Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

Competition – Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA9

May 26th, 2011 Simon
xacti

Anseo.net have teamed up with Mediascene with a great competition to win a Sanyo Waterproof Digital Camcorder worth €400.  Mediascene are one of Ireland’s longest established businesses selling technology to the education market.

This competition is now finished. Very well done to Conor John Quigley who is the very last winner of the Media Scene Prize draws for this school year. He has nominated St. Clares National School, Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan to receive this prize. We hope that St. Clares will receive this prize before the end of term.

Posted in Competition, Featured 16 Comments »

Should Facebook be used in Primary Schools?

May 26th, 2011 Simon
facebook

Social networking is now part of almost everyone’s everyday lives, with people checking their online lives on their phones, iPads and any other Internet device several times a day.  Of all the social networks out there, Facebook is the most popular with over 600 million users worldwide.  It has as many plaudits as it does critics but it is now part of 21st century life.  In my job as a primary school principal, I hear children mentioning Facebook at least once a week.

Should Facebook be used in Primary Schools?  From one angle, this can be answered very quickly with a resounding “no”.  To use Facebook, one must be 13 years of age or older.  Given that 99% of primary school children are under 13, that just about wraps it up….or does it?

At primary level, there are a number of people who are over 13 who use Facebook, namely, staff and parents.  I believe that if Facebook could be used to link these cohorts together, it can actually improve children’s learning in school.

Most schools have a web site but how many parents can honestly say that they visit it regularly?  However, how many parents visit their Facebook profile regularly?  If a school could bring their web site content to Facebook, this would help parents keep up to date with what’s going on in the school.  It

Source: http://www.rssgraffiti.com/

is reasonably easy to do this.  The school can set up a Facebook page and then install an RSS Feeder such as RSS graffiti on to it.  Whenever the school web site is updated, the Facebook page gets an update.  Parents simply need to “like” the school page and they become subscribed to any changes on the web site.

As well as feeding the school’s web site updates, I also feed through a photograph of the noticeboard in our school foyer.  This is useful for parents who can’t get into the school in the morning.

Often, I post reminders and messages on the school’s Facebook page.  For example, if we have a book fair coming, I might write that as a status message.  The great thing for me as an administrator on the Facebook page is that any message I type up doesn’t come from my personal Facebook account.  Facebook automatically generates the message from the “Admin”.  If teachers or other staff wish to post on the school Facebook page, they can also be made as administrators.

My garden, November 2010

Another way I have used Facebook was when we had a period of bad weather.  As children were unable to come into school, I sent some fun exercises to parents to do with their children at home.  One exercise was to post up a photograph of their back garden during the snow.  Another was to write their favourite “snow joke”.

One of the more subtle ways that Facebook can be useful for is feedback.  The “Like” button is great for getting feedback on status updates or posts.  If we announce that we won a competition on Facebook, usually we’ll get between 6 and 10 “likes” on the page.  Other news gets no feedback.  For a school, if we can see that parents like certain things more than others, it can help us to tailor themes for planning lessons or begin face to face conversations, e.g. “I saw you liked our project…”

Parents can also start conversations on Facebook.  Some parents have set up art classes for the school using Facebook and others have simply asked a question, which we can answer.

With all this great stuff, there’s obviously some pitfalls.  The main one is the complete lack of control a school has to make sure that inappropriate is not posted on the Facebook page.  Another question mark is security.  My answer to this is to have a well written section on Web 2.0 usage.  This can form part of an Internet Acceptable Usage Policy or a general behaviour policy.

I would suggest that schools consider adding the following items to their policy.

  • Users cannot advertise products or services on the page
  • Users should not post anything on the page that could be deemed as offensive
  • Users should not ask to become “friends” with staff as failure to respond may cause offence
  • Users cannot tag or post photographs of children on the page

The sanction for breaking the rules is an automatic ban.  In other words, one is completely trusted to use the page appropriately until they break one of the rules.  While this doesn’t assure that the page will not be spammed or used for inappropriate reasons, Facebook is not anonymous and the offenders are caught.

Our Facebook page has been up for almost 2 years without incident.  We have found it to be useful for all the reasons above.  While our children cannot engage in the conversations by themselves, if they can see Facebook being used well by the people around them, it is more likely that when they get to use it, that they will also play by the rules.

Posted in Facebook, Featured 3 Comments »

Digital Art Week on Tour!

May 26th, 2011 Simon
tap5

When Damien, Fred and I came together to plan out Digital Art Week (#tap2011 on Twitter), I don’t think any of us expected it to have been such a great success!  With great support from loads of teachers around the country, we now have a permanent digital art gallery with 365 original images.  The report of the event has been published in PC Live magazine and Leadership+, the IPPN’s magazine for principals.

Pamela O’Brien and Bernie Goldbach from the Tipperary Institute came up with a really nice idea for their annual ICT in Education conference.  They asked if they could display a sample of the art at the conference.  Bernie’s three-year old daughter selected a number of the images and these were printed, framed and displayed in the entrance to the main lecture hall.  Below is a gallery of the exhibition.  The frames are now going on display in Carlow Educate Together NS.  Contact has already been made with Éigse, the Carlow Arts Festival, who have shown some interest in working with us next year.  Who knows? We might see the frames in a real art gallery next year!

Posted in Featured, Visual Arts 1 Comment »

Survey Results: Web 2.0 in Schools

May 26th, 2011 Simon
web20

As part of Anseo.net’s competition to win a HD Flip Cam, participants answered some questions about the Web 2.0 tools that they use in school and at home.  In this article, we’ll examine the results and explore some of the reasons behind the results.  It’s worth pointing out that the people who probably took the survey are IT literate and probably have some form of interest in ICT in education.

There were 152 responses to the survey which asked the following questions:

  • Which of the following web tools do you use at home?
    • YouTube
    • Facebook
    • Google Apps
    • A Blog
    • Twitter
  • Which of the following web tools do you use in school? (with the same responses)

Source: http://www.penn-olson.com

For each item that was selected, a point was given.  Therefore if I answered the first question, selecting two items, my “school use score” was two.  Likewise if I selected 3 items in the second question, my “home use score” would be three.

The first interesting thing to note was that the total score for home and school use was:

471 for home use and 241 for school use

Using web 2.0 tools was almost twice as likely to happen at home than at school.  While, this is unsurprising to most teachers, it does support the commonly held view that children are “switched on” outside of school but are forced to “switch off” once they come to school. Having said this, 44% of teachers surveyed said they use YouTube videos in school, with 42.5% using Google Apps and 42% using a blog.  Comparing these to home, 90% use YouTube, 48% use Google Apps and 42% using a blog.

Some teachers pointed out that they would use YouTube in their school if it were not for their school’s web filtering policies.  Thankfully, the NCTE has relaxed their rules on YouTube and other tools but many schools have not changed their level of filtering.

The biggest disparity in the survey was the number of teachers using Facebook for school use against home use.  84% of teachers surveyed use Facebook for home use but only 14% use it for school use.  To be honest, 14% was a higher figure than I expected.  There are a number of issues around the use of Facebook with students for school use – such as loss of control and, lack of privacy and lack of security.  There is also the perception of the line between work and personal life.   Coupled that with the fact that the secure version of Facebook does not work on the NCTE School’s Broadband filtering, there are some issues with security in general.

Source: http://howtoblog.org/

It was heartening to see that blogging has grown in popularity with teachers since I last surveyed them two and a half years ago.  Back then, only 20% of teachers said that they would even feel comfortable using a blog, (I can assume that much less than that used a blog at the time).  With over 42% of respondents using blogs in school and at home, this is a major leap.

Twitter is all the rage amongst a wide variety of generations.  I was speaking to a second level teacher who said that her 13-14 year old students are obsessed with it yet the older teenagers prefer Facebook.  Twitter is being used by all sorts of celebrities, salesmen and educators.  For the first time, one can have conversations with people one would never have access to. There is the famous example of the rugby fan who was demonised after tweeting a rugby international.  However, it’s not just celebrities.  I can contact teachers all over the world with a tweet.  Twitter is beginning to be used by teachers thanks to initiatives like Edchatie and various projects run by individual teachers, e.g. @mrquinnsclass and @superkiddos.  The figure of 15% of respondents using it for school was higher than I expected.  Having said this, Twitter usage at home was over 3 times more likely.

Finally, it was good to see that the use of Google Apps was reasonably similar with around 42-45% of teachers using the service both at home and in school.  With Google adding more and more features to its products, it may not be long before more teachers jump on board.

Overall, one could look at this survey in two ways.  In a positive way, it’s good to see that teachers seem to be using web 2.0 services and that the figure is growing.  Certain services like Facebook and Twitter might need more time to be trusted by teachers and we will explore these over time.  Another way of looking at the survey is that there are over 30,000 teachers in the country and less than 1% of them took the survey.  The teachers who did take the survey are more likely to be teachers with a positive disposition to technology.  It is quite obvious that 15% of teachers (4,500) are not using Twitter in school.  However, rather than being pessimistic about this, at least we have a start.  Web 2.0 usage is on the increase in schools.  The word “blog” is generally not met with a puzzled look and there is colloquial evidence that many more teachers are using technology in some way in their classroom, be it printing online posters or showing shapes on an Interactive Whiteboard.  Over time, we’ll convert more to technology.  After all, as Jesus said: “The geek shall inherit the earth”…or something along those lines.

Posted in Featured, Opinion No Comments »

Mental Maths Project

May 26th, 2011 Simon
targetboard

Last month on Anseo.net, I reported on an idea I had to use Google Apps to help with Mental Maths.  Thus, Targetboard.net was born.  I decided to buy the domain and encourage as many schools to take part in an event where we can find as many solutions to a targetboard as possible.  It’s all going to happen on the morning of June 7th just after the bank holiday.

So what does the Targetboard project involve?

On the morning of 7th June, schools will be invited to log on to http://www.targetboard.net.  They will be presented with a 4×4 grid with numbers in it and a target number below.  Schools will then have the opportunity to type in ways to reach this target number using the numbers in the grid.  Many schools do this as a warm up to maths lessons anyway but with lots of schools doing it the same time, we could find many more solutions together.

Essentially the aim of the project is to showcase another way that ICT can be integrated into the curriculum in a real and effective way.  It also showcases a simple way that schools around Ireland can join together in education.

The main thing over the next two weeks will be to spread the word as much as possible.  While this is not a commercial venture, it is very difficult to get word out to schools.  I would urge anyone who is interested to send posts to education fora, mailing lists and blogs.  The more schools on board, the more interesting the project will be.

Each day (from Tuesday to Friday) I will publish the number of schools that took part, the number of unique solutions we gathered and the name of the school that offered the most solutions.

Over the coming days, a practice targetboard will be published on the web site each school day.  So, if you can, please spread the word and let’s see if we can make mental maths social!

Posted in Featured, Maths No Comments »

5 Mobile Learning Tools

April 30th, 2011 Simon
mobilelearning

I’m not the first person to announce that technology has transformed the way we learn.  In the last number of years, thanks to better battery life and wireless devices, bringing one’s learning with you is no longer restricted to pen and paper.  However, in the last year or two, mobile devices have become completely mainstreamed.  In this article, we look at some devices that can help primary school children learn and whether schools should start looking seroiusly at them.

Laptop/Netbook

Laptops have been around for many years in Irish classrooms.  However, it’s only in the last year or so, they have become very popular.  Previously, schools chose to buy desktops over laptops as laptops tended to be more expensive for less power and they were also more easily stolen.

Prices of laptops have come down hugely.  One can get a refurbished laptop for about €150.  Coupled, with the onset of laptop trolleys, one can transport several laptops into a classroom and have them all charged up. Essentially, one is bringing the old-style computer room into the classroom.  This opens up huge learning opportunities for children.  If one has a typical class of 32 children and one brings in 16 laptops, there is massive potential for learning.

Netbooks are a more recent phenomenon.  The main difference between them and laptops is their size.  However, because school computers don’t need too much power these days, a netbook can perform most tasks effectively.  Netbooks generally don’t have CD-ROM drives but they do have longer battery lives.

For classroom use, either product gives you all the power of a PC but with great portability options.

Tablet PC / Fizzbook

In late 2010, the Fizzbook reached Ireland with much excitement.  This was the first laptop designed for children.  It had a hard cover case in case of falls and it also had a touch screen.  The screen also twisted and could be placed on top of the keyboard to create a tablet.  There are other tablet PCs out there but they tend to be more expensive than the Fizzbook.

Basically, a tablet PC does everything a laptop does except it doubles up as a tablet (like an iPad).  Generally tablet PCs run Windows operating system so children are generally familiar with the interface.  The problem is the price.  A Fizzbook costs around €600 for a basic model, which is very slow for classroom use.

On the upside, when tablet PCs mature as products and become cheaper and faster, they have the potential to completely replace Interactive Whiteboards.  The touch screen on them will become a child’s personal IWB!

iPad

The iPad arrived with much fanfare in the autumn of 2010 in Ireland.  The iPad is basically a touch screen computer.  One can access the Internet and can use apps (little applications that can be bought from a special store).   Great advantages compared to laptops are that it instantly turns on and a child can access any app very quickly. When it came out, skeptics merely compared it to a giant iPhone but this is where I see its strength: screen space.  The screen space of the iPad is large enough for a child to be able to use the apps similar to that on a laptop.  The smaller screen of the iPod Touch can be frustrating.  The downside of the iPad is its price but that should come down quickly.

iPod Touch/iPhone

There’s a lot of fanfare around the iPod Touch for learning with a few pilot projects running around a few classrooms around Ireland and a number of schools buying classroom loads of the devices.  Basically, an iPod Touch is a small handheld device that allows users to use the Internet and play apps, similar to that of the iPad above.  There are a number of good apps to support curriculum subjects but not nearly enough.  However, apps are being developed all the time.  I have seen some very inventive uses of the iPod Touch in primary education but I’m not as convinced by them as I am with their bigger brother, the iPad.  Screen space is too small to sport a full web site or a decent book.

DS Lite / PSP

Mobile computer game devices are fast becoming popular in classrooms.  There are a number of schools in Ireland already using DS Lites in the classroom with several games available to suit children’s creative skills.  For example the “Imagine” series of DS Lite games are excellent.  There are also a number of brain training games around, which are very good too.

The PSP with a camera attached makes for excited Augmented Reality (AR) learning opportunities.  By pointing your camera at a special QR Code, the PSP can transport children to great learning opportunities such as videos and games.

Both devices have their disadvantages in that they are only as good as the games that are available for them.  As of this date, there has been nothing created for them to support the Irish curriculum, though some games tie in nicely with certain subjects.

Mobile learning is where we are heading.  I believe there will be a number of criteria for the success of  mobile learning devices.  One will be a minimum screen space.  Right now, I think the iPads and Netbooks have it right. The iPod Touches, I believe, are too small.   Speed and instant access will be another criterion. The Apple products certainly have got these right.  Finally, the applications or programmes that run on these devices will be crucial for their success.  Windows laptops and netbooks have a small amount of Irish-designed programmes.  None of the others really do.

As we’re in the very early days of mobile learning devices, it’s probably best to hold your ground.  There’s a number of very interesting tablet PCs coming along.  Android is an operating system that has become one of the most popular in the world and more and more apps are being written for it.  We haven’t even started to talk about using children’s own mobile phones for learning opportunities.  Perhaps, this time next year it will be easier to decide what product will be best for our children to learn with.  At least we know the early signs of mobile learning devices are promising.

Posted in Featured, iPod/iPad 1 Comment »

Digital Art Week

April 30th, 2011 Simon
tap2011e

This month we had Ireland’s first Digital Art Week for primary schools and it was one of the best weeks I’ve had as a teacher and principal in years.  Over the course of a week (or two) schools all over Ireland used digital tools such as Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia and more in order to learn about art and to create their own pieces of work.  The idea of a Digital Art week sprang up from a Twitter conversation a couple of weeks before my school were due to start our own Art Week, which we hold every year.

Each year, children in my school get a drawing pad and they draw a picture and caption it.  Each year they get the same drawing pad and by the end of 8 years, they will have amassed a progression of their drawing skills from Junior Infants to 6th class.  I wanted to expand on this idea so I went on to Twitter to see if there was anyone interested in collaborating on something else.

Over the course of a few days, Fred Boss from the NCTE (and an art teacher), Damien Quinn from Seomra Ranga (and a primary teacher in Sligo) and myself (also a primary teacher) worked on some ideas to integrate Visual Arts with simple technology.  We came up with a number of  interesting ideas.

There were four main parts to the project.  Firstly, there was to be a shared gallery that all schools could upload images to.  Secondly, there would be an online Art Treasure Hunt.  Thirdly, we wanted to give a list of web sites that children could play around with to gain an insight as to how some famous artists worked.  Finally, being big fans of Twitter, we really wanted to get conversations going there and this was going to be a medium for sharing ideas, questions, etc.

We created a Twitter hashtag (keyword) for the week #tap2011 and began tweeting about the event and asking anyone we knew on Twitter to retweet it.  We also emailed the various education fora and mailing lists such as IPPN, DICTAT and CESI who kindly did not object!  I created instructions for the event on my personal blog (http://www.simonlewis.ie).  On this, we answered questions and hoped that lots of teachers and parents would pick up on it.  Thankfully they did.

We decided to use Flickr as the place to share all the pieces of art that the children were to create.  Flickr is one of the best known photo sharing sites in the world so I felt it would be a good choice.  Teachers simply had to email me and I would give them the username and password to the account and they could upload whatever children’s art they wished.  There was no theme, no type of art and no restrictions (within reason!)  Pupils could take photographs or draw something using Paint or use iPod Touches to create their masterpieces.  There was a great variety of art work uploaded with almost 100 pieces of work uploaded by the end of the first week. Samples of this artwork are scattered throughout this article.  The only downside to this was Flickr is blocked by the Schools Broadband Filtering Scheme on levels 4 and below.  This made it very awkward for some schools to upload images but it was amazing how inventive some teachers were.  One teacher emailed me to say she had uploaded the images on her iPhone using the 3G signal!

Fred Boss acquired a new Twitter friend for us all – a Vole by the name of Leo – who created a fantastic Twitter Art Treasure Hunt.  For two days, Leo would tweet clues, which would link to a web site and questions would be asked about a particular piece of art.  Pupils had to tweet back the answer.  If they were right, they collected a piece of a jigsaw.  If they got all 12 piece s of the jigsaw, it revealed a famous painting!  It was amazing to see so many new faces on Twitter and hopefully it will encourage them to keep on tweeting with their classes after this.

A while back I discovered a fantastic app which allowed children to make paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock (jacksonpollock.org).  I wanted to find other web apps that let children “paint” in the style of other famous artists.  I found a few of these and children were able to play around with artists like Picasso, Keith Haring and Henri Roussau. Some of these images made it onto the Flickr album.

One of the great successes was the use of Twitter throughout the project.  A quick search of the term #tap2011 contains hundreds of tweets from loads of schools and other followers. Another great thing about the project was that there were a number of non-teachers who got very interested in the project.  One such interested party was the National Children’s Gallery who offered to use the art uploaded in the project to their national gallery.

I definitely think this should be an annual event.  The project welcomed teachers who may not have used social media like Twitter before.  It also helped children create their own art and share it with each other.  Most of all, it helped hundreds of children around the country learn a little bit more about art.

 

Posted in Featured, Twitter 1 Comment »

Google Apps: Sharing Maths Across Schools

April 30th, 2011 Simon
shareGoogle

Mental Maths is one of the key challenges facing teachers today.  If I were to ask you to tell me what 1287 dived by 29 was, most adults would wish they had a pen and paper in front of them (or a calculator!)  What doesn’t come into our heads first is trying to mentally calculate a rough idea of the answer.  We should probably be seeing that 29 is quite close to 30 and go from there.  We need to give children these abilities, particularly in a world where rote learning is becoming less relevant.

Many teachers have come up with good Mental Maths starters in their classrooms. (I don’t mean an infamous book called “Mental Maths” which is anything but!)  One such concept is called the Target Board.  Essentially, this is a grid with numbers in each box.  The teacher sets a target number to reach and children must find as many ways of reaching that number through any numerical operation.  An example is below.

For example, children could go with 20 x 5 or 5 x 5 x 4.  The great thing about this exercise is its open-ended nature.  It can be as easy or as difficult as one wishes.

Other examples of mental maths starters in the classroom are: 24 and Countdown.

Countdown is the equivalent of the numbers’ game in the quiz show of the same name.  The teacher displays a target number and 6 smaller numbers to get that answer.

In the above example, to get 10 points, one might try (100 x 2) + (8 x 7) + 1.  Depending on how close the student is to the answer, the points lessen.

To play 24, the students are given 4 numbers and they must use each number once with any operation to make 24.  For example, if the teacher listed 4, 6, 6, 8 – a valid answer could be (6 x 8 ) – (6 x 4) = 48 – 24 = 24.

These have great opportunities in the classroom and the concept of competing with their classmates adds an extra dimension of fun to the whole affair.  However, wouldn’t it be great if they could compete with other classrooms around the world?

Google have recently added a new concept to their Google Docs, which I believe has very interesting educational value.  The concept allows authors of a document to have discussions about that document to the side of the screen.  Google’s own blog outlines how this works really well:  http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-discussions-in-google-docs.html

This new concept works in all of Google Docs applications and I’ve thought of an idea, which I’d love to try out with other schools.  Taking our Mental Maths approach, if I designed a slide with a targetboard, a countdown numbers game or a 24 game and then shared it with everyone who wanted to join in, it opens the whole thing to a much wider audience.  It could be used as a tool to get schools to compete with each other in Mental Maths.  What child in Cork wouldn’t be motivated to kick the ass of a child in Kerry in some sport – be it football or mental maths!

To see how this could work, let’s take a look at an example slide created using Google Docs:

Right now, this targetboard can only be viewed by me.  If I make it public, anyone with the link can access it.  I do this by clicking on the link, which, at present says: “Private to only me”.  A box will pop up and I decide to change this to “Public on the Web”.

 

Once this is done, I’m now free to advertise a public Targetboard challenge.  The link to the slide is given, (in this case click here to go to the slide), and you will see the Targetboard.  So far, so good – but how do you get the schools to compete with each other?  The secret is in the “View Together” link at the bottom right of the presentation.

Once you click on this, a side panel appears on the right hand side with all the names of all the users logged on to this slide.  Now each school can type in their answers to the target board.  At the end of an agreed time, the number of answers for each school are calculated and a winner is determined.

For the Countdown game, the first school to correctly type in the formula for the target number wins;  likewise for the 24 game.

Let’s say 10 schools agreed that each day at 10am, they would log on to the agreed link and compete with each other.  A league or tournament could be set up.  In fact the possibilities for fun ways to learn maths in an open-ended way are enormous.  For example, a classroom of children with their own laptops or iPod Touches could all compete.

To me, this all sounds very possible and requires very little to set up.  The only thing to do now is see if it can actually happen in real life.  If there’s any schools that are interested in trying this out, please comment below or send me an email and we’ll see if we can try it out for one week.  I’ll report our findings here and see what happens after that.  If anyone wants to organise it amongst themselves, let me know how you get on too.

Google Apps always surprises me with their tools that can be used for almost anything.  Let’s see if we can grab another educational opportunity!

Posted in Featured, Google Apps, Maths 12 Comments »

10 Things School Management Systems Should Have

April 30th, 2011 Simon
tenthingsadmin

Over the last year or so, principals and teachers around the country have got very excited by school management systems.  Basically, a school management system allows users to have access to any administrative information about the school.  For example, phone numbers of parents, attendance records and school policies can be accessed with a click or two of a button.  There are about 5 different Irish-made school management system options out there, each with their own merits.  In this article, I look at the ten things every school management system should have.

Source: ballintemplens.ie

1. Electronic Rollbook

This is the main reason I decided to get my school management system for my school despite the fact we still have to fill out the traditional roll book.  A good electronic rollbook will balance the numbers at the end of each term to save teachers hours of frustration.  Clever rollbooks will take very little extra time to fill out if everyone is deemed to be automatically present initially.  Therefore, a teacher can simply mark who is absent.

2. Electronic Noticeboard

We don’t use the whiteboard in the staffroom for messages and notices.  Our school management system contains an electronic noticeboard.  This means that anybody can post a notice up about anything.  Another advantage is that people can reply to notices.  We have used this to do anything from posting up web links of interest to organising staff nights out.  I also find that it cuts out the invisible hierarchy that traditional whiteboards seem to create.

3. Integration with Google Calendar

In my opinion, Google do the best calendar.  If one can share their school calendar with any other calendar in their lives and allow it to appear on the school management system, then it’s a win-win for me.  A stand alone calendar is acceptable.

4. Cloud-based

If I want to access information about my school, I’m not necessarily in the school when I want it.  Cloud-based school management systems allow me to access the information anywhere including my phone.  Those who don’t sell cloud-based systems will argue that security could be an issue.  I believe this argument to be dated as cloud-based solutions are now recognised as being extremely secure.

5. Easy printing of class lists

There are so many times in the year where schools are asked to send lists of pupils to different agencies.  A good school management system will allow you to create lists on the fly, for example: anyone who goes on the bus, any child under the age of 6, etc.  It is also a good idea if only certain information that’s needed can be filtered rather than having to print every detail of every child.

6. Search Function

This is probably more applicable to bigger schools but if young Johnny Murphy has smashed his head open, the quickest way to get his mother’s phone number would be to simply use a Google-style search function for his name.  Other useful search ideas would be for any keyword in documents, policies, etc.

7. Document Storage

Being able to store documents in a school management system is a handy feature.  For example, I can store all the school’s policies in one place for teachers to look at.  Google Docs  is an even more powerful solution, so integration with that would be even better.  However, even better again would be the ability to store assessment results, for example MIST, Sigma-T, etc.  Better again would be comparison lists of results of  these assessments.  Another document to store might be children’s reports each year.  A report generator would be a welcome addition as these take ages!

8. Social Bookmarking

I don’t think any school management system has this feature but teachers love sharing links to good web sites.  Through tagging bookmarks, a nice list for any school could be very useful.  If this was shared amongst the whole community of other schools, a huge databank of good links to web sites could grow extremely quickly.  Right now, I use a link to Google Bookmarks.

Source: binbin.net

9. Money Collection

There are times in the year that children give teachers money.  It is nice to have a list of your class online where you can enter what they have paid you and when.  Again clever use of lists can make this very effective.

10. Yard Duty Timetable

Every school does yard duty so why not have it on a school management system.  Even better, the school management system could automatically generate a fair timetable for all teachers and even calculate the number of hours completed.

There’s plenty of other things a school management system offers and these are just some of the many features that they generally have.  However, I think it is best that school management system stick to administration options and shouldn’t try to do too much, for example lesson planning.

As is tradition with these top ten lists, I have to put in a bonus item. so here goes:

Bonus Item: Parent Teacher Meeting Timetable Generator

Trying to timetable parents for parent teacher meetings is one big nightmare.  One has to fit siblings together.  One also has to make sure that support staff get to talk to parents after (or before) the teacher.  It takes hours to get it manually, and even then there’s tonnes of mistakes.  As a school management system will have access to each child and their relationship to their siblings in the school as well as support details, a computer programme might have more luck.

I hope this article proves useful to you in choosing a student management system for your school.

Posted in Featured, Management No Comments »

ICT in Education Conference 2011, Tipperary

April 30th, 2011 Simon
tipp2011

One of my favourite annual conferences is the ICT in Education Conference in Thurles, Tipperary.  Each year, they host a number of excellent lectures and workshops with the ethos that it is for teachers by teachers.  Last year, I had the honour of being the keynote speaker with Bernie Goldbach and the capstone speaker was Mark Little of Storyful.  This year’s keynote and capstone speakers are: Christian Payne, Ciaran McCormack and Dermot Casey.

2010 conference photo

There will be a number of workshops on blogging, Scratch, Edmodo, Game-based Learning and a couple on Twitter.  The great thing about the talks and lectures is that they are pitched at a level that is accessible to everyone.

A number of interesting events take place during this conference.

The night before the main event, CESI, (Computers in Education Society of Ireland), host their famous CESI Meet.  There’ll be dozens of fellow teachers talking about things they do in their classrooms.  Even better is that the talks last from 2 to 15 minutes so if a talk doesn’t suit you, you don’t have long to wait until the next one!

After the great success of Digital Art Week, the images created by children all over Ireland will be displayed throughout the conference.  This is a great achievement for all the children involved.

There’s always a number of interesting surprises that come down the line so come down to Tipperary for a great weekend of learning.

The ICT in Education Conference takes place on Saturday 14th May.  For more information, please visit their web site http://www.tippinst.ie/schools. You can also follow them on Twitter with the username @ictedu

Posted in Events, Featured 2 Comments »
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