Parklands Primary BLT

I finally got around to introducing my class to Comic Life. We had been doing a literacy unit on newspaper reports and I though it would make a change for them to do something a bit different to end the unit. As they’d already written their ‘proper’ reports, I got them to act out the stories in their reports as part of a drama session. After photographing them, I uploaded the pictures to their laptops and showed them the basics of Comic Life. These are some of the results after one session.

It really is easy to use (for the children!)

I just wanted to thank everyone for turning up to the BLT day. I hope you got as much out of it as I did I was a bit nervous about the whole thing – it’s good to see so many positive responses about Zu3D and the other bits we looked at. I also notice that there are quite a few new Twitterers about! Hopefully this community/network will grow and we’ll be able to share some great ideas over the coming months.

How might we use Zu3D across the curriculum?

The Northants BLT ideas on using Primary Pad

Hello and welcome to the BLT Development day.
Can you jot down any thoughts or ideas, about the use of Primary Pad onto this pad, as it will help other like-minded individuals to be as inspired as you are! 

This would be a great tool for us working on split sites to communicate across sites which we do by email at present but we could chat to one another. Would also be good for Senior management to use rather than sending lots of email to one another. 

PEER Improvement of writing pieces.
Research for non fiction writing class collection of information
class assessment of a piece of writing.

In Year 1 I could use it for collaborative poetry.  I did this last week just using good old fashioned pen and paper but could have groups adding words to have a wordbank for a shape poem.  They could then add at home (once I have written to parents to inform them)

I think it would be fantastic to have an on-line Class Council Discussion… Children without the confidence needed to put forward ideas in class would find this easier (we’ve done something similar on our new platform – but it would be fun to embed this too.
Writing a story creatively with the whole class even whole school and across schools!
I believe using it to build a wiki about a topic like Circus Maximus would be great.

Homework – continuing adding to non-fiction or fiction writing – started in school – completed at home.
Poems, story writing, word based numeracy such as naming triangles or shapes, the possibilities are endless.
I like the idea of using it for homework that can be continually added to throughout the week or the length of the homework task. 
I would like to use it as a starter to find out what children know about the unit of work I was about to start.

It could be used at the beginning and end of unit of work: what do you know, what do you want to find out, what you have found out. Just realised i’ve written a similar thing to the person above me!
Use this to brainstorm ideas as a class using laptops

Very good for peer marking
I would be a bit concerned about homework – what controls have we got to stop silly things happening? I agree.
We used our learning platform last year in a wiki for children to share everything they knew about Luxor but this would be so much better as they can all go on at the same time and edit each others work

It looks like Monday 8th will see a fair number of teaching staff from Northampton and beyond attending the Saints Study Centre.
We’re lucky to have David Henley from Zu3D coming to demonstrate the fantastic stop-motion animation package. This is a great resource for literacy lessons as well as developing animation skills. There will also be mini-workshops on Primary Pad www.primarypad.com , Prezi www.prezi.com as well as feedback from the recent BLT trip to South Korea. In the afternoon we’re hoping to have some iPads, iPods and Flip cameras to play around with. All in all a day that is well worth the cost (free).
As it’s free – you need to bring some lunch.
See you there.