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

I love using technology to create WOW moments to inspire writing. When children can create content that inspires their imaginations they are completely engaged with their writing. One tool that continues to inspire writing is Greenscreen! I have previously used Greenscreen in lots of different ways such as - Exploring our own Jurassic World Jurassic School Mr P is abducted by Aliens Multimedia Digital Stories  Making new knowledge stick! Today Greenscreen was used to inspire stories where the children were shrunk to a fraction of their size. Using the app Doink Greenscreen, we created videos giving the illusion that the children were tiny in size, exploring the classroom where everything was massive. These videos were then shared with the class and the visuals provided the children with the perfect stimulus to write a story to accompany the videos. They then performed their writing over the videos to create some amazing digital stories! Within the recording process, children...

I know plenty of EYFS and KS1 classrooms have a Barnaby Bear . A teddy bear that spends every weekend with a child from the class. Usually, a book goes with the bear and parents are encouraged to document what happens over the weekend and this is then shared back in class. Last weekend, my son Harry came home with his class teddy! We had a great weekend which we documented in the book by printing some photos, but as you would probably guess I couldn't just leave it at text and images. I wanted to use technology to enhance what can be done with the book. Firstly, I wanted to document Harry's recount of the weekend. As he isn't able to write yet, I used the app Audioboom to record some audio of him talking through his weekend. This was uploaded online and turned into a QR code which was printed and stuck in the book. For me, this is a simple but effective way in which younger children can contribute more to the book. It has so many other uses in the classroom. On t...

A recent advert has inspired this blog post - I watched this and thought the same sort of message could be applied to teaching (take away the sitting an exam and CV.) It got me thinking, how often are you told you're doing great? Every news article I seem to read at the minute about education seems to always have a negative tone. Just to quote one I read today - "There is nothing anecdotal about this. A recent YouGov poll commissioned by the NUT teaching union suggests 53 per cent of teachers are thinking of quitting in the next couple of years. News reports earlier this year revealed that four out of 10 teachers quit within a year of qualifying. And 11,000 young teachers leave the profession before they have even completed their development as educators. The exodus has almost tripled in six years and there is much talk of a teacher recruitment crisis. This waste of talent, enthusiasm and youthful idealism is shocking. It is also staggeringly expensive. There is a ...

The latest John Lewis Christmas advert was revealed today and again they have delivered with their 'Man on the Moon' film. On the ' Improving Reading and Writing through Popular Children's Movies and Media' Conference with John Murray we discuss how powerful storytelling is and this shouldn't be neglected by focusing purely on the technical aspect of writing. I believe the John Lewis adverts are so popular because each one tells a story. You can read my ideas for the advert in 2014 here , also look at some more ideas on the Christmas Shed . Here is the advert - What I love about this year's effort, is how powerful the music and the lyrics are. John Murray has kindly put together some questions based on the song and the lyrics, which were originally performed by Oasis. Here is a link to the lyric video - Questions to consider, this can be used as a pre-reading task, aimed at Upper KS2 - Why do you think the singer wants to leave ‘this ci...

Snapchat is one of the most popular social media messaging apps. The app has recently had some impressive updates including adding a animated filter over your face and the recent addition of rewind, slow motion and fast forward. These can create some very simple but effective special effects to trick an audience into believing children may have super powers! NEW BLOG POST - Using Snapchat to turn children into superheroes! https://t.co/FvIbokEero @ICTEvangelist @alanpeat pic.twitter.com/34vfxX6B8E — Mr Parkinson (@ICT_MrP) November 5, 2015 Now Snapchat may not be an app teachers would feel comfortable using in class, therefore, an alternative app is Videoshop . This app popped up on Apps Gone Free a while back, the app has a wealth of different features - 1. Trim: Cut out any unwanted moments. 2. Music: Add from your iPod library to your videos. 3. Sound effects: Choose from animals noises, farts, explosions, laughter, and more. 4. Slow motion (or fast motio...

Tonight is Bonfire night, so in school we have been looking at using the iPad to create some Bonfire artwork! A couple of years ago, I used brushes after being inspired by a lesson from @SimonHaughton . These were some of our efforts - This year we decided to use a different app - MyBrushes Pro , the range of different tools and brush types to use is fantastic. Here are a couple of our efforts from Year 1 -  I have previously used this app with Year 1 to create some lovely Christmas tree designs, you can read more about them here . In KS2 we linked our pictures more with Literacy and first generated as much vocabulary to describe fireworks. We used Socrative to collect all the children's ideas and put all the vocabulary into Tagxedo -  The children then had to create their own firework display picture using the fantastic TypeDrawing app. Asking the children to try and include as much vocabulary in their picture. Here are some of their effo...

As a follow-up to the successful project last year (see here) , we will once again be looking to connect classrooms across the world. In the lead up to Christmas, you can deepen your understanding of different Christmas traditions by asking other children from around the world about how they celebrate Christmas in their community. The project is simple, sign up using the form below, pick a school from the number of willing participants in the spreadsheet and arrange a time to connect using a variety of ways such as Skype, Google Hangouts and Ustream/periscope. Please be aware of time zone differences and this website may help - Click Here. You may also wish to live stream an assembly or Christmas show to share with the world to Youtube or use Periscope, or if you have been busy blogging and creating work related to Christmas, you can share it on the global Padlet below. What you may need to take part in this project: An email address Skype Account Google + account U...