windows 7.

O

Newsletter March 2010

Issue 17

ICT Curriculum Support


2/8

ICT Excellence

Awardshe 2010 ICT Excellence Awards are now

open for entries until 24 March 2010. All

Falkirk schools are encouraged to enter.

The Becta ICT

Excellence

Awards are

open to

schools in

England,Scotland,

Wales and Northern Ireland. These awards aim

to identify and reward whole school

excellence in ICT in various categories.

Winning schools receive a cash prize.

(http://stage.awards.becta.org.uk)

Several Falkirk schools entered in 2009 and

Head of Muir Primary School were successful in

being shortlisted from all the schools in the

UK. Ann Kilpatrick, ICT Co-ordinator at Head

of Muir Primary School, kindly shared how they

found the process so as to encourage others to

enter this year.

Head of Muir Primary School entered the

Learning Experience category and in this the

Becta judges were looking for ICT to be

embedded into the whole curriculum and

innovative and creative ways of using ICT. As

ICT develops it is no longer enough to simply

have ICT in your curriculum and to use your

whiteboard as a teaching tool - they are

looking for the impact it has on learning within

your classroom, school and community.

They ask when visiting if the school has used

the Self review framework available at:

www.becta.org.uk/schools/selfreviewframewo

rk . This is an excellent tool for focusing your

thinking and helps you to look at where you

are and where you would like to go with ICT.

This is best completed over a period of time by

a group of staff from throughout the school.

Each section could be saved when completed

and re-visited at a later date.

The sections covered in the Learning

experience category are:

Curriculum Learning and Teaching Assessment E-safety Professional development Inclusion Communication throughout the school

and with parents Impact of ICT on pupil outcomesWe then heard at the end of March that we

had been shortlisted and the date that the

judges would visit. The visits start in May and

go through until June. Our visit was on 11th

May which gave us approximately 3 weeks to

prepare for the visit after the Easter holiday.

We were asked to keep this information

confidential.

With the second email came a timetable forthe visit:

Introductions to Head teacher and ICT co-ordinator

Context setting meeting with aboveexplaining the development of ICT withinthe school

General tour of the school to include allstages of the school included in theapplication.

Classroom visits Meeting with group of pupils - (we used

the web group)

Meeting with group of staff members Further discussion with Head teacher/ICT

co-ordinator

The onus is on the school to show the judges

evidence of anything they deem is

appropriate. This should be concise and

selective as they only have a short time. We

ensured that all classes were using ICT in a

different way during the visit linking the

activities to our submission. Included in our

evidence was our SIP, with ICT developments

T

Page 2 of 8 ICT Curriculum Support


3/8

highlighted, our ICT policy, samples of weekly

planning, highlighting activities involving ICT

and any pieces of work which reflected good

use of ICT. The judges were very friendly and

they were very accommodating. We were

notified of the outcome of our visit during thesummer holidays, when we were also sent a

press release to notify everyone of having

been shortlisted.

Go now to http://stage.awards.becta.org.uk

and start the process to enter your school for

this years awards.

E-Safety

ost teachers will encourage pupils to

use online resources when undertaking

curricular work either in school or at

home. So it is important for all staff to

reinforce safety messages to all pupils. The

safety of our pupils online is the responsibility

of all staff. Online safety skills are skills for

life. If our children can make sensible and

informed choices online they can get the most

from the internet and stay safe whilst doing

so.

So what resources are there to help staff?

Highly recommended are the e-safety online

resources which can be found on the very first

page of the Falkirk VTC

(www.falkirkvtc.org.uk) which is the very first

page primary pupils will see when logging onto

the internet in schools. These include age-

specific interactive activities at

www.thinkuknow.co.uk - so pupils fromprimary 1 to S6 will find material here

relevant to them presented in ways designed

to appeal to the different age groups.

The Falkirk VTC website also has a Google

search box on the first page. This

automatically uses the Google Safe Search tool

(in addition to the Council web filters within

school) - and should be encouraged for use at

home too.

In a primary school when staff log on to a

computer they will see a blue screen, while

pupils logging on will see a green screen, so ata glance it is easy to check that pupils are

not using a computer inadvertently left logged

on by a staff member.

Whether primary or secondary, all staff get

access to extra facilities, the access to these

being set by the use of the staff username to

the computer. The level of access to the

internet is varied staff get access to sites to

which pupils will not get access. If a member

of staff finds themselves unable to access a

website which they know to be a useful

teaching resource, only staff are presented

with a screen which enables them to directly

request access. Likewise if staff find a

resource which they believe should be blocked

from access by pupils in school then staff can

report this via the ICT Service Desk link from

their PC or by sending an e-mail to

[email protected]

The Thinkuknow website has an excellent area

for teachers. There youll find films,

presentations, games, lesson plans and posters

covering a range of issues including cyber-

bullying. All of these resources encourage

young people to have fun with new

technology, whilst staying in control of the

risks. Importantly, they also teach young

people where to go if they have any concerns.

Schools are encouraged to include links to e-

safety resources on their own school websites.

M



4/8

In addition the Thinkuknow website has

resources to support parents in keeping their

children safe online and it is recommended

that these are highlighted regularly in school

newsletters to parents.

www.thinkuknow.co.uk

Looking for support

in using ICT across

the curriculum?

he first Glow group created for everyoneto access in Falkirk Council was one to

show how ICT can be used across the

curriculum in primary schools. The Glow

group can be found once you've logged into

Glow by clicking on the Falkirk Council button

on the left-hand side, then click on the Glow

Groups tab along the top. And then scroll

down to "Falkirk Primary ICT Co-ordinator

Support."

There you will find online resources for use

across the curriculum. This Glow group also

provides an example of how a teacher might

make use of Glow as place to store their own

teaching resources, and a single place to

gather together and access resourceselsewhere online.

This Glow group also provides examples and

explanations of how to use various tools and

resources in a Glow group. These include

Wordle text images, Auto-collage Maker to

make photographic collages, blabberize to

create a speaking image in Monty Python-

esque animation style, and rss2java to take

feeds from other blogs, websites or podcasts

and convert them for use in Glow so that links

appear automatically. Web tools which are

useful to teachers are regularly added to this

Glow group. There are also many links to

curricular-specific resources, including the

presentations created by ICT Curriculum

Support on using the software on PCs in Falkirk

primary schools.

If any member of staff does not have a Glow

account, then please advise them to place a

helpdesk request via

[email protected] requesting

a Glow account to be set up.

Internet Filtering

Changes

ver the past few months Education

Services in partnership with ICT

Corporate Services have been deploying

new Internet Filtering software to our

education establishments. The new provider,

Sophos Web Security, will allow for more

efficient web filtering and reporting, as well

as providing new anti-virus and anti-spyware

protection.

All Nursery and Primary schools have been

transferred to the new system, with 5

Secondary schools recently added. The

T

O



5/8

remaining schools will be transferred during

their desktop standardisation programme over

the coming months.

Some of you using the new system may have

noticed some new functionality when using the

Internet. Teaching staff now have the ability

to request the re-categorisation or unblocking

of a website when they reach a blocked page.

You may also see a Blocked Request image

appearing within small areas of other sites you

are able to access. This indicates that anadvert or popup within the site is blocked, but

should not interrupt normal access to the site.

Requesting Access to Blocked Sitesnternet filters are necessary to protect children and young people from accessing inappropriate

websites. However, if you believe that a website has been blocked in error, please follow the

instructions below:

On the screen, click on the submit request icon.

Enter your comment stating why you think that access to the site should be granted and, if

necessary, change the category to which the site belongs (see the example below). Click on the

submit request icon.

You will be prompted to return to your previous page and the request will usually be dealt with in a

matter of hours.

I



6/8

The VTC and Curriculum for Excellence

The Staff area ofthe VTC continues

to be updatedregularly. If youhave anyCurriculum forExcellenceresources, plans,or case studies youwould like toshare, pleasecontact MargaretVass at ICTCurriculumSupport.

The Homepage now contains information about Glow and includes links to areas within Glow thathave been designed to help you get started.

The VTC and Glow

During the next few weeks and months, there are plans to regularly spotlight good uses of Glow invarious Scottish authorities. The links provided will show examples of how Glow groups have beenset up to improve learning and teaching in a variety of stages and curricular areas.

The Staff area of the VTC can be accessed at:

http://www.falkirkvtcstaff.org.uk/



7/8

ECDL

Congratulations

ongratulations to Louise Machray,teacher at Hallglen Primary School,

who is the latest to have successfully

completed the ECDL through completing the

ECDL for Educators course offered at Camelon

Education Centre. The ECDL is a qualification

administered by the British Computer Society,

the UK Chartered Institute for IT, which is

recognized in over 140 countries and

represents a global benchmark in end-user

computer skills. If you are interested in

working towards the ECDL then contact yourCPD co-ordinator for details of the ECDL for

Educators Course

offered at

Camelon

Education Centre.

Seemisor those of you who use Click+Go

regularly and feel the need and/orinterest in getting further training, then

you may like to have a go at a short on-line

survey trying to find out your requirements.

The survey can be found at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GWCHLP5

It will only take you a few minutes to

undertake it and it will be available to

access until Friday, 2nd

April 2010.

By completing the survey you will be helping

us to schedule targeted training into the new

school year knowing that it is meeting

peoples needs.

Additional preparatory work and training istaking place in the near future for a number

of other processes available using Seemis:

Secondary schools developing theirtimetables using Click+Go

Piloting of the new tracking andmonitoring module at Boness Academy

and Grangemouth High School (see

following article from Steve Dougan)

Staff of the Registrars offices preparingFME using Click+Go

Education Services staff undertakingtraining in EMA

Training in the management andmaintenance of staff records in Click+Go

Seemis - Tracking &

Monitoring

he new tracking and monitoring system

offered by Seemis is being piloted in

both Boness Academy and

Grangemouth High School and which should

be available to all secondary schools from the

summer onwards once the national piloting

has been completed. The following describes

the work undertaken and progress to date in

Boness Academy.

We have been piloting the new tracking &monitoring module Since January 2010 at

Boness Academy. After the initial fun of

setting up the tracking periods and resolving

one or two glitches we have found the system

very simple and quick to use. An initial one

hour training session was given to all staff

along with a modified instruction manual. All

staff from the ICT experts to the less

experienced have found the system very

straightforward and easy to use.

C

F T



8/8

See below the new look of Tracking &

Monitoring in the Seemis pilot project.

So far we have concentrated on the reportingelement of the module and have successfully

produced S4 and S2 parental reports.

Over the coming months we will look in more

depth at the tracking & monitoring aspects.

Advantages to the school have been:

It keeps all pupils data in one system

It is user friendly with a spell check andsizing guide which work!

On the printed report there is a summaryfor parents showing all basic, key

Information

There is the opportunity for teachers toprint their own condensed reports (veryuseful for parents evenings)

Teachers can monitor how their pupilsare performing in other subject areas

It is our intention to roll out the following

aspects of the system throughout the

remainder of the session:

S5 SQA exam predictors CAT analysis Tracking comparators Intervention strategies SQA NAB entries

At the present time we have enjoyed using

the system and look forward to it being fully

integrated into Click+Go.

ICT Curriculum Support Team contact detailsWith the arrival at Camelon Education Centre (CEC) of more staff from McLaren House, there has been

some re-organisation of staff locations and so the ICT Curriculum Support Team will no longer be

found in room 3 on the top floor. However, apart from Margaret Vass, all their telephone numbers and

email addresses will remain the same although the fax number has changed:

ICT Curriculum Support

Camelon Education Centre

Abercrombie Street

Camelon

FalkirkFK1 4HA

Name: Telephone: Email: New room:

Jan Baxter: 01324 501987 [email protected] EY1

Isabelle Gunn: 01324 503767 [email protected] 5

Stuart Lennie: 01324 503765 [email protected] 17

Margaret Vass: 01324 503764 [email protected] 17

Robert McLeary: 01324 501984 [email protected] 15

Laurie Lee Moodie: 01324 503760 [email protected] 15

Malcolm Wilson: 01324 503766 [email protected] 17

Fax: 01324 503718


17 ICT Newsletter March 2010

Documents

Transcript of 17 ICT Newsletter March 2010