I have now completed my visits to Bradford schools covering some basics of being empowered by web based resources. The meetings have usually lasted about an hour and have been relatively structureless & informal.
Considering their approach..
to identifying their pupils, parents(current and prospective) and teachers requirements for a learning platform. Including showing the school example of how other schools are using web based technology. The main idea of this is to get the school to think about what they want the web to do for them, not what they can do on the web.
Web based vs downloadable
I showed each school how to access to the Primary School Web2 searchable database which will allow them to search for web2 resources in the future when they are contemplating replacing a current legacy application.
I showed off Microsoft‘s Live at Edu showing how even the most pricey of apps are moving on-line and the experience is relatively high quality compared to a few years ago.
I explained why I believe web based is better than downloadable especially for mobile projects. I also tried to explain the new method for distributing apps through systems such as Google Market and iStore.
Web2 after school
I covered some useful web sites and resources that are focused on extending pupils learning outside of the school gates. The examples I used were Mr Thorne does Phonics and Primary Games Arena amongst others.
The biggest problem I faced during the sessions were the amount of sites that were filtered so access was not possible. This is something all LA’s are working on and struggling with. This problem wont be experienced at home so I suggested that the teacher/head continued investigating resources from the searchable database at home.
Summary
I enjoyed doing the sessions and I spent the last few minutes of the meetings asking the school if they thought the meetings were valuable. Many schools have expressed an interest in pursuing things further with their own web based systems and all have said they will use some of the web based resources already available on the internet. Nearly all of the schools were not aware of all the resources available and were amazed at the quality and ease of use of a lot of the sites I showed them.
It is worth remembering that these sessions are often required just as a way to introduce schools to the basics around web based technology and they aren’t meant to be a thorough session with direct outputs or goals. I hope/think they went well and will probably run them again next year depending on funding from Primary Technology who funded all of the sessions this year. I do hope that some schools begin exploring Web2 in more depth and begin working with the Education Bradford ICT team to embed Web2 into their whole school plan.