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

The app ' Sneak ,' has been one I have been desperate to try! I came across the app so long ago I can't remember who first shared it with me! Anyway, for any households who need an app to keep younger children engaged and quiet this half term, Sneak is the answer! I can't wait to use this in an EYFS and KS1 classroom. What this app entails is different from most apps for younger children, just watch the official trailer - Now that my brood have started Nursery, I decided to give this app a go... Wow! The iPad ran out of battery before the children stopped playing! Playing hide and seek whilst trying to take pictures of different monsters had them hooked! The app has two modes of catching the children - listening using the microphone or watching for any quick movements using the front iPad camera, you can choose either one or both. There are a range of different monsters to snap and it is great to have an app where more than one child can take part! I couldn...

I am a massive fan of Augmented Reality! I have previously blogged about it here and here.  It can be used to inspire, share and enhance learning in a number of ways. The latest way in which we have used Augmented Reality is to create an interactive reading display. The initial inspiration came from this tweet I stumbled across on twitter - I saw this outside @bball_tracyj 's classroom today... I almost broke down & started dancing. #unionrxi #musicchat pic.twitter.com/BygtaCFRml — Dr. Justin Tarte (@justintarte) October 1, 2014 And so have created a very similar display thanks to the wonderful staff at Davyhulme Primary - However we decided to make ours a little differently. I asked all the children to create a Tellagami review of their favourite book using the cover as the background. Each cover was then printed and used as a trigger image to create Auras using the app Aurasma. We also had some fun reworking some of our favourite pop songs to try and promote ...

I am very excited to announce that my latest eBook - The 12 iPad lessons of Christmas , is available on the iBook store now! This new eBook contains 12 fantastic lessons that will inspire and engage your children in the run up to Christmas. Covering a range of different curriculum areas including; Literacy, Numeracy, Geography, Computing, Art, Languages, RE and PSHCE, this eBook will be a great resource for any iPad classroom.  With lessons using a range of apps such as: Thinglink, Pic Collage, iMovie, Puppetpals, Phoetic and many others, each contains a clear explanation and many contain examples of children's work from the primary classroom. Make the most of children enthusiasm for Christmas with lessons that really help develop children's learning in innovative and creative ways. You can buy your copy now from the iBooks store or have a PDF copy emailed for you to print or save on any device! CLICK THE LINK BELOW! If you do download a...

Today I started a new project with a group of Year 5 children. After researching about Polar Bears, a pupil stumbled across this website - saveyupi.com . After discussing the issue with the class, we felt the need to learn more and try to help this defenceless animal. After a shared writing session, where we tried to use as many of Alan Peat and Mat Sullivan's exciting sentences as possible, the children wanted to create something that would catch people's attention. Using greenscreen, we created a video sharing our research about the topic. Adding music and images helped to enhance the writing and make it more Here is the finished effort - I am hoping this video will inspire some amazing writing that we will be doing over the next few weeks on this topic. After the amazing response we had last year to our #blackfish  and #marius project, I would love to have the same impact on children's learning this time round. What I have found is that when children are w...

I am a big fan of asking children to write stories from different points of views. I think it is a challenging way for children to create stories. One form of this method is writing stories as inanimate objects, for example I recently posted this picture on my Facebook page, showing Mona Lisa's view and think this would be a great writing stimulus - Recently, I viewed an advert for SSE Energy Supplies and think it would make an amazing writing stimulus - Here are a few ideas for how you could use this advert in class - Discussion - Reading Skills Watch the first 10 seconds, listen carefully to the sounds? Where is this story set to begin with? What time of day is it? How do you know? How do people react to the Orangutan roaming the city streets? Why do you think no-one pays much attention? This could lead into a discussion about people being too busy to notice amazing things around them - this video discusses this. Pause at 25 seconds, what is the Orangutan i...

With the new iOS 8 update, iTunes have started to offer apps in bundles which is great for teachers as it means you can save money! For schools who have a lot of iPads, this is a great way to save more of the precious budget. I am a massive fan of Apps Gone Free , where paid apps are released for free for a limited period and often share useful apps on twitter. Below are some app bundles that I would recommend looking into for schools: Quick Math Pack -   Bundle - £1.49 Separately - £2.76 These are some of my favourite apps to use in Numeracy, children really enjoy using them and the additions of Quick Clocks and Quick Fractions make these apps usable with plenty of different maths objectives. I have also been sent the new app from the Quick Math team and am very excited at the potential so make sure you keep a keen eye out for that one! Let's do Mental Maths - Bundle - £4.99 Separately - £11.94 These are fantastic apps to support mental maths tailored...

The skills that you need to be a successful mathematician in school – at least, the skills against which children are assessed in SATS tests – are much narrower than the broad range of skills that you need whe n us ing mathematics in the real world. Maths ideas and concepts have evolved to help people find efficient solutions to a range of practical problems; yet mathematics is often seen as being a relatively closed, abstract subject. The Mathematics Apprenticeship helps to bridge this gap. In it, the children get to ‘do’ mathematics in real contexts, helping them to see the practical application – and importance – of maths as a subject. Also, like in the majority of real-life contexts, being able to ‘do the maths’ is only one part of what it takes to complete a tasks successfully. The children will have to organise the work between the team members; prioritise tasks so that they meet time deadlines; communicate their ideas in writing; and interact confidently with a range o...