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As many of you will know, over the past few months Dr Tanya Byron has been conducting a review of children’s use of technologies (focussing on use of the Internet and gaming) and the implications for their safety and well-being. The report is now out - ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’ and can be accessed from http://www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview/. The summary for children and young people is very accessible and would be well worth using with children as a starting point for discussion (or even as a summary for those adults who otherwise would not have the time (or inclination) to read the full document)

Microsoft have a set of Office 2007 posters available for free for schools.

Details can be found on the Microsoft Blog: blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2008/06/17/free-office-2007-classroom-posters.aspx

If you’d like me to send you a set, just email with your name, school name and address. Let them know if you’re already using Office 2007 in the classroom, or if you’re rolling it out this summer, and then they will get them in the post ASAP.  (If you just can’t wait, and you want to download the PDFs, then click here to get them from SkyDrive)

From the Kent education blog, I found out about these Flash- based engaging maths ITPs, developed by Coventry LA. They include activities in money, bingo, shape and space and many more. I found that they work best when saved to your pc, then opened.

There is still time to book onto the free (to Shropshire schools) e-safety conference, next Tuesday, 8th July at Albrighton Hall, nr Shrewsbury. The keynote speaker will be Karl Hopwood, whose bio reads
‘He has been involved with internet safety projects with Becta for a number of years now and worked on the initial pilot of the internet proficiency pack. E-safety had a high priority in the school and Karl has run a number of successful workshops for parents and children on this subject. He works with the local authority in Wiltshire to develop guidance materials relating to school and home Internet safety. Karl is now an independent e-safety consultant and is currently supporting Childnet International as one of their trustees. His work involves creating best practice and policy about developing e-safety guidance, and he has given presentations at a number of national and international events including the Innovative Teacher’s Forum and more recently at the Young People in the Internet and Mobile Age conference in Cairo. Karl is working for a number of different organisations now including Becta, CEOP and The South West Grid for Learning.’
In addition, there will be time for discussion, an introduction to the long-awaited WMNet e-safety materials and some examples of good practice from Shropshrie schools.
In the afternoon, we are holding a content exhibition, which will give schools a chance to see the type of content and technology available to them, and will also give the LA a chance to findout what type of content schools would like to see included on the Learning Gateway. 
to book onto the course, contact CPD@shropshire.gov.uk

As part of a course I was running last night, I had cause to revisit Picasa, Google’s free image manipulation software, and I must say that it was well worth revisiting. I had forgotten how powerful it is. A particular favourite is the ‘collage’ facility, which enable you to take a number of images and display them in a number of  interesting ways. So - just a reminder - if you haven’t used Picasa for a while, or you have never used it and are in need of some imaging software, have a go! You can download the software from http://picasa.google.com

NumberGym provides a set of extremely useful maths tools and activities for primary maths, especially good for use with an interactive board. Shropshire schools can download an example of their ‘Digit Counters’ file - SMART users from here, Activ users from here. Well worth a look.

I was recently asked where to get film clips/trailers from the net. Came up with the following:

http://creative.bfi.org.uk/titles/ - British film institute
http://www.imdb.com/ - scroll down to the bottom of the page and there’s a link for ‘trailers’, which can be accessed via an index
Obviously, http://www.youtube.com (using our friend www.zamzar.com to get it to the children)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/

Health warning! All of these site will need checking! The videos should either be downloaded (copyright permitting!) or links should be made directly to that video. I wouldn’t necessarily want young children to be browsing these sites in school!
If you know of any other useful sites- please share

Through the  ‘Cool Cat Teacher’ blog, I found out about this very accessible (and cool!) wiki at http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com which is designed to deliver a course on Web 2.0 technologies. Anyone can browse and its really worth a look for anyone who wants to find out more about the basics of these new technologies. The wiki is very much enhanced by the Common Craft videos, which explain Web 2.0 features brilliantly.

Billy from Thomas Adams has uploaded all his x-games resources to the KS4 documents section within the ICT area of the new Shropshire Learning Gateway.  These resources are only available to Shropshire schools:

https://www.shropshirelg.net/curriculum/foundsubjects/ict/secondary/Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fcurriculum%2ffoundsubjects%2fict%2fsecondary%2fDocuments%2fKS4%2fX%20Games&FolderCTID=&View=%7b00AB74E3%2d6FA2%2d4181%2dB4B3%2dEFCD662FBD24%7d

These resources support the use of an xbox to provide evidence towards the ASDAN qualification at KS4.

Please click the following link to view the Diploma in IT newsletter for June 2008. www.e-skills.com/diplomanewsjune08