I have had an exciting day today working with a small group of year 5 and 6 pupils who have been left behind whilst their classmates have gone on a residential to Buckden. Readers will know that I have long wanted to get schools involved in tree audits so today we started one. We identified […]
One of my first blog posts on this site was about how little contact children have with nature these days and the impact it can have on their health and wellbeing. Last night the Country File TV program on BBC referred to the National Trust’s campaign to encourage children to get out of doors, they […]
Printing from an iPad in schools can be a bit of a pain, especially if you don’t have any Apple computers or AirPrint enabled printers. One piece of software I have found particularly useful is Fingerprint from Collobus. It runs on a PC and shares whichever printers you want shared to the iPads – so […]
Fairtrade Yorkshire and Leeds DEC ran a “Take a Step” competition during Fair Trade fortnight this year where children were invited to show the journey of a Fairtrade product in a fun and interesting way. The finalists have just been announced and you can see the videos on the Leeds DEC Facebook page or Fair […]
In Star Trek: The Next Generation Captain Jean-Luc Picard has a preference for paper books over digital books. Science fiction has now become science fact and we have access to small e-book readers such as the Kindle, and other tablets that we can read books on like the iPad that I am currently blogging from. […]
David Mitchell, deputy head at Heathfield CPS in Bolton, found that of the children being sent to him, for every child sent for a positive reason there were 10 for negative reasons. In an attempt to change this he set up a “Well done – Show Mr Mitchell” blog. Pupils were told that the next […]
Over the next few months I will be taking part on a Permaculture Design Course. This is partly to help me develop the “half-farmer, half-X” lifestyle I have blogged about elsewhere, but also so that I can offer more help with schools and other other organisations that I work with to reduce their carbon footprint […]
What food do birds prefer? If you have a classroom that looks out onto a green patch, flower bed or hedge why not help your children to do a scientific investigation into what types of food each type of bird prefers? The children can help to plan a fair experiment but at the simplest level […]
It’s good to hear that both Mathletics and Lexia are developing apps for the iPad, even though they cannot give a time scale. Are there other educational software writers out there like these two who are developing their apps for the iPad? Let me know if you know!
I remember a colleague once saying that education was all about relationships. Relationships with pupils, with colleagues, with parents and of course with your own family. Since I started reading more about sustainability and well being I have realised that another relationship that is very important is the one with your school building and grounds. […]
The International Children’s Digital Library is described as “A Library for the World’s Children”. In it’s mission statement it says: “The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children’s books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed […]
Storybird is a brilliant collaborative story telling tool. The site has loads of artwork which you can use to tell stories and make a book. The book can then be published online and embedded into your website (see Captain Peregrine’s Big Discovery below). There are already loads of stories on the Storybird website and there […]
Fuel poverty is on the increase. Fuel poverty is said to occur when in order to heat a home to an adequate standard of warmth a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on heating. Many pupils in Leeds come from homes that are experiencing fuel poverty and often there are quick […]
AnswerGarden is a feedback tool that is very easy to use for online brainstorming or for gaining feedback from visitors to your website. At it’s simplest level you enter a question like “What did you think of my lesson?” and publish it, then invite students to visit the site and respond. You can set it […]
Logotype Maker is a free web tool that you can use for making logos for printing, web pages, videos, etc. It is very easy to use, you enter some text and it randomly generates some logos. If you don’t like the ones you see hit the refresh button and you get some more. If you […]
I’ve always been shocked at the amount of food that is wasted and the huge environmental impact food production has. We grow food and transport it all over the world, often flying it thousands of miles and then transporting it by road for hundreds of miles only to throw half of it away because it […]
Yesterday I was introduced to Storyline Online, an on-line streaming video program starring members of the Screen Actors Guild reading children’s books aloud. Each book has beautiful animations and has ideas for lesson activities. I don’t recognise a lot of the names of the actors – I’m not a particularly star struck sort of person […]
We have just had solar panels fitted to our home (see my personal blog for more information). This week I have also come across an organisation called Solar Schools who want people to chip in to buy a solar roof for their local school. It’s a fund raising site run by 10:10, an organisation that […]
The winds of the last few days are causing the leaves to start falling and even though it is only September it feels like Autumn is on its way. As I walk around my local patch the hawes are ripe on the hawthorn trees, beech mast litters the ground and rowan berries are a brilliant […]
I’ve been meaning to search out some good online art tools for some time and then, today, a fellow blogger has produced a blog with some examples of art tools that can be used effectively with Interactive Whiteboards. My particular interest was in finding art tools that pupils could use from home as well as […]