Welcome to Year 1 ICT. We’ll use this blog to tell you about what’s coming up each week and to record highlights as we go.

We’re excited to be using blogs with you to collect thoughts and discoveries, and we look forward to linking to your individual blogs from here so that we can all share ideas easily.

Here are some links to get you thinking about using blogs in schools.  Mr Mitchell and Mr Avery‘s blogs are good examples.  BrainPOP made a fantastic recording of a group of Year 6 children from Heathfield School:

In session 1 we will be looking at the course outline, thinking about recent changes to the ICT curriculum in schools, and setting up your individual blog and twitter accounts. You can read about recent curriculum initiatives on Helen’s blog and explore your free blogging tool on MyPad from the tools block on your Nile homepage. You’ll be able to personalise your blog by choosing from the 137 edublog themes. It would also be useful to set up a twitter account so that we can share our ideas on the School of Education screens and further afield using the hashtag #unsoe.

In session 2 we’ll be exploring interactive whiteboards (IWBs) and presentation software. We’ll have some hands-on with the whiteboard and visualiser and also think about the software and tools you can use to make the most of them. Gareth has been posting about interactive whiteboards. I have posted about presentation software, including eBook-making.  You may like to browse my Pinterest collection for links on maths or literacy. You’ll find a mixture of links for IWB resources and iPad apps. Pinterest is a great site for resource sharing and it’s worth browsing other people’s pins using search terms such as ‘Primary Education’. You’ll find it’s impossible not to get sidetracked by things that catch your eye, but if you join, you can repin anything that looks useful to your own board.

Your directed task this week will be to use your blog and twitter to comment and reflect on the session, making a comparison of tools.

Do let me know if you need any help or have any questions (helen.caldwell@northampton.ac.uk),

Happy blogging!

Helen