Havering:Redbridge VC Update - Meeting over VC - Wednesday 2nd July 2008 at 4pm

Dear Colleagues,

We hope you are all well.

Anthony and I hope that you are getting-on well with your VC activities as discussed during the meeting on 12th March 2008 – please see the link below for details:-

http://haveridgevc.blogspot.com/2008/03/project-group-meeting-at-ardleigh-green.html

Next ‘Virtual’ Meeting - Wednesday 2nd July 2008 at 4pm

We would like to schedule a ‘meeting over VC’ on Wednesday 2nd July 2008 at 4pm – please can you register via JANET at

http://www.jvcs.ja.net/cgi-bin/vcng/welcome.cgi

Then we will set-up the meeting online. We can then all join the meeting over VC, removing the need to travel from our own schools.

Please can you confirm your attendance at this session by Wednesday 21st May 2008 by emailing dsmith.havering@lgfl.net?

Best regards,

Dave Smith (Havering) and Anthony Evans (Redbridge)

A message for Redbridge and Havering Schools from Rachel Hillman of the National Archives Education Service

If your school is too far away to make a visit to the National Archives, we are able to offer many of our workshops via videoconference (both IP and ISDN). We aim to give students of all ages and abilities (from KS1- KS5), the opportunity to work as real historians with some of the most famous and important original documents in history. Videoconference sessions vary from topics as diverse as the Great Fire of London and the Tudors, to Jack the Ripper and the Rise of National Socialism.

Most of our sessions are led by members of the education service, all of whom are qualified teachers with recent classroom experience. Our ’special event’ videoconferences, held at specific dates in the year, are led by historical interpreters, who base their characters on thorough historical research from the archives. Examples of these sessions include: a videoconference on the First World War, where pupils are given the opportunity to talk to an actor playing the role of Private Henry Fairhurst from a Pals Battalion; a debate style session that takes your students back in time to 1642, where Puritan Adam Wright and Bishop Richard Hyde discuss the causes of the English Civil Wars, and a workshop that introduces pupils to a member of the government’s Employment Commission of 1842 as he gathers evidence of children’s experiences of working in the mines.

A pack of preparation materials is available for many of our videoconferences, and this can either be downloaded from our website The Learning Curve, or sent to you via post. These packs help to encourage discussion and debate during the session.

A full list of the sessions we offer and further information about the National Archives Education Service can be found at:

http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/index/education.htm

Possible Science Week link-up with Parkhill Junior...

Dear All

As mentioned at the VC meeting last week, we were going to try and set up a connection to our Science week activities.

But all the great ideas won't always work! The proposed sharing of our Science week "Big Bug Show" just won't be logistically possible. We have been in our hall with the VC equipment and find that there is no way we can successfully show a whole year group doing the activities, it would be chaos!

However, we have this idea instead; we will be filming the day, taking photos etc. We would therefore like to offer a VC, with anyone who is interested, where we will get the children to present their experiences of the day. We feel this would be a more organised activity.
If anyone is interested please email back and we will set dates for some time after Easter.

Best wishes

Alison Seagrave

Parkhill Junior School

Have you registered for JANET?

Please register for JANET if you have not already done so, to allow us to link-up as a group of 6 schools in the Summer Term 2008.

http://www.jvcs.ja.net/cgi-bin/vcng/welcome.cgi

Many thanks,

Anthony Evans - Redbridge ICT Consultant and Dave Smith - Havering ICT Consultant

Content Providers for VC activities

ACTIVITY: As part of our Project, please try to link with one VC content provider (see below) during the next term and feedback to Anthony and Dave for sharing through the next VC link-up. Thanks, Anthony and Dave

The following websites provide a wealth of links to VC content providers for education.

http://www.janetcollaborate.ac.uk/
JANET Collaborate is a 'one-stop-shop' for teachers and lecturers looking for opportunities to work collaboratively, especially using videoconferencing.

The website is free to join and use. Members can search through the catalogue of Opportunities to collaborate:

with museums, galleries, archives and other content providers
with other teachers in schools in the UK and further afield
The site is arranged in three main sections: Find, Share and Organise.


Global Leaphttp://www.global-leap.org/
Find out about Global Leap at...
http://www.global-leap.com/about/globalleapbackgrounddec2007.ppt.htm

National Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/educationservice/video.htm

http://www.motivate.maths.org/
MOTIVATE is a real-time videoconferencing project for schools, providing maths, science and cross-curricular videoconferences and linked projects for students of all ages (5-19) both in the UK and internationally.

Project Group Meeting at Ardleigh Green Junior 12.03.08

A very positive meeting was held at Ardleigh Green Junior School to share outcomes of the project so far. Parkhill Junior School joined the meeting over VC direct from their school, rather than travelling to Hornchurch - a great idea, that worked!

Clockhouse Primary (LBH) and Chadwell Primary (LBR) have had great success in Year One sharing information about their classes and school and in Year Four linking for joint topic work.

A Park Ranger visited Clockhouse Primary and Chadwell Primary were able to find out about their role. A great use of the technology to share a human resource between two sites.

Ardleigh Green Junior (LBH) and Parklands Junior (LBR) have enjoyed linking-up and sharing outcomes.

Gearies Infants (LBR) and Engayne Primary (LBH) have made a number of successful connections over VC to share similarities and differences between the schools as part of the Knowing Me, Knowing You Activities.

Where to next?

1. The schools discussed joint projects on which they would like to work collaboratively and it was agreed to keep the existing school partnerships to develop these further.

2. It was decided that all schools should try linking with an external provider - a list of this will be provided in a separate posting on this blog.

3. Please can all schools who have not already done so sign-up to the JANET VC booking system to allow links to schools/providers outside of the London Grid for Learning as well as to allow a 'multicast' linking more than 2 venues at a time.

4. It was agreed to hold the next meeting of the Project VC group over VC - to reduce travelling,

http://www.jvcs.ja.net/cgi-bin/vcng/welcome.cgi

Gill from Chadwell Primary listed the following benefits of VC from her experience of using it so far...

"It develops a pride in the school, as pupils want to show their school in its best light over VC."

"It is great for joint topic work, as pupils can link across schools to share knowledge and ideas to achieve a joint outcome."

"It raises pupils' expectations as they want to work to create higher quality work."

Parkhill and Ardleigh Green

This was a good opportunity for Ardleigh Green and Parkhill to get together and talk about joint projects that they could collaborate on. There were some good ideas flowing between schools and these included:

Both schools allowing each other to share in their Romans Day, this will mean that children will have a chance to see how the other school celebrates Roman culture. Children each school will be dressed in Roman costume and will share some of their work. Apparently Parkhill have some excellent Boudicas.

In June Parkhill are hosting a circus skills session, so Ardeligh Green will be able to learn all about how Parkhill children learned to juggle (and tame lions).

Similarly, in April Ardeliegh Green are hosting a musical entertainer. This regular visitor to the school is a banjo playing singer will be sharing some of his songs to both schools, and providing another good context for speaking and listening as children interview him over VC.

Future ideas

Ideas for the future use of VC included:

- to link a group of gifted and talented pupils from all schools into a debate using the JANET VC network - with the pupils controlling the VC kit under adult supervision (to develop pupil autonomy)
- to use VC for cross-school continuing professional development
- to teach music over VC - recorders would be ideal for this
- to develop language teaching over VC

Other news...
It was also announced that the North Romford School Improvement Consortium have the following 12 schools coming on board with VC kit.

PRIMARY
Clockhouse Primary
Crownfield Infant
Crownfield Junior
The Mawney School
Parklands Infant
Parklands Junior
Pinewood Primary
Rise Park Infant
Rise Park Junior
St Patrick’s RC Primary

SECONDARY
Marshalls Park
Bower Park

As well as this Branfil Junior (Upminster) and Hacton Primary (Hornchurch) are to have VC kit installed to enable them to participate in a VC project linking with Engayne Primary and Gaynes School (both Upminster) to develop pupils' Modern Foreign Languages skills...

Thanks for your continued input and efforts to make VC a success across Redbridge and Havering.


Dave Smith - Havering ICT Consultant Anthony Evans - Redbridge ICT Consultant

Gearies Infant's ICT: video conferencing

Gearies Infant's ICT: video conferencing
Gearies and Engagyne have made contact - read all about it by clicking on the link above- well done Val and the Teachers @ Engayne.

Space Centre Link Up

Note this post is also on the Subject Leaders Blog

During our Subject Leaders Event we hooked up with the National Space Centre in Leicester to chat with Charlotte. We were told about a new E Mission for Key Stage 2 , which is open to Redbridge schools.

We aim to offer these to 6 schools over week beginning the 30th of June. If you are interested in taking part and hosting an E Mission, then you will need to attend a prior training session at the Teachers Centre with myself and Mina Patel on the 12th of June. Once you have applied to take part in the E Mission and this has been accepted, you will need to register for the course by booking on Redbridge PDC

If you have never seen an E Mission before, then you can look at how Parkhill Juniors got on with their Operation Montserrat mission earlier this year. You may remember that Rob from Redbridge was really enthused by the E mission at his school too, and took some time to tell us about it @ our last Subject Leaders event.

The Emission event will take place around 10am or 1pm on the week beginning the 30th of June 2008. If you were at the Subject leaders event, then you should have been sent a google form to express interest, if not then you can access the form here, or email Anthony Evans @ the usual address.

Video Conferencing Out On A Lim

Find our Network referenced here!

http://bcisdvcs.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/new-vc-blog-from-london/

Getting To Most From Your Videoconferencing Kit

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR VIDEOCONFERENCING KIT

A TWILIGHT SESSION FOR TEACHERS

MONDAY 10 MARCH 2008 4PM TO 5PM


This will be the fifth of a regular series of training sessions. For purely practical reasons we impose a limit of six endpoints per session. The first two sessions were fully booked as soon as they were publicised, so:
BOOK EARLY!

The session begins with a short multipoint discussion about good practice, resolving difficulties and finding or creating opportunities to use this valuable resource. This is followed by time to try out the LVCNet direct school-to-school dialling. We finish with a second group discussion that includes Q+A and news of forthcoming events via vc.

Whilst we limit the group to six endpoints, there is no limit to the number of staff who can take part at your school.

Contact ROGER BLOXHAM for further details:

roger.bloxham@heartoflondon.org
07967 347735
0207 598 4838

Read Around The Planet 2008

Read Around the Planet - March 2008
Looking for an American school as a videoconference partner? Read around the Planet can match you with a US school, initially for a reading based activity in March 2008 but with the potential for a long term partnership to be formed.

See the link below…

http://www.twice.cc/read/

TWICE invites you to participate in a celebration of reading using video conference technology!

TWICE provides a matching service for point-to-point videoconferences between schools. Teacher matching is done based on your registration information. Participating schools are responsible for making the connections work successfully.

Video Conferencing from the Content Provider Perspective

JANET Collaborate Prototype and Pilot

The JANET Collaborate Prototype and Pilot - would you like to sign-up?

http://www.janetcollaborate.ac.uk/

JANET Collaborate is a 'one-stop-shop' for teachers and lecturers looking for opportunities to work collaboratively, especially using videoconferencing.
The website is free to join and use. Members can search through the catalogue of Opportunities to collaborate:

• with museums, galleries, archives and other content providers


• with other teachers in schools in the UK and further afield

The site is arranged in three main sections: Find, Share and Organise.

Who is it for?
The JANET Collaborate prototype is available to all teachers, lecturers and support staff in Schools, Colleges, Universities and Research institutions. It is also available to educational content providers including museums.

How can it help me to videoconference?
With links through to the JANET Videoconferencing Service, an Opportunity in JANET Collaborate can simply and quickly be converted into a JVCS Booking and activate a live videoconference. The JANET Collaborate prototype is free to use.

Why is JANET Collaborate a prototype?
The JANET Collaborate prototype is designed to be a platform for discussion and to be the focus for the JANET Collaborate Pilot Project. The lessons learnt from the pilot will enable the development of a full production version of this service.

Crownfield Infants connect with Beijing for Breakfast!

http://haveringict.edublogs.org/2008/01/24/crownfield-infants-connect-with-beijing-for-breakfast/

At Breakfast Time on Thursday 24th January 2008* pupils at Crownfield Infant School in Collier Row, Havering linked-up over the ClickToMeet video-conferencing network with a school in Beijing, China to talk about their schools and respective countries. Helped by Headteacher Sharon Nacmias, pupils enjoyed talking about London and China, comparing similarities and differences. This helped enhance the pupils’ speaking and listening skills, as well as having excellent links to Geography and Modern languages, with pupils learning a few phrases in Chinese too. It was an excellent session. One pupil commented, “This is really good, I am learning lots about China.” Another pupil said, “This is great, so much fun.”

To get started with Click To Meet visit the website below - or contact your HIAS/Redbridge ICT Consultant.

http://vc.lgfl.org.uk/

*Due to the time difference between England and China.