Category: Primary School ICT

Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 in the primary classroom

Posted on by primaryt

Microsoft have released Office Web Apps 2010, this is big news for Primary Schools.  Continue reading to find out why…

Price

Office Web Apps is completely free, you don’t need to buy into Microsoft Office or pay any registration free.  In fact you can start using it right now by visiting Microsoft Office Live.

Documents are stored online

When you work on an office web app all of your documents are stored on Microsoft’s Skydrive.  This means that even if your local computer crashes you won’t lose any documents.  By storing files online you can also access them from anywhere with an internet connection and easily share and collaborate with other people.  Of course the collaboration isn’t as great as PrimaryPad as it is only sentence by sentence and not really-real time 😛

No download or purchase required

Because Office web apps 2010 are completely online you don’t need to download, install or configure anything before you get started.  Watch the video below to get an idea of how simple it is to use.  For advanced editor features you will have to purchase Office 2010

Management with Live @ Edu

Live @ Edu is a service available for your primary school that allows you to have a management portal that manages the configuration of Microsoft Office Web Apps for your school.  Live @ Edu offers a lot more than this but essentially if you think of it being a way to customize a pupil or teachers experience of using one of the Microsoft Office Web Apps tools then you can’t go far wrong!

Limitations

With Web Apps being relatively new (although in Beta for a long time at Microsoft) there are some obvious limitations:

  • Difficult to wrap text around images
  • Impossible to send content straight from a school MIS to the Web Apps.

I strongly recommend signing into your hotmail/live account and clicking the Office button and having a play.  Only you will know how your school uses Office applications so only you can say what is a limitation for you.  If you do find any please post them as a comment!

Summary

With office 2010 being familiar to schools and a very few barriers to uptake I can see this perfectly complimenting the work we are doing in Bradford, I look forward to deploying Live@Edu and think that the impact of extending learning should be easily measurable from an assessment point of view.  The conservatives want to focus on the basics, what better way to focus on the basics than by delivering them anywhere, any time?

Have you had a chance to play with it yet?  Is it too limiting for you?  Do you believe we should be blogging/emailing  instead of word processing?

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Jaycut in the primary classroom – Video editing

Posted on by John McLear

Recently when making my GTA application I checked out Jaycut.

Jaycut is an online video editing tool.   I was super sceptical of using Jaycut, what with the size of video files and how slow preview should be over the internet, especially on my poxy home internet connection. I was very surprised by the results, although at one point I did lose all of my work!  Watch the video and check it out.. No doubt it will be filtered inside of your school, get calling your LA/internet provider and get it opened up.  It’s another great web2 tool we should be supporting.

As you can see it is very simple to use and accessible anywhere which makes it my #1 preferred option for editing video after they have been captured by a digital video camera.

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Bye bye creative curriculum?

Posted on by John McLear

The new Primary Curriculum is axed. Cutting the creative curriculum means 1 of 2 things, either:
a) schools can adopt their own creative curriculum without government guidance
or
b) schools have to stick to the current curriculum

Option a seems to make most sense as Cameron talks about empowering teachers.

So it is very likely schools will have to stick the current curriculum (option a) as sensible decisions isn’t the way Whitehall operates.  Anyone else get the “If it can be cut – cut it” type mentality?  On the same day as Cameron reminded us that our national debt is larger than Ron Jeremy’s libido.

It is no surprise that any “new spending” or “new project” would get cut but it seems like the Conservatives need to be clear and frank about the Primary Curriculum and their reasons for not proceeding with it after teachers have collectively spent tens of thousands of hours working towards delivering it.

Before Becta closes they have rushed through the Self review framework changes.

What do you think?  Do you think it will be option a or b?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

UPDATE:  In the meantime, the Department has advised schools that the existing primary curriculum will continue to be in force in 2011/12 and primary schools should plan on that basis.  Source

Ouch…

Focusing on Reading, writing and arithmetic will be a disaster.

Posted on by John McLear

View from 5:30 if you don’t have time to watch it all. Basically saying it will be a disaster to go back to reading, writing and maths only model. For the most part I agree. I believe that it is our duty to give pupils opportunities to be creative as a priority.

Educational Gaming on a PC without a iwb/keyboard/mouse.

Posted on by John McLear

Here are two alternative ways to control the Interactive whiteboard or PC in your classroom while engaging in game based learning.

I apologize for the slightly lame video quality, Camera Mouse stuff starts at 2 minutes 20 seconds.

Timocco‘s coloured object tracking.

Using coloured objects and encouraging motor skills. The timocco software (considering I only had a limited access version(wtdeuce?)) is average, I mean its okay but it’s not web based and it’s a bit of a pain to configure, the music is pretty annoying and the games don’t really present much scope for learning.  The focus here is on an individual motor skills.  It would be interesting to see multi-player built into this package however I think the obstacle of it not being a web based tool should be overcome first.

Head tracking with Camera Mouse 2010.

Why ‘o Why does this software not have a simple function that allows the mouse to be clicked when the operator snaps their fingers? Other than that, it was quite an eye opener for me how easy it was to get onto primary games arena and start learning.. Obvious obstacles of no keyboard so I can’t input anything or do left/right.  Obvious frustration with the delay before mouse click too..   Other than that, the opportunity and scope for different applications such as this one are obvious.  It was my second time trying to use this tool, it is extremely natural to adopt.  This application is not web based either but it is more of a way of extending your operating system as opposed to just extending an exclusive application.

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Websites and info:
Timocco
Camera Mouse 2010
The webcam I’m using – Microsoft Lifecam