MAJOR UPDATE (v1.1): My School Holidays (inc lots of freebies)

February 7, 2012 in my school holidays, primary school, school, school holiday dates by Admin Admin | No comments

Today we are pleased to announce the launch version 1.1 of our popular School Holiday Dates website, My School Holidays.

With over 1 million people every month using My School Holidays it is crucial your school holiday dates are up to date.

Mobile Phone App

We’ve just released a FREE Android school holiday countdown widget for My School Holidays users which can be found on the Android Market here. Or from your phone scan this QR code (or visit the Android Market on your phone and search for My School Holidays).

msh_widget_qr_code

Printable Calendar Cards

Don’t have an Android? But want a way to remember your school holiday dates on the go? How about printing them onto something that fit right in your pocket? Maybe a business card? You can now select your school on My School Holidays and print business card sized calendars with your school’s holidays on. You could even print a few pages, laminate them and give to parents? It’s super easy to do:
Simply find your school on My School Holidays and click the Printable Business Cards link. Print it out double sided and off you go.

Autocomplete on Search

We revamped the search box on the website so our autocomplete search will suggest school names to you as you type in the name of your school. Try it out now at My School Holidays

Going global

We have added more countries dates to My School Holidays. We now currently support: Germany, Canada,
The United Kingdom(includes Wales), Australia, The United States of America and New Zealand with more countries due over the next few months. Also useful if you’re planning to go on holiday in another country and want to find out when the local schools are on holiday.

iCal & GMail support

GMail, Outlook and Thunderbird users can now enjoy a simple iCal import of their school holiday calendar.

To do this visit your school on My School Holidays then click “More options” then select the format you wish your holiday dates.

Edit your own school holiday dates

We want your school to update your school holiday dates but we know how difficult it can be to encourage administrators to do this so we have given this functionality to the hardest working people in the education system, the teachers.

Teachers can now use a really simple interface to insert their own school holiday dates. They can also add casual/training/inset days. To insert your days simply find your school on My School Holidays and Click “Edit the dates”.

Behind the scenes

We have developed a new way of predicting and validating school holiday dates that you will see come to life in Version 1.2. We are currently using this method to quickly collect school holiday dates and publish them live on the website.

We will be using this technique along side other techniques to gather Holiday Data from trusted sources and provide you with the most up to date information on school holidays from around the world.

Blowing our own trumpet.

December 1, 2011 in primary paint, PrimaryBlogger, primarypad by Admin Admin | No comments

Sometimes we get email that really make all of the hard work we put in worthwhile. Here is one of those emails:

Just a note to say thank you for the excellent two packages I have used today. As you are no doubt aware that today was a strike day and unfortunately our school decided to close. Without politics being discussed I decided not to strike and used the Internet and two of your packages to host my lessons – run from the classroom, but with children in their homes. The technology worked seamlessly. My only issue was not having names on primary paint.  The software was quality all over and made my interactive lessons almost as they would be in the classroom. Thanks again.

So not only did we get some positive, quality feedback we also got a bug report :) Thanks to the sender!

Primary Schools’ Hidden & Broken Online Barriers

November 30, 2011 in ict, primary school, primarylogon by Admin Admin | No comments

Personalised learning needs a smooth transition between various service providers who are
offering learning content and activities. With continual password prompts being a barrier to this
style of learning, and putting off many schools. Single Sign On (SSO) should be one of the
underlying technologies that removes this barrier, yet it is failing to live up to its promise and the
hard work that many people have put into it. This endangers the whole thrust of personalisation
mediated by technology.

Schools have both a want and a need to try to personalise students’ online learning. Since 2006
the majority of schools, districts and local authorities have tried to accomplish this by accessing
web based learning resources using a Single Sign On system called Shibboleth to avoid
remembering and having to enter multiple passwords on multiple web applications. At
Government level this system is called “Federated Access Management (FAM)” but as the scope of
my report covers a specific mechanism I will not be using this term. This system isn’t achieving its
goals, in this report I will try to explain why and how we can go about making Single Sign On a
more natural experience for schools. If I was reading this report I would have given up before now,
thinking “Meh, its someone else’s problem” but really it isn’t. I hope you can take some time to
read on and to find out how we can all work together to solve the problem.

Download the report: PDF, Microsoft Word, Open Document.

See previous revisions of the report: http://john.primarypad.com/ep/pad/view/single-sign-on-writeup/latest

Quadblogging with PrimaryBlogger

November 21, 2011 in ict, primary school, PrimaryBlogger by John McLear | No comments

This is a guest post by David Mitchell.

So, if you’re reading this, the chances are you are a blogger, if you’re not a blogger, your class might be bloggers and if your class are not blogging, the very fact you are here reading this suggests that you probably should be.

I started blogging with my class less than two years ago. In that time, blogging has transformed my teaching, my attitude and my learning too. Blogging has become a very powerful tool in my teacher’s toolbox. Through hard work and some good luck, I have managed to develop a large audience for my pupils to showcase their talents to. Through the use of Twitter, I have tweeted links each day – sometimes as many as 20 per day out to the world. If people don’t like what I am tweeting about it’s simple, they can ‘unfollow’ me. Believe me, many have – and told me too!

During my time researching blogging, supporting other blogging teachers an just observing new blogs, one thing has become very clear. Building an audience takes time. It took me about 2 months to get regular stream of visitors to my first class blog: (www.y62010.heathfieldcps.net) back in December 2009. I have seen so many teacher start blogging with their class and either because they lost interest or their pupils lost interest the once exciting new platform that promised so much – delivered very little!

Here’s where a little idea I had could help you out…

Imagine 4 schools or classes of similar aged pupils from different parts of the world. All sharing one common objective – to publish their learning to a global audience. Instead of waiting 2-3 months to get your audience, why not use the community around you to support you in these first months. This is where QuadBlogging comes in. It’s free, takes 1 minute to sign up to and promises to deliver a truly global audience of like minded people to your class blog.

Here’s how it works:

Here’s what Miss B’s Class think about QuadBlogging and the impact it has had on the children:

QuadBlogging has been going from strength to strength. The September to December cycle has have over 500 classes from 18 countries. We’re talking somewhere in the region of 15,000 – 20,000 pupils from around the world. Sign up allows you to specify where you’d like some of your Quaddies to be from as a result, allowing you to fit QuadBlogging into your curriculum. The next round of QuadBlogging sees registration open right now. The cycle will run from January 2012 – April 2012:

Sign up here: www.QuadBlogging.net

Here’s what some teachers already QuadBlogging have to say about it:

“Hightlights of Quadblogging? All of it! The children in my class are absolutely absorbed and loving our purposeful learning journey around the world. Each day brings something new to our classroom. You can’t “plan” that!
We are Skyping to meet our Australian buddies today.
Thank you for introducing Quadblogging to us!”

“Quadblogging offers so many fantastic opportunities to connect with others all over the world! My students are 5-6 year olds and they are learning so much from our quaddies. There is great excitement and engagement in the classroom everyday as we explore the different blogs and ask questions and write comments to our new friends. Our blog says it all –http://prepblackburnsouth.blogspot.com/
What an amazing initiative – linking students and teachers from all over the world. Thank you!”

“WOW! Quadblogging has been awesome – an intentional response to our writing which is fantastic for the children to read. It’s authentic feedback from other students and we can’t put a price on that! The class have absolutely hung on every word written by their buddies and have avidly searched through each other blog for interesting ideas to compare and contrast to their own. We have truly gone global through this and their sense of their place in the world has really become a reality. Quadblogging rocks!”

Registration is free and easy, the impact could be huge and powerful!

www.quadblogging.net

David Mitchell
aka @DeputyMitchell
Founder of QuadBlogging

Embedding Education games in your blog

November 15, 2011 in primary games arena, primary school, PrimaryBlogger by Admin Admin | No comments

Embedding educational games in your blog is now really easy.

Step 1. Find the game you want on Primary Games Arena

Step 2. Click Share then Click Link, click again for embed code

Step 3. Copy the embed code (Right click Select all, Right click Copy), it will look something like “<iframe width=800 height=600 src=”http://primarygamesarena.com/redirect.php?id=250″></iframe>”

Step 4. Create a new post or edit an existing one. Click HTML in the top right corner of your editor.

Step 5. Right click on the editor and click Paste.

NEW FEATURE: Printable holiday dates onto business cards

November 9, 2011 in my school holidays, primary school by Admin Admin | No comments

Ever wanted to print your school holiday dates onto something that fit right in your wallet? Maybe a business card? Maybe even print a load out, laminate them and sell them to parents? Well now you can and it’s super easy!

Simply find your school on My School Holidays and click the Printable Business Cards link. Print it out and off you go!

Bradford Schools Remote Access upgrades

November 2, 2011 in bradford, ict, primary school, remote access by Admin Admin | No comments

On the 1st of November we implemented a number of upgrades to the Bradford Schools Remote Access system.

What has changed?

1. Remote Access is now smoother and faster. We are using new technology to ensure a smoother user experience.
2. A new Desktop client means that you can access your schools Remote Access from your desktop or start menu without having to go through the web browser.
3. Increased security means that you can be confident that only your staff are accessing your schools systems.

What if I have a problem with the new system?

Please get in touch and we will resolve it ASAP

Find out more about Bradford Schools Remote Access

8 ways to get PrimaryBlogger help and support

October 24, 2011 in blog, ict, primary school, PrimaryBlogger, wordpress by Admin Admin | No comments

1. The PrimaryBlogger community forum is by far the best place to ask any question, it’s full of enthusiastic PrimaryBlogger users.
2. Your favorite search engine.
3. Looking for a plugin? Try the wordpress plugin codex.
3. Looking for a theme? Try the wordpress theme codex.
5. Looking for plugin support? Try the WordPress community.
6. Want to speak to someone from the PrimaryBlogger or Primary Technology team? Try our live online chat!
7. Email our support desk.
8. Call our support team, this is the last case because we take a while to answer the phones!

Safe Search on the Bradford Learning Network

October 19, 2011 in ict, primary pad, primary school, Safe Search by Admin Admin | No comments

Today we rolled out a new feature for Bradford Learning Network(BLN) schools that we hope to roll out to other Broadband providers.

Regional Broadband consortiums such as the BLN purchase curriculum focused resources for their customers. We found that a number of schools were not aware of the resources they had access to so we decided to add a links section to safe search that will be displayed when any computer on the Bradford Learning Network accesses safe search.

The links direct the users to the single sign on link of their specific resource and have the Shibboleth WAYF set.

The links look like this:

You can directly link to http://primaryschoolict.com/bradford to access it from home.

If you would like similar functionality for your RBC or LA then please get in touch!

Technical note: We automatically detect the location of the visitor IE schools from the Bradford Learning Network just visit http://primaryschoolict.com and get the appropriate links. We do this based on IP address of the visitor

« Older entries