Mr P's ICT blog - Tech to raise standards!

Today with Year 1 and 2, we created our own digital Advent Calendars! After discussing the idea behind Advent, I explained to the children that we would be making a digital Advent Calendar and one that everyone can use and enjoy. We started by discussing what could be behind each door on our calendar. As a class, we decided to share some facts we knew about Christmas. Children were given time to come up with as many facts about everything to do with Christmas. We then listed these on the board. Using Pic Collage , the children then created a picture with all the numbers needed for the countdown to Christmas. Once they had created their picture, they saved this to the camera roll. The children then opened the app, ThingLink, which is a free app and web tool that makes your images interactive. There is so much potential to this app in many areas of the curriculum, and I have used this previously here and here . From the iPad app, children can add text or videos on top of t...

This is the first time I have nominated but here it goes: Best individual blog - iPad4Schools Best group blog - 100 Word Challenge  Best new blog - Inspired Minds   Best class blog - Davyhulme Year 5 Best ed tech / resource sharing blog - ICT Magic Best teacher blog - Learning in Hand Most influential blog post of the year - Now that's what I call Outstanding Best individual tweeter -  @ICTEvangelist  Best twitter hashtag - #ukedchat Best free web tool - Dropbox Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast - The Literacy Shed Best educational wiki - Primary Ideas Best educational use of a social network - Quadblogging Best mobile app - Explain Everything Lifetime achievement -   David Mitchell 

If you manage time within the endless bombardment of assessments and data to actually talk to the children in your class, they will probably chat non stop about MineCraft. I have to quote my stepson for the easiest definition of what it is, to which he sarcastically commented, "Well you can mine and you can craft things!" He is borderline obsessed, when I asked him to elaborate further, I was astounded at how rich his enthusiasm and willing to talk about this game. Personally I don't get it, but I soon realised that I don't need to. As a teacher, I just need to know it will get my class engaged and can be used to inspire writing. After a quick tutorial from my stepson and trawling through some great websites about minecraft in the classroom, I soon realised the unbelievable potential with this game. Some of the best ideas I have come across have come from  @thecommonpeople  and he has a long list of ways to use minecraft in the classroom on his Youtube channe...

A few months ago, I wrote an article looking at how certain accounts on twitter are fantastic for providing amazing pictures that can be used to spark creative writing, discussion and other useful activities in class. To read the post - click here . To make it easier to keep an eye on all these accounts I have created a twitter list which you can subscribe to here - Media in The Classroom . None of these accounts are ran by teachers or people working within education, so you cannot always guarantee that they will post material appropriate for the classroom, so always find pictures you want to use in your own time without children present in case there are tweets they shouldn't see. Since writing the original post I have found other twitter accounts that provide some simply spectacular pictures that can be used in so many different ways in the classroom. Here are some examples: @AbondonedPics Abandoned playground in Syria pic.twitter.com/h6BHzsXyHw — Abandoned (@Abandon...