Computing resources part 1: Raspberri pi, Kodu and Makey Makey

Raspberry Pi

I'm not going to pretend to be a Raspberry Pi expert, but I am a fan of it, what others have done with it and its potential. The brilliant Raspberry Pi website tells you everything you need to know and the introductory film is fab. My #DLchat buddy @clcsimon has created resources for this site (the sorting hat) and I know that @MissPhilbin and @eslweb are Pi experts. It's worth checking out their blogs because although they are secondary, some of the resources will transfer to upper KS2, especially with your computing whizzes.

I bought my Pi at a Raspberry Pi teachmeet in Cambridge in 2012, but aside from getting it started and playing around with Scratch on it, I haven't really used it ... We had just purchased our iPads in school and the digital leader energy was focused on that. I'm sure we have some at East Harling, but I am not responsible for the digital leaders there, so I am not sure if they have used them. I shall show mine to my Code Club this year to see what they make of it. Even if we just use it for Scratch, it will be an achievement for them - and an introduction before they go off to high school, where I know @kevin_sait is doing marvellous things with tech.  

For more information or ideas for using your Pi in primary, try Sway Grantham's blog. You can see her digital leaders in action here.


Kodu

I've blogged about Kodu before, because I think it is one of the best free resources available for KS2 up (though they promote it from age 5 up). The way that you toggle between creating and play is excellent and the potential for creativity enormous. The folk who say that the computing curriculum is dull or doesn't have potential for innovation/imagination (yes, I've read lots of tweets along those lines) are not looking in the right places or are interpreting the curriculum in the right way (in my opinion). With kodu you can take any theme you want and create your world to go with it - I made my own Game of Thrones World! Tutorials are provided and I know that someone with more time than I have could take this to a multi-layered game. The free classroom kit contains lesson plans and activities for teachers to use.  I highly recommend this resource! 

These film clips are what some year 6 children created during their first 'play' with it in 2011. You can see the original post here.

Makey makey

One of my Roydon DLs with Mathieu and his Makey Makey

My digital leaders at Roydon experienced Makey Makey when we went down to London for the Nightzookeeper kidsmeet. Using the kit and some clips you can turn everyday objects into computer touchpads. Genius! You can read about the creators on their blog and find out more about the potential and creativity you can encourage through the Makey Makey. More resources and ideas can be found here.

If you have any more links, please add them via a comment - I'm sure the folk at the Shropshire conference will be grateful!

Brilliant books for the kindle

I'm a big fan of Oliver Jeffers and love using his books in the classroom. I have 8 of his titles and when I see them at the boot sale (rarely) I duplicate so that I can put them in my book box at school or give them to friends. I have used the Incredible Book Eating Boy as part of a mini mantle, which my children loved. They can relate to the art work and recreate in a similar style with a huge sense of achievement. 

I had seen his book, The Day the Crayons Quit, but am ashamed to say that I was too tight to buy it in hardback ... I was reminded of it yesterday when my headteacher had picked it up in the classroom next door to me - a child had brought it in for world book day. I decided I was being a right Scrooge (I am spoilt by 20p boot sale books) so got right on to Amazon, where I found it on Kindle for 69p! Yes, 69p! It's lush!

Now I would normally want this in the flesh, but actually in the classroom it's really easy to project them from the IWB. Everyone gets to see - and with Apple TV I can still hold my iPad like a book, to keep that storyteller feel. Whilst I was there on Amazon, I bought 3 more of Jeffers' 69p books (more are available, but I have them in paperback/hardback and like I said, I'm tight!)

The Hueys books are great for assemblies as they have great underlying values themes. 

The fourth book I bought was, None the Number, which I will definitely be using in maths (probably at the start of the year. 

I have Lost and Found (which we loved on DVD too) and The Way back Home on The iPad already (and paid more than 69p for them!) and who knows, maybe I'll buy the other 69p books by the end of the night. One in the hand, one on the IWB! I would highly recommend them, because the art work is lovely and you can do a huge amount of inference and deduction beyond the story. 

The Heart and the Bottle made me cry. 

If you haven't used his books yet in the classroom, at 69p there's no reason not to! Find them here!

Polar bear iBooks!

I published this on this blog instead of my class blog by mistake today. My class ipad was plugged into the IWB, so I used mine to capture the children at work. I've decided to keep it on here as well as it shows two of my passions happening in the classroom - ICT and drama. We are PEACE at present, with a huge dilemma of saving some stranded polar bears. 

We have jumped back in time to a few years bcak when we all had to undergo staff training about polar bears. To pass the course, we all had to create quality iBooks. You can see the other drama activities on our class blog. This is the post on the class blog (minimalist - a picture says a thousand words!!)


The staff training is coming along nicely and all PEACE employees are well on their way with their polar bear iBook assignments.

Why should we employ digital leaders in school?

I asked the question below ready for the keynote I am delivering at the Shropshire computing conference next week and got lots of helpful responses. Then someone asked if I would storify it to help others. Erm ... yes! It's always good to learn something new! I've seen them and been mentioned in them before, so tried it straight away. It's simple to use and a great way of collecting tweets. I'm sure this won't be the last time I use it!

Clicker sentences for the ipad

This is not a new post, but somehow I unpublished it ... 

I started a masters degree in 2005 using action research to find out how children with SEN can be supported through technology. I was interested in learning behaviours and whether technology could have a positive impact and help remove barriers in a mainstream setting.

One of the resources I looked at closely during my action research was Clicker Grids for learning. I have always been fortunate enough to have desktop computers in my classroom, but had not explored Clicker in any detail. When I did, I was kicking myself for not having looked at it before. It enables children to use wordprocessing skills at their level and provides a wealth of free resources to support learning.

 After training my TA to use it, it became the main writing resource for a child in my class. Clicker enabled him to successfully write his weekly news as well as write up scientific investigations, history reports and other cross curricular writing. I have used it with different children every year since, to support their reading and writing.

So why haven't I looked at the app before now? Well I had a good look at the last Bett show I went to - in 2013 - but at £18.99 it was a little pricey to put on our iPads at school, when we were already making use of it on our PCs. The reason I was keen to get it now is that I no longer have PCs in my classroom. It has been a huge change for me as I used to have two at my last school - but I had the space there too. My new classroom does not have room and although I have access to an old teacher laptop, it has proved to be too much of a distraction (they were tucked away in my previous classroom). What I do have is a class iPad, so I make use of that for meaningful interventions. I am sure that it will prove to be a useful resource in the future for a child with ASD who is currently in reception.

I have found it very similar to the PC version, in that you have to play around for a little while before you get the hang of making your word banks quickly. There are lots of models available for story/instruction writing, but it is at its most useful when it can be personalised. 

What I really like about it is that you can change the settings to aid progression. For example, you can have the word order as sentence order, or guided (only the next word in the sentence can be clicked on), alphabetical order or you can have random order as they become more familiar. 

Having the words read to you makes this very accessible to children with visual impairments/visual processing difficulties. You can also have the sentence displayed at the top of a word set as a model, or in a pop up so that they can look at it for a few seconds before writing. 

The great thing is that you can change the options for every sentence that you have prepared for the child to write. I know that this is going to be a valuable element to support children with their next steps. You don't have to provide all words for them either, you can let them attempt phonetically decidable words. For the first few times though I want to provide all of them as I want the child to develop confidence.

There are parts that I still need to learn  and I know that I could ask for help, but I want to make sure that I am using it confidently before I ask TAs to use it - I need to show them how to  set them up.

 My next job is to find out how to import grids using Dropbox, then play with it for a bit longer (a job for tomorrow) then I will try using it with a child in my class next week. I will write another post with the child's views about using it. 

I think this is going to prove to be a very useful app for a range of children, who will be able to see themselves as successful writers. 

Come back soon to see how it has been used in the classroom.

16 (or so) quality ipad apps to use in a year 2 class

In the next couple of weeks my year 2 children will be using the brilliant Scratch Jnr app to create basic polar bear animations. It ties in with the work that we are doing in class and I believe that the app is easy enough for 6 year olds to use, especially with some careful pairing. 

Update: My year 2s used the app independently, check it out on the class blog!         

After the briefest conversation with my HT I have been considering whether I have been using the iPads effectively this year  - and thinking about the apps I use and whether they are high quality. Am I still using them innovatively and is this possible with year two children?  I am one of those people who lives in the moment and I honestly can forget very quickly the things that I have done. I looked back over our class blog this year and am pleased that I think we have used quality apps effectively, though maybe I could use some apps more often. I'm not sure whether it's innovative use - probably not, but they are being used.

So here are my top apps this year for year 2, in no particular order. All photographs of children have been taken from our class blog this year. 

Number 1: Collins Big Cat apps

Fab for guided reading and writing

I use them for guided reading / writing interventions. They are great at keeping my children focused when working independently whilst I am working with a group too.

Number 2: Book creator

We used these to create profiles of ourselves to send off to a school in London. The expectation was that they just create one page. This will be built on this half term when they create an ibook about polar bears, then in the summer term an ibook about nocturnal animals. It doesn't replace paper work as their writing in the app is minimalist in comparison with paper based activities. That's because they are concentrating on so many skills here!

Book creator

Number 3. Puppet Pals

We used this in the autumn term to create animations from our local fen. They designed creatures, took photos at the den, created storyboards then animated!

Puppet pals animations

Number 4: Comic life

A great little app for creating posters across the curriculum. We used it to show knowledge and understanding of Samuel Pepys.

Comic Life (posters about Pepys!)

Number 5: Brushes

Creating art work in the style of Hockney as part of our environmental artists work. We used the ipad to take photographs of our natural art too.

Brushes

Number 6: Google maps/Earth

Use in conjunction with atlases! 

Number 7: Skitch

Not just great for planning journeys, it can be used in lots of ways!

Using Skitch to plan routes

Number 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, programming apps:  Beebot, ALEX, Daisy Dino,  Fix the Factory and Scratch

A.L.E.X

Daisy Dino

Number 13: Twinkl phonics suite

A child in my class uses this daily for the brilliant pairs activity and letter formation as well as phonics practice. Lovely little app!

Number 14: Primary games maths apps

We use these regularly for boosting their rapid recall of number pacts. There are lots of great apps available!

Number 15: Explain everything / screen chomp

I haven't made use of these yet this year. They have been planned for, but my children haven't been secure enough to do what I have wanted them to do. My aim is for my top mathematicians to explain strategies for pencil and paper procedures by using the apps. We will get there by the end of the year!

16: Clicker grids

I can't believe I intially forgot this! Eek! I have used this fabulous app with a child in my class with SEN and it has enabled him to write his own pieces. Equally, a child with ASD who comes to my literacy group has been inspired to use it (he loves tech) and he writes much more quickly with it. I have blogged about the app here, which somehow I reverted to draft after publishing, so have republished it now! I will take a photo very soon.


They are the apps I use regularly - many other quality apps are available and we will be exploring more this year, like Little Fox Music Box and possibly i-movies bu the end of the year. Incidentally, the two top apps that I use regularly as a teacher are popplet and blogger. I also love Nosy Crow books for whole class teaching (they are a little expensive for all ipads).

You can see lots more quality apps from EYFS to KS2 on my ipad site. 

Two iPad apps for early computing

These two apps were freebies that I installed via apps gone free. The first is called RGB express and much to my surprise I was quite impressed with it! The aim is to get your truck to the garage, sometimes picking up cargo on the way. You plan your route, then finger swipe the way you want your truck to go. Press play and you're off! 

 I can see how this would fit in nicely in the early years and was impressed when it became clear that the further you progressed through the app, the more thinking is required! 

When you get to certain levels (and you reach them quite quickly) you have to think through the routes for both your trucks as they can't cross over. Perfect! Logical reasoning, unambiguous instructions, creating and debugging are covered in an EYFS style! 

The second app looks very familiar, in a Beebot kind of way. Code blast differs in that it makes writing algorithm slightly easier, in that turns and moves are not separate commands. For that reason I wouldn't give it to a child who has mastered Beebot, as this would confuse them (it initially confused me!) It's a nice introduction to writing algorithms and the commands are visible on the right hand side of the app. When you press play it highlights in green where it us, which helps debugging when it goes pear shaped! As you can see, the algorithms can be quite lengthy.

When I completed 12 levels I earned a certificate, which I knows important to many children.

I'm now on the silver level and am now able to shoot aliens that are in the way. This will keep some children interested, if they have kept their interest up to level 12.

I am intrigued as to what will happen in gold level and am hopeful that it may progress onto the repeat command, but presently I don't have enough time to investigate. I shall find a willing beta tester next week at school! I will add their opinions asap.

Don't forget you can find some more computing apps on my ipad site.