Last term I started a project with 20 pupils in 5th and 6th class.  Their job was to set up a film studio and create a cartoon.  My job was to make sure that there was scaffolding in place to ensure the project maintained focus. The plan is to have the children ready to publish their cartoon by St. Patrick’s Day. So far, we have set up groups and children have been busy with the following skills:

Brainstorming: Children had to come up with a name for their production company and then a topic for their cartoon.  This transformed into an “Apprentice”-style discussion about names that would suit their personalities and the fact that they were creating a cartoon.  It was interesting to see how personalities, gender and YouTube had major impacts on their choices.  I was delighted with one group when I saw a wonderfully original name for their company only to be informed that the pupil in question had simply ripped it off a YouTube video he liked!  In fact, it was interesting that most of the groups started their process with something familiar and tweaked it into something original.

The topic of the cartoon was something similar.  One of the criteria was that the cartoon could only have a maximum of three characters.  This disappointed one of the children who was hoping to set an army of soldiers against another army of aliens in his idea.  However, having one simple condition, really challenged their thinking.

Design/Personalise: The next step was for children to design the logo for their production company.  The goal was to try and link the name of the company within the design.  Considering the number of logos that children are exposed to on a regular basis, I was surprised by their general lack of knowledge.  My assumption that they would find a task like this easy didn’t work and we are going to look at this in our first lesson when we come back to school this week.

Which leads nicely to:

Evaluation: Our next lesson will be on logos.  I’m going to give the children lots of logos – some famous and others not so famous. I’m not an expert in logo design but we’re going to examine some simple theory.

• http://www.how-to-branding.com/Logo-Design-Theory.html

From this, we can look at fonts, colours, shapes and evaluate these in terms of emotions and effectiveness. We’re going to evaluate whether the logos are effective and why this is.  We’re going to try and understand why choices were made.  We’re then going to discuss a fictional company and make decisions around ideas for a logo.  Finally, we’ll go back to the drawing board for designing their logos.

Preparation of Tools: Before we get planning, I want to get the children to see the tools that they’ll be using.  Whenever I design a piece of software, I try and find the tool that suits best for my needs.  For example, back when I programmed the game, “Who Took the Book?”, a game which essentially was a sequence of puzzles, the tool Opus Illuminatus suited my needs.  However, it would be useless to create an iPhone app so I use other tools for this.  I want to present children with a number of animation tools and let them decide which one they are comfortable using.

The HP Teacher Exchange blog has come up with 7 Web 2.0 animation tools ranging in simplicity and power, which I think will give the children a good choice.  I’m going to give them time to play around with these tools and see what they can do with them.  They will have to work as a team to evaluate them and I will provide them with a template to do this.

Planning: With all our evaluations done, it’s time to start planning our story.  The children have up to 2 minutes to tell their full story.  They need a plan.  That’s where I’m going to flip down our laptops and get the pencils, erasers and paper out.  I feel that one can easily tell a simple short story in 8 “bits” to give them time for an introduction (2), development (2), problem (2) then conclusion (2).  Obviously there’s flexibility to this but it’s not a bad guideline.  The group will have to draw their story including the setting, characters, dialogue, etc.  Once the storyboard is complete, they are ready for the next part.

Creation: I often find once all the idea stuff is out of the way, almost all the work is done.  It’s time to use their chosen animation tool to create their cartoon.  If the animation tool allows it, they will need to insert their company name, logo and title.  After that, they need to put their storyboard in action.

This process can take the majority of the time and progress can be slow but it is great to see all the discussion, decisions and learning that can come from it.  Once all this is done, it’s time for the final part.

Presentation: All the hard work is done so it’s time to sit back and revel in all the hard work that has gone on before.  All the decisions, evaluations, discussions, problem-solving and every other skill come down to this moment… and we will celebrate! We will certainly be showing the cartoons to each other as a group.  The students will decide whether they merit a premiere for the rest of the school and the parents.

Will we have covered the curriculum?  Of course.  Literacy is easy to see here.  In fact, if this were simply just a plan for the English curriculum, I’d be happy.  However, there are other skills at play here, which have been outlined and fall into lots of subjects:

• Drama
• Maths
• Geography
• SPHE
• Visual Arts
• History
• Music (if they need a soundtrack)
• Learn Together (for ET schools)

There are possibilities that other subjects will be covered depending on the topic of the cartoon.  It’s not impossible that the lessons learned in Alive O, (the Catholic Religion Programme), will be mirrored in any stories with morals.

If the children allow me, we’ll hopefully be able to publish their cartoon for everyone to see.  My hope is that most of them will be proud of their work and this will be easy but 11-13 year olds think differently to me and that’s an important lesson I’ve learned.

Images from Creative Commons

• Imagination:  Some rights reserved by Sarah&theSpider
• Storyboard:  Some rights reserved by mrmayo
• Child with Animation Program:  Some rights reserved by crol373
• Brainstorm:  Some rights reserved by Coloriamo la cittÃ

Dan’s 5th class blog

Starting with this award-winning blog, this is an example of how one can start off with a simple idea and make it grow into something special.  This blog started in September 1st 2011 with some interactive scavenger hunts for Dan’s pupils before growing into an online account of everything that goes on in the classroom.  No doubt on the back of the Junior Spider’s success, Dan’s class are going to continue blogging this year.

Michael’s 3rd & 4th class blog

Michael is a teacher in my school and in three months has created an amazing resource for his class with his school blog.  Michael is a whizz with Adobe Fireworks and he creates great animations to help his class (and their parents) learn different concepts.  He also blogs about what’s going on in the classroom, which again gives parents the opportunity to see what their children are learning in class.  Recently, a number of his pupils have started adding their own articles and this blog is shaping up to be a wonderful resource.

Mr. Mitchell’s Class Blog

This Sligo-based teacher started his class blog back in February so is on to his second set of children in his class.  It is amazing to see the number of projects there.  The first one, in February, focused on the Maori people, and there are ideas in these articles to inspire any teacher.  Mr. Mitchell is experimenting with Web 2.0 apps like Wallwisher, Audioboo and Twitter and it looks like 2012 is going to be another award-winning year for him and his lucky class.

Miss Mernagh’s Blog

Launched on the 1st January 2011, Miss Mernagh’s Blog is a gigantic resource for early year’s teachers and parents.  Miss Mernagh shares how she makes resources and how she uses them in her classroom.  She also shares ideas for teaching early learning concepts.  Already featured in the Irish Examiner and Times newspapers, Miss Mernagh has a large following.  One can only assume that this blog is going to get bigger and better.  If you’re a teacher of infants, this is by far the best place to start getting ideas.

A Crucial Week in the Life of an NQT

Started in July 2011, this is a fantastic blog for any newly qualified teacher (NQT).  Going by the name, “Baggy_Trousers”, this NQT shares her own experiences of the classroom and shares the types of things she does to prepare for the dreaded “dip” (probationary year).  One can see this teacher growing in confidence as the months have rolled on and it will be interesting to see the direction this blog will go as this teacher’s year progresses.

Irish Teacher Blogs

To round things up, Nigel Lane, (who has been blogging for more than a year or he’d be on this list), has come up with the Irish Teacher Blogs Project, which essentially aggregates every Irish teacher’s blog into one site.  It’s been running for a few months now and rather than simply listing random blog posts from around the country, Nigel sets regular challenges for us.  Teachers have been challenged to comment on another teacher’s blog or to share their favourite blog.  Nigel also “spotlights” some of his contributors, which is a nice touch.  I see big things for this web site in 2012.

As I said, if you started a blog in 2011 and want to add it to the comments below, please do.  I think we’re going to see a number of new blogs popping up in the next couple of months.  Some will ask why should they set up a blog; why would I put my class up on the Internet?  For me, it’s all about sharing.  If you read some of the blogs above, you’ll definitely become inspired in your own classroom.  Why not inspire others yourself!

I’ve put together a couple of games and activities that could be used in the classroom in those last few days where your pupils are very excited and find it hard to settle and do their normal classwork. You can have a bit of fun while ensuring the class are still learning!
I’ve only included games that I think would work in a classroom, a lot of the games on the net are designed for the American teacher or parent. I found all these on the net easily enough but sometimes it can take a long time to source these things only to realise they wouldn’t work in a Irish classroom.

Games

SANTA TRIP
Level: 1st-6th Class
1.    Players sit in a circle.
2.    The first player says,”On Christmas Eve I’m traveling with Santa and I’m going to take (something starting with A )”.
3.    The next player repeats the first object and adds an object beginning with B continue the game through the alphabet.
If there are more players than 26 letters…start again at “A”.

(www.activityvillage.com)
Jingle Bells
Level: All classes
This is a good game for winding the class down after a Christmas party.
You will need:
A large space-it’s better if there is no carpet.?A chair?A set of bells ?A blindfold of some sort.
The children sit in a circle. A chair is placed in the centre of the circle and the set of bells put underneath. A child is chosen to be Santa and sits on the chair. Santa is then blindfolded.
A child in the circle is chosen to be the thief. The thief must try to steal the bells without being heard. If Santa hears a noise he must point at the thief before the thief goes back to his/her place in the circle. If the thief succeeds, Santa has another go while a new thief is chosen. If the thief is identified, they become the new Santa and the previous Santa rejoins the circle.
Depending on the numbers and ages you can adapt the last part. For example in a large group I try and pick a different Santa and thief each time to try and ensure everyone has a go at something. With younger ones I let the thief become Santa whether they succeed or fail in getting the bells.
(www.activityvillage.com)

Musical chairs or statues
Level: All Classes
You will need:
A CD player or similar with dancing music or children’s favorites?Some little prizes
How to play:
Similar to musical bumps, the children dance around while the music plays and must stand still as statues when the music stops. Anyone seen moving after the music has stopped is eliminated.
Hints:
When playing with younger kids it may be better to “eliminate” children by asking them to dance in a different area of the room, rather than sit around watching.
We have found it is easier to give prizes to the last 2 or 3 children playing rather than try to pick one winner.
Some younger children can get very competitive so you will need to be prepared to distract them and involve them in some other way if necessary!
(www.activityvillage.com)

Scramble Christmas Words:

Levels: 3rd upwards

Supplies
Index cards, paper bags.
How To Play:
Choose a Christmas word such as: Christmas, Candy Cane, Santa Claus, Reindeer…. Write each letter of a word on individual index cards.  Put the set in a paper bag. Divide the Ss into teams. Give each team a bag. The first team to decipher what the word in the bag wins.  A variation of the game would be to divide into teams with the same number of Ss as there are letters in the word. Each S gets a letter and the team must arrange themselves in the right order to spell the word.
(www.eslkids.com)

Secret Santa Gift Exchange:

Levels: 3rd upwards

Now, we are sick of hearing about the recession, so why not change this game to a Secret Santa card exchange?
Set this up 2-3 weeks before the class party.  Write each person’s name on a slip of paper, then have students draw a name from a hat. They can’t get their own name.  Students must make a card/present for the person whose name they chose. Students bring the card, with the recipients name on it, to the party (have a few extra cards on hand if anyone forgets,  or in case of other emergencies so everyone can get one).  The teacher (or Santa!) draws the names from a hat, and the recipient has to guess who gave them the card.
(www.eslkids.com)

Spelling Banner

Levels: 2nd upwards
Prepare two banners that say whatever you want them to say, ie Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings, etc.  Also prepare a set of letters for the same words cut out in two different colours hidden randomly around the room.  Divide the class into 2  teams with two captains–the captains sit and wait for their teammates to bring the letters for their banner.  If a student is on the “red” team and sees a letter for the “green” team he/she just leaves it alone. The first team to cover their banner letters wins.
(www.eslkids.com)

Who am I Santa?

Levels: All levels
Blindfold one student. The other Students stand in circle around the blindfolded student.  Spin the student around and then stop him/her facing another student.  S says “Ho ho ho.  Who am I?”. The blindfolded S must guess who that student is and call out his/her name.
(www.eslkids.com)

Word Find:

Levels: 2nd upwards
Supplies: timer, paper, pens.  Divide Ss into teams.  Take a Christmas related word such as: Christmas, candy cane, Santa Claus, etc. and find as many words as possible using the letters of that word.  Give a time limit (e.g. 2 mins).  The team with the most words wins!   Example: Christmas 1: (sit, is, his, miss, rat, tar, this, math, chair, rim…), Example 2: Candy cane (candy, cane, and, dance, day, nay, can, dye, an, any…).
(www.eslkids.com)

Links
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/christmas_games.htm- Great website for everything Christmassy! ACtivities, downloadable, cards, games and much, much more! Can go a bit “Crafty” though sometimes so be aware!
www.allthingschristmas.com-  does what it says on the tin, lovely section of carols and recipes if you want to be adventurous! Some nice games that you can print out and use with the class but mostly tailored to home use so adapt!
www.mash.ie this contains loads of good links to Christmas. These links were uploaded by teacher so it’s worth a look!
http://www.eslkidstuff.com/ChristmasGames.htm This is a great educational Christmas-themed section. Some lovely ideas for children that need help with their language and those who don’t! A list of lyrics for well-known Christmas songs could be used for any English/Music lesson.
http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/christmas/ This is a most excellent website that you could teach all year from! Covers the religious aspect of Christmas to poems, songs and art. It had many free dramas and short scripts if you wanted to try readers’ theatre here. Well worth a look!

Christmas Carol Video Conference

Host a video conference using Skype, OnlineMeetingRooms or any other application with another school.  Each school can sing a couple of Christmas Carols to each other.  This is even better when schools have a different ethos to each other.  Read about a Church of Ireland school who conferenced with an Educate Together school here.

Visit a Virtual North Pole

With loads of great activities to do on an Interactive Whiteboard, the North Pole web site is a great place to visit with younger classes.

http://www.northpole.com

Make your own Christmas Cards

This can work out as a good fundraising idea.  Get children to design Christmas cards in their favourite painting package.  The best one(s) can be sent to a printing company and the cards can be sold to families in school.

Christmas Podcast

Why not get your children to record some Christmas stories or songs and podcast them to the world.  This is easily done using programs like Audacity.  Podcasts can be uploaded to the school’s web site or even on iTunes!

YouTube Nativity

Get the children to design and record a Christmas Nativity.  Because it will go on YouTube, it will have to be less than 10 minutes! A great challenge for older classes.

Nollag Vocabulary

Why not teach the world some Gaeilge? Using PowerPoint, OpenOffice or Keynote, make some slides with Christmas clipart. When a user clicks on a picture, a recording of the word(s) is spoken.  You can also create a SoundBoard on http://www.soundboard.com/. This is a cool project for children of all ages.

Follow Santa on Twitter!

Santa’s gone all Web 2.0 and updates his progress on Twitter.  Check him out on: http://twitter.com/#!/noradsanta

A Christmas Field Trip

Find out about Christmas all around the world on this Virtual Christmas Field Trip: http://www.tramline.com/tours/cross/xmas/_tourlaunch1.htm

Write a Christmas Story Online

Storybird.com is a brilliant site for writing stories in general.  Because it has lots of professional quality clipart (and it’s free too), it can make a shared writing exercise highly motivating.  Children can create their own Storybird stories too if they have access to a computer.

A Christmas Blog

Blogs don’t have to last forever.  They can be quite specific.  For example two schools in Ireland and Italy did an eTwinning project about Christmas Carolling around Europe. Have a look here http://carollingineurope.wordpress.com/ to read about their project and maybe come up with some ideas of your own.

Use the web to learn about other festivals of light

Christmas is known as a festival of light, which Christians celebrate.  However other religions have their own festivals of light too.  Jewish people celebrate Chanukah, Sikhs and Hindus have Diwali and there’s Kwanzaa, which is an African-American festival too.  There’s plenty of others around the world including special ones in Sweden, Mexico and Brazil.  Children can spend time researching different festivals of light on the Internet and making interesting projects based on them.

If you have found any good ideas to celebrate Christmas using technology, why not add them to our comments?  If you have some good links to share for teaching about Christmas, go to our sister site,  http://www.mash.ie/christmas and add them there.

‘Shankids.com’ is an educational activity site for teachers and students.  The site contains the best and most up to date educational interactive websites used today.  With links to all the subjects of the primary school curriculum and sorted into relevant class groups the website is tailored for the needs of primary school students and teachers alike.  Navigation of the site is moderated for students’ needs providing a safe gateway to the most popular educational content on the net.

The students’ section contains activities for all of the curriculum subjects and is divided into the different class groups to aid ease of access.  Links are supported by images and a brief description of their content making navigation simple for students of all ages

The site also contains an extremely useful ‘teachers resources’ section.  Here links have been handpicked and are sorted by subject and class group.  The section contains IWB resources, clip art, images, lesson plans and ideas, special needs resources and information, as well as activities for teachers and students in all strands and strand units.

‘Shankids .com’ is another project delivered by the team approach taken by the staff of ‘Scoil Naomh Anna’,’ Rathmicheal’ and ‘Scoil Mhuire’, in the Shankill parish under the guidance of principals ‘Jim Halligan’, ‘Patricia Slavin’ and ‘Caroline Senior’ respectively.  Maintaining their continued dedication to developing the highest standards of education for their students the 3 schools have engaged on numerous projects aimed at positively developing their children’s educational experience.

Following the successful launch of the site popularity has grown at a rapid rate.  Students’ and teachers’ feedback is extremely positive and has helped to stream the next phase of material which is set to be added and updated on a weekly basis.

The website is designed by ‘Jim Halligan’ ‘Patricia Slavin’,’ Caroline Senior ‘and ‘John Montayne’ of ‘Montimedia’.  It is regularly updated by teachers from each of the 3 schools, pooling together the best educational ideas and content available today.

However, Caithriona felt it was necessary for the children not to be deprived of a week’s worth of school when it could so easily be avoided.  Using whatever technology was available, Caithriona set about trialling online learning for her 9 pupils.

Using free technology such as Google chat and email, the school was able to send worksheets, presentations, etc. to each of the children and the families were able to converse with Caithriona online.

Caithriona said of the first day, “From the feedback I received from the children themselves, it has been one of the most rewarding days of teaching! The children felt an overwhelming sense of achievement.  It has proved as an extremely beneficial project for the children. We have covered most of our revision work for our Christmas tests and still had plenty of time to play in the snow!”

With broadband  and snow days becoming the norm in most households across the country, is this the future of teaching during snow days?  Rather than having to change standardised calendars and messing around with uncertainty, can’t schools implement an online learning strategy for days like this?  It could be the start of something very interesting indeed.

To show you an example of how I’ve used an LRS, in one class I used it to assess whether children recognised their colours in Irish.

I created a flipchart with a coloured blob and four possible answers. (My green blob had A. dearg B. glas C. gorm D. buí next to it).  The children had 30 seconds to record the correct word to match the colour and their answers were logged by the software.  The software then created a nice pie chart showing % correct answers and incorrect answers.  It also showed me the number of answers each child got right and wrong.

This was very useful to me as I was able to see exactly how many children in the class knew their colours vocabulary and whether there were some colours that still needed some focus – corcra being the one most children forgot.

I found initially children found the devices difficult to use.  However, when they did get used to them, they were quite happy to play our “voting games.”  I noticed after the 6th or 7th time, children were not as enthusiastic about them as I’d hoped.  This may have been because they were bored of the activities I had prepared or perhaps, the novelty had worn off.  They do take quite a bit of time to set up -  handing them out to the correct children and putting them away at the end in the right order takes about 10 minutes.  The initial set up is even longer but this can be done outside of class time.

On a positive note, like any piece of technology, if it’s used well and not overused, it has great educational benefits.

There are a number of companies selling LRSs all over Ireland.  In fact, if a company sells an Interactive Whiteboard, you can be almost sure that they will also sell an LRS.  Most LRSs are compatible with any computer or IWB.  Ask the companies before you purchase.

The main off-putting thing about LRSs is the price.  They cost about €50 each (or more).  For a class of 30 children, this amounts to a fairly big investment.  I also think that mobile phones or devices like the iPod Touch will eventually render these devices obsolete, but I’ve been saying that for 7 years now and it hasn’t happened, even with the iPod Touch emerging this year.

If anyone has good stories about their use of LRSs in their classrooms, I’d love to hear them so add your comments below.

1. Video Conference with a school

Once a school has a reasonable broadband connection, video conferencing is a simple and great way to connect two schools together.  This year, my school, (an urban school with about 100 children), connected with a rural school in Co. Mayo.  We showed the 9 pupils in the school our Halloween outfits and they showed us how to play a Halloween game.

2. Spooky Podcast

Why not get your kids to record a spooky story for Halloween and upload it as a podcast?  Audacity is free software to record audio and has lots of effects to make voices sound even scarier!  A great example is from a school in Sligo where they recorded a play “Witch Griselda Rides Again”

3. Virtual Pumpkin Carving

There are certain things that probably aren’t safe to do in primary schools.  Letting children loose with a sharp knife to carve pumpkins is one of those things.  Isn’t it great that someone thought to make a virtual pumpkin carving app?  It’s a very simple Flash file that allows the user to “cut out” holes in a pumpkin to create their own “Jack-O-Lantern”.  Using the PrtSc key in your keyboard and pasting the image into Paint, you can save children’s creations.  This can work very nicely on a projected screen too.

4.  Write a Story Online

Storybird.com is a brilliant site for writing stories in general.  Because it has lots of professional quality clipart (and it’s free too), it can make a shared writing exercise highly motivating.  Children can create their own Storybird stories too if they have access to a computer.

5. A Halloween Blog

Blogs don’t have to last forever.  They can be quite specific.  How about setting up a free blog on a service like Edublogs or WordPress and get children to blog about Halloween?  Ideas might be a short story, a poem or even a description of Halloween in their house.

6. Use the web to learn about other festivals around Halloween

Get on to the Internet and learn about other festivals around this time of the year.  Divide your class into groups and get them to research other festivals that tend to crop up around this time of year: Samhain, Divali, Allantide, Reformation Day, All Saints Day, Dasara, etc.  Find out if any of them share any rituals.

Up until last year, I had built our school intranet using Google Apps for Education and I’d built up a fairly decent set up with a roll book, a calendar, a number of forms for reporting things and a good noticeboard. Part of the reason that we decided to move to Aladdin was that it did all these things better. Another part was if there were things that we wanted to change or enhance, the Aladdin team would do their best to help us out.

Aladdin is built on Google Apps so the feel of our intranet did not change much.  However, I wanted to make it look almost exactly as the staff were used to.  My first request was the ability to personalise the homepage and within days, I was able to change colour schemes, set different logos and change the look of the homepage really easily.

I set up the staff accounts quickly and began creating a similar homepage that they were used to seeing – a calendar, a virtual noticeboard and a reminder section.  I also added a “popular” menu which linked back to some of my Google created pages such as reporting a yard incident and booking in a “catch up” session with a support teacher.  I also kept our SEN page in Google initially.  However, in Aladdin, I also added a yard duty timetable on the front page, which I like very much.

With the front page looking well, it was time to get the students into the system.  Luckily, we didn’t have to type in everything manually.  After assigning classes to particular teachers, I simply used Aladdin’s import tool to automatically import the children’s details in from a spreadsheet and it guided me through the process easily.  I was also able to import the children on our pre-enrolment list, which was great.  Although Aladdin will import the data for you for free, I like doing things like this myself!

The first day of school arrived and we decided to have a staff meeting to try out our new look staff intranet.  Initially, the staff wondered why we were changing.  They loved the old system.  So did I.  However, as soon as I showed them the new way of taking the roll, I had gained some new fans.  Aladdin’s rollbook assumes that all children are present and all the teacher has to do is click the children who are absent each day.  It’s much quicker.  Even better, it also allows teachers to input the reason for an absence which helps with returns to the NEWB.

We did have a few teething problems with the noticeboard.  Initially only the administrator (me) was allowed to post messages on the board and there was no way to reply to them.  These were changed within 24 hours of my request and now staff are happily posting messages up and conversing everyday.

The people who are most benefiting from the new system, apart from me, are the school secretary and the deputy principal.

Our secretary has never found it easier to get access to our students’ details if needed.  She also has a module called “Money” which she has been using for collection of schoolbook money.  She’s also already organised our staff Christmas party using the system!

The deputy principal in my school is in charge of all matters to do with attendance and Aladdin has cut her workload significantly.  Our DP has the honour of filling in the physical roll books until the Department of Education allow us to record electronically only.  Because it’s so easy to take the roll, all staff generally are quicker to fill it in during the day.  However, more significantly, Aladdin automatically generates the Cúntas Tinnreamh exactly the way it appears in the real thing.  We are printing this out and sticking in the physical book each month.  On the 30th September, our DP was able to automatically send our NEWB stats with the click of a button.  Aladdin automatically generated the report.  I’ve never sent back my NEWB returns so quickly! We can also see at a glance the children who have missed the most days, any unexplained absences and lots more.

Another benefit we’ve found since the start of the year is that we have been slowly moving most of our SEN support stuff over to the Aladdin application from the Google page.  By creating templates, we can now create IEPs and other documents for each child directly in the system, which can be printed for the child’s file.

We will probably start using Aladdin for standardised testing later in the year but we’ll be requesting a couple of ideas before we do so.

All in all, I think the staff are won over by Aladdin.  It’s great that it’s ever evolving and improving.  We’re learning as we go along and we’re enjoying helping this product get even better.  I think the next step in its evolution will be the amount of access rights different staff members will have.  At the moment, all my staff have been made administrators but I will change this when I have more control over what staff can access.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited by an Irish designed education product.  We’ll more than likely be starting to use the texting service that comes with Aladdin in the next month or two as we still have a good bit of credit left on our current system.  Next time, I write about Aladdin, I’ll report on our progress with the texting and any other treasures we find.