ICT Newsletter #300

ICT Newsletter #300

10th September 2007

GENERAL

Changes in the ICT Team

We welcome our new coordinating adviser Graham Garner who will be writing to all head teachers to introduce himself and outline some exciting new developments and opportunities in ICT. We also welcome a new consultant, Emma Stinga, who replaces Liz Hunt who has taken up the Deputy Headteacher position at Willowcroft school.

New ICT Newsletter email address - ict.newsletter@oxfordshire.gov.uk

We have a new ICT Newsletter Email address - future newsletters will be posted from this address and competitions and any feedback can be sent to this address. We would also be very pleased to receive any news items from yourselves that you think our community would be interested in sharing via the newsletter.

300th Newsletter Give-away!

We have a number of USB memory sticks to give away courtesy of Crick, all you have to do is to email the answer to two simple questions to competitions@sds.theocn.net

1. In which year was the Oxfordshire ICT Team formed
3. (Tiebreaker) What is the combined age of all of the Oxfordshire ICT Team (10 people - see our team on the website http://www.ict.oxon-lea.gov.uk/ictteam.html for clues!)

Courses

A general reminder - increasingly our courses give you opportunities to create content that would be very easy for you to save onto a USB memory stick. If you have one, please remember to bring it along to your next course.

The following courses (taken from the 'pin-me-up' sheet circulated in the latest copy of Ox-On-Line) have places available. If you would like to attend please apply to the Inset section at Cricket Road or online at: http://intranet.oxfordshire.gov.uk/links/intranet/oqsaapply

Tuesday 2 October (first of two days) New Primary ICT Coordinators (KS 1/2) 21/779

Friday 5 October (one day) IWB for Beginners 21/781

Monday 8 October (morning of 1.5 days) Web Authoring with Digital Brain 21/782

Tuesday 9 October (first of three days) Teachers new to ICT (KS3/4) 21/783

Friday 12 October (one day) IWBs for TAs 21/785

Competitions

There are a number of exciting competitions coming up. Look out for the fliers in your school:

· You may want to register an interest in participating in the Lego league Competition - more details below

Looking further ahead:

· National Poetry Day Competition (theme DREAM) 17/09/07 - 12/10/07 - SEE ATTACHED FLIER
· Foundation Stage Christmas Card Competition 29/10/07 - 23/11/07
· Maths Challenge - week beginning 12/11/07

CD/DVD Duplicator

The ICT team are proud to announce a new service available to the whole of the county. We can bulk duplicate CDs and DVDs. Schools may be interested in the ability to mass replicate CDs of music or DVDs of productions to sell to parents. All disks come with full colour printed tops and the option of flexible plastic cases. For further details and prices please contact Christine Ruane (01865 428034).

Changing the name showing as the writer in the Digitalbrain forums

Threaded discussions in Digitalbrain have recently been replaced by an updated messaging system called Forums. When you write a message to the children it automatically shows the first name of the author. Clearly this is not always ideal and while some colleagues may feel comfortable with that, many do not. This is very easy to change.

Log into Digitalbrain and click on the My Digitalbrain (yellow person) icon to get to your personal homepage. Click on the Account icon which will be at the bottom of your list of icons. In the nickname space write Mrs / Mr *******, whatever you want displayed on the messages to the children. Digitalbrain will then use that name in preference to your first name.

Video Conferencing Opportunity

An opportunity to video conference "read-alouds or common interest books for children's own work" with 6 to 13 year-olds in Canada has arisen - if you are interested please contact Anna Poole (01865 428 034 or anna.foreman@oxfordshire.gov.uk) for further details.

PRIMARY

Ictopus

There is a new website, Ictopus (ICT online primary user support), offering a free support service for primary education. It launched on 1st September 2007. Each week they plan to make available a six page printable magazine (Sharing Good Practice) and a set of activity suggestions (lessons2go) to all registered users. To find out more and/or register for free follow this link -

http://www.ictopus.org.uk

Science Smart Notebooks

Do you have any Science Smart Notebook files that you are really proud of and that you would like to share with Oxfordshire schools? We are looking to collect these resources to share with colleagues on our training CDs and Digitalbrain. You will of course get full recognition on the Smart Notebook for all of your hard work. If you have some examples - no matter how "polished" you think they are please email them to us at ictnewsletter@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

SECONDARY

Delivering DiDA

Follow the links for up to date information on delivering DiDA this year

Summative Project Briefs 0907

http://alerts.edexcel.org.uk/go.axd/15899

Unit 4 ICT in Enterprise

http://alerts.edexcel.org.uk/go.axd/15900

Unit 2 Multimedia

http://alerts.edexcel.org.uk/go.axd/15901

Unit 3 Graphics

Tell me a Story

http://alerts.edexcel.org.uk/go.axd/15902