Hello everyone!

Welcome to Year 3 ICT and to our class blog.

We’ll use this blog to tell you about what’s coming up and to record highlights as we go. You’ll find a course overview in the module materials for ICT on Nile.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be exploring the topic of computer science using a versatile program called Scratch.  With Scratch you can explore computing concepts creatively by making all kinds of things from simple animations to interactive games. If you’ve not seen it before here’s an introduction.

We’ll also be thinking about the use of mobile technologies and using our brand new set of iPad 3s with lots of new apps installed. One focus will be the use of apps to capture and manipulate media, such as using QR codes to make learning trails.

We’re excited to be using blogs with you to record thoughts and discoveries, and we look forward to linking to your individual blogs from here so that we can all share ideas easily.  We’ll also use the wiki on this blog as a place for everyone to post resources and examples of work, and hope that it will become a useful starting place for planning ICT projects in schools.

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

When you’ve had a look, you could add a word or two to the AnswerGarden word cloud below…

Why blog?… at AnswerGarden.ch

This week we will be making our blogs and tweeting about them on #unsoe. You can read about recent ICT curriculum initiatives on Helen’s blog and explore your free blogging tool on MyPad from the tools block on your Nile homepage. You’ll get caught up browsing through the 137 edublog themes (Helen has tried them all!). It would be useful to set up a twitter account so that we can share our ideas on the School of Education screens and further afield.

We’ll also think about the topic of eSafety.  Here is a set of weblinks to browse on eSafety and another set on Information Literacy (click on the thumbnails). You may like to look at an example scheme of work for Online Research, Communication, Publishing and eSafety from Islington’s Primary ICT team.

eSafety Wordle

Finally, here’s a link to the Wordle and to a Google Doc for thinking about eSafety.

Look forward to working with you next week,

Helen, Ellie and Gareth

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