Stumbled across this excellent site after reading an article about it on Ewan McIntosh's Blog.
Basically it is a game site that asks children mental maths questions and how to spell words.
What I like is the competitive nature of the site, since you don't play by yourself you compete with other children on the site. The children score points based on how well they do, what is great is that you can play children from all over the world, basically anyone who is logged in.
The site is very secure the only information you see is the login that the children use. The site itself collects only a very small amount of information about the child, date of birth and country. If you create a school account the children will need that as well or they just put in their parents email address and within 7 days their parents must respond or the account is frozen.
The school account allows you to track those in your class and see what games they have been playing and how they are doing.
This is a very interesting alternative to using DS's and Doctor Kawashima's Brain Training. Next year I will be looking into this in more detail.
Search on youtube for movie maker and you will get loads more.
Where does the Literacy Frameworks make expicit refernce to video and audio use... In Year 5
Narrative
Unit 2 - Myths and Legends Record the groups' retelling of the legend using microphones, digital sound recorders or video cameras so that they can be reviewed and evaluated.
Unit 6 - Dramic Conventions Establish the form of presentation, for example a performance of the script to be recorded using a form of ICT (consider use of a recording format that would allow children to save their own and others' presentations onto portable music players). Children present their scripts either in performance or through a recording and evaluate their own performance and that of others.
Non-fiction
Unit 2 - Reports Demonstrate or model the use of note-taking in interviews to prepare the teams. Emphasise the distinction between quotations and reported speech (refer to earlier activities). Consider the use of digital sound recorders to assist children in carrying out their interviews.
The presentation can be a newspaper report, radio report, TV report, for example using video cameras with simple digital editing programs, magazine article, e-report or web page (consider hyperlinking from or to the school website). Possibly compile group recounts into a class newspaper, TV-style news programme, etc.
Poetry
Unit 2 - Narrative Poems Give children time to rehearse and polish their freeze-frames, recording them digitally for later use.
Allow the groups time to explore the poem and select stanzas for performance. It may be appropriate to place children's dramatic images into presentation software to support children's decision-making process. Allow children to practise, record and listen to their oral performances in order to evaluate and improve them.
Unit 3 - Perfomance Poems A simple digital video camera, which itself can be operated by children, provides an excellent way of recording and reviewing children's own live performances, and ICT media, such as pod casting, can provide a wider audience for such performances.
There are other places where it is not explicit but can we worked in. Narrative - Unit 5 Film Narrative - Create photo slideshows or even movies Non-Fiction - Unit 3 - Persuasion - Create your own adverts
It was a busy week last week with the Redbridge ICT Conference and Teachmeet East London.
Keep your rss readers tuned to the Redbridge Subject Leaders Blog as soon there will be video and/or audio downloads of the Keynote Speakers Ewan McIntosh and Karl Hopwood.
If you missed Teachmeet and what to see what the fuss was - you can rewatch it on Flashmeeting.
Hopefully there will be as well some videos of the primary and secondary schools who showcased their work.
Thoughs...
How do we encourage teachers to communicate and share there good practice? We need to have a go with these new(ish) tools and technology and be prepared to fail.
"Don't Think. Try."
Are we doing all we can to promote and educate children about e-safety issues? How do we get a uniform appropach?
Recently I have been working with my class using Robosapien robots. This is a project that has been funded by Redbridge borough and is linked in with my AST work.
It's that time again in Year 5 where we look at newspaper reports. Stumbled across this after I'd done all the the planning but got to remember for next time.
