Autumn 2014 Hampshire IT Schools...successful women working in IT and then write 100 words saying which woman impressed them most and why, plus a further 100 words saying what they

Hampshire ITSchools

Autumn 2014

Look under the bonnet of Hampshire IT Help Desk

www.hants.gov.uk www.hants.gov.uk/itschools

The magazine that keeps all school staff, especially headteachers and governors, senior leaders and SIMS managers ahead of the game

Hampshire IT Schools – Autumn 2014

www.hants.gov.uk/itschools

ContactsFor comments and suggestions about the magazine, please contact the Editor, Barbara McSweeney: tel 01962 667821, email [email protected]

For all other inquiries, please contact the IT Help Desk, tel 01962 847007

Autumn 2014

Extra copiesIf you would like extra copies of Hampshire IT Schools, please call the IT Help Desk on 01962 847007. Or use the form at: www.hants.gov.uk/contactit

Previous issuesDownload this and previous issues at www.hants.gov.uk/itschools-newsletter

FormatIf you need this information in a different format, please call the IT Help Desk on 01962 847007

ContributorsAlistair Sackley, Strategy Manager, HCCCarole Bishop, Peel Common Junior SchoolDominic Coburn, Tom Webb, Sue Kent and Julie Burman, Forest Education CentreJos Creese, Chief Information Officer, HCCLiz Stoneham, Crofton Hammond Junior SchoolMark Campbell and Richard Moore, Court-Moor SchoolRenate Tracy, IT SIMS Lead, HCCSue Savory, County ICT Inspector/Advisor, HCCSuzanne Smith, TITCH Programme Manager, HCC

Welcome to the Autumn edition of Hampshire IT’s termly publication for schools.

I hope you will enjoy as much as I did reading how colleagues in schools around the

county are making imaginative use of ICT. The article about Forest Education Centre on pages 20-22 show just how extensively and creatively ICT can be used to improve learn-ing in a range of subjects, including English and food technology.

I am very keen that schools should see Hampshire IT Schools as a forum where teach-ers can exchange ideas, and for that reason we are increasing the number of copies being sent to each school, in the hope that copies will find their way into the staffroom.

I also hope you will find the news from my own area of the County Council, Hampshire

IT, of interest – in particular the competition we are sponsoring to encourage more girls to consider a career in the IT industry. (Please see page 5.)

As you may be aware, there is a marked gender imbalance in the IT industry. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and others have been running awareness campaigns in the media, and this competition is part of that.

I am also delighted that we now have more than 100 schools benefiting from our Hosted Schools Service. We will continue to invest in the service and deliver improvements. (See page 4.)

On page 6 you will find a report on this year’s Computing Conference for primary schools. We hope to build on the success of this annual and very well-attended event by running a similar conference for secondary schools in 2015.

Nick Davey, Lead Business PartnerHampshire IT


3IT Help Desk 01962 847007

Inside this issue…4 100th school takes Hosted School Service

4 TITCH programme update

5 Competition – IT needs girl power!

6-7 Thinking aloud – social machines

8 Primary Computing Conference – report

9-15 SIMS newsletter

16-17 Focus on....3-D printing at Court-Moor School

18-20 Forest Education Centre’s wide-ranging use of technology

21 My IT – Carole Bishop, Peel Common Junior School

22-23 Teaching computing – Liz Stoneham’s Robot Clubs

24 eLearn eTeach – have you booked a course yet?

FeedbackYour views are important to us. Please take five minutes to tell us what you think of this issue: email the editor: [email protected]

Hampshire IT’s new logoHampshire IT, the County Council’s IT service, now has its own logo, comprising a green disc within a circle. The thought behind the logo is “a round peg in a round hole”, encapsulating what we strive to achieve: services that are a perfect fit for Hampshire schools.



Riverside Community Special School became the 100th school to take the Hosted School Service from

Hampshire IT this Summer.

102 schools now use the service, with another four due to join the group very soon.

Catherine Marsh, Head of Riverside, in Waterlooville, said they decided to take the service for several reasons:

“The spread of payments over five years made it an attractive proposition, as being a small school, our budget restrictions were quite tight.

“Hampshire IT were able to bring in and demonstrate several options around laptops both for staff and pupils, and this helped with planning for storage and portability.

“I am also reassured that all our information is stored securely and centrally.”

Another school which opted to take the service during the Summer was St Thomas More’s Catholic Primary School, in Havant.

Headteacher Colin Flanagan said: “I’m glad we went with it. The quality is good, and everybody says Hampshire is reliable. Also the install was super- efficient. The team were amazing; they knew exactly what they were doing.”

100th school signs up forHosted School Service

Available through a five year contract, the Hosted School Service was devised to provide schools with a comprehensive, managed IT service.

For more information or to speak to someone about the service, please visit www.hants.gov.uk/hss or ring the Hampshire IT Helpdesk 01962 847007 or email [email protected]

The TITCH Programme is progress-ing with early schools work,

focussing on introducing address- cleansing and validation. Thanks to those schools who are piloting the processes for us and providing really useful feedback. The pilot has uncovered some tech-nical issues, which we are working on and hope to resolve shortly. We aim to be in contact with locally hosted SIMS schools this term and

to commence work with the centrally hosted SIMS schools in the new calendar year. We are also continuing work to evaluate the most cost-effective and beneficial solutions to support schools and the use of SIMS within schools and also how we can all benefit from better sharing of child data between schools and the local authority.In other areas covered by the TITCH

programme, the first new function-ality has gone live in Admissions, and we are now looking forward to introducing further modules in the next few months.

We are also working with Capita to develop a new-to-market social care solution which, whilst a longer term piece of work, will allow both organisations to benefit from an innovative and flexible IT solution to support Children’s Services.

TITCH Programme update from Programme Manager Suzanne Smith


5IT Help Desk 01962 847007

How to get involved – please register your school or, if your school has already signed up, find your school’s nominated Single Point of Contact at www.bcs.org/category/12271

Why do so few girls study computing and ICT at

A-Level compared to boys – even though research shows that nationally girls outperform boys in these subjects?

And why do so few women work in the IT industry when it has so many interesting jobs to offer?

These are the questions behind a competition being run by BCS Hampshire, the local branch of The Chartered Institute for IT, and sponsored by the Council’s IT service, Hampshire IT.

The competition aims to raise awareness amongst students and their teachers of the opportunities available in the world of IT – not just in programming but in business analysis, creative web design, project-management, customer service, organisational change and service design.

By now you may have seen a weekly school com inviting schools to take part in the competition and/or posters around your school, encouraging students and teachers to enter.

The age range for eligible students is years 10-13, approximately 14-18 years old, and students can be attending a school, college or education centre.

Boys can also enter the competition, which offers prizes of an iPad mini and work experience with Hampshire IT for the winning students and an iPad mini and £100 IT vouchers for classroom use for the winning teacher.

Jos Creese, Hampshire’s Chief Information Officer, is also Deputy President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

Jos said: “We want to dispel the myth that IT is the preserve of the male ‘geek’ or primarily about programming.

“Many roles are less about technology itself and more about how technology is used to deliver better outcomes in every industry for economic, social and environmental benefit.”

Light up IT! GIRL POWER needed !a competition to encourage more girls to consider a career in IT

Participating schools will receive this competition poster for download

The competition is based around an e-book, Women in IT: Inspiring the Next Generation, available from www.bcs.org/18254 (or search under the full title) and from Amazon.

Students are asked to read some or all the articles written by successful women working in IT and then write 100 words saying which woman impressed them most and why, plus a further 100 words saying what they think is great about IT.

Teachers: please visit the competition page www.bcs.org/ category/12271 to find the questions set for teachers.



Social machine technology is not science-fiction. It’s here already,

collecting and reusing data from our mobile phones, social media and in specialist wearable IT, help-ing us predict the weather, improve our health and understand the universe around us better. The way in which machines interact with our lives is getting more and more sophisticated, such as in driverless cars.

In the past we’ve built systems and collected data manually, for example by using surveys. Doing this at scale, such as gather-ing and analysing global weather data for forecasting, is complex and expensive and needs some very large computers. But web applications run on phones are free

and can source data from the public for nothing. This sort of crowd-sourcing can help in the classroom, providing new and immediate ways for children to interact with the world around them and turn theory into practice. And crowd-sourcing is nearly always more accurate (and quicker) than consult-ing experts. Weather, the economy, traffic, trends, news, health can all be tracked, based on real time information captured from social interaction, giving a faster, more accurate and more shareable means to predict and adapt.

Your pupils will certainly be using social networks like Facebook and Twitter, where people not only interact socially but share experiences and solve problems.

Social machines take this a step further, using simple software tools and networks of computers which link people to collaborate and co-create. They allow a large number of people to give a small amount of time or data to create a big effect, so allowing computing to develop and to deploy human traits to make judgements.

Your school may already be involved in a citizen science social machine, for example, GalaxyZoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) where amateur astronomers across the world help to identify types of galaxies, or in searching for the elusive New Forest cicada (www.newforestcicada.info)

Social machines can also be used to teach children and young people to protect themselves. Funding has

What’s the point of...

Social Machines?Hampshire County Council is involved in a University of Southampton research programme looking at how “social machines” can be designed and used to improve people’s lives, including those of children and young people.

Jos Creese, Hampshire County Council’s Chief Information Officer, spent a morning at the Royal Society in London reviewing the programme with Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, from the University of Southampton, who is leading the Social Machines (SOCIAM) programme.

Jos believes social machines will play an increasingly important part in our lives and that we need to plan now for their use and their control, including how we teach children to protect their privacy.

Thinking aloud


7IT Help Desk 01962 847007

recently been approved for a peer to peer website, Rave Stories, that will present contributions from other young people, recounting their experiences with novel psychoactive substances (formerly legal highs). Hopefully this will help protect other young people from becoming the next drug-related overdose or death.

Learning to protect our privacy

The development and prevalence of social machines and data-capture devices such as mobile phones and wearable technology will mean our personal data is used ever more subtly in marketing. Not just leaflets through the door or junk email – in future you will walk past an electronic bill-board in the street, and it will recognise your face, match it to your on-line shopping

habits and leisure interests and there and then present you with adverts relevant to you and your location. That might be a clothes sale or a theatre around the corner.

In my view this should not scare us, for either ourselves or our children, provided we remain in control, choosing whether and how to participate and what data to share. We don’t have to relinquish our personal data – but if we choose to do so, we should expect to see benefits. Done well, these social machines can help with education, employment, health and social well-being. This means we will need to develop our own understanding and awareness, learn new skills to protect our privacy and then teach these to our children (although inevitably some of them are already teaching us!)

The SOCIAM Project is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number EP/J017728/1 and comprises the universities of Southampton, Oxford and Edinburgh. It aims to pioneer the use of human and computational intelligence to empower people to solve their own problems via the Web.For more info visit: http://sociam.org

If you would like to share your thoughts about the impact of future technology on teaching and learning, please email the Hampshire IT Schools editor: [email protected]

The elusive New Forest cicada, Cicadetta montana s. str., focus of a citizen science social machine: www.newforestcicada.info

Distant spiral galaxy – is your school participating in citizen science social machine GalaxyZoo?

A pupil from a Hampshire school has been selected to sit on the UK’s first Digital Youth Council to help shape the debate on how technology is being used in the classroom.

Isobel, from Eggars School, Alton, is one of eight pupils from across the UK chosen by Virgin Media Business, which has set up the Council. They will come together with influencers and representatives of the Department for Education to share their experiences and debate how technology can be used to shape their futures.

The Digital Youth Council is part of ‘Generation Tech’ – a state-of-the nation review, led by Sir Richard Branson and looking at the way technology is used in education.

Hampshire pupil chosen for Digital Youth Council



In Winchester on 26 June over 150 ICT co-ordinators joined

the Hampshire ICT Team for a day that was facilitated by Tim Rylands and Sarah Neild.

The day was inspirational, and everybody was buzzing with the ideas that both Tim and Sarah shared with us.

Tools that they demonstrated included Gadwin, Tag Galaxy, Flickr, Clevr, Arounder, Photosynth, Stereographic and Audacity to name but a few.

Sarah also demonstrated how to use PowerPoint in demonstration mode so that teachers can set up learning tasks with commercial quality output.

The day was significantly focused

on digital literacy and using ICT as a tool for learning to inspire all those teachers to use these tools to support teaching in all subject areas.

The message from the conference was very much around the impor-tance of retaining ICT as a tool to support learning within the new computing programme of study. As I have always said, it is about pedagogy not technology.

The day was so inspiring that we managed to arrange with Tim and Sarah that they return to Hampshire on 2 July 2015 to deliver another day for us.

It will be different to this year because it will also incorporate workshops facilitated by school practitioners in Hampshire.

More news from eLearn eTeach Shortly after the conference, we succeeded in appointing a replacement for Stella Kenny. Phil Bagge, whom many of you will know, joined us in September to work two days a week in HIAS.

We have also reviewed our courses and subject groups.

For an update please go to the eLearn eTeach website pages: www.hants.gov.uk/ elearneteach

Computing Conference Report by Sue Savory, County ICT Inspector/Adviser

IT Help Desk 01962 847007

Management Information

SIMS Newsletter

9

So what’s new.... in SIMS?

We’re pleased to announce a number of exciting new features in SIMS as part of the Summer 2014 release. The latest upgrade also brought support for the Autumn 2014 School Census and the School Workforce Census 2014. Let’s look at the top highlights:

From September, Education, Health and Care plans (EHCP) replaced statements for children with special educational needs.

SIMS introduced a new EHCP panel and a restructured SEN setup page. The new ‘need types’ for compatibil-ity with the new plans and the new SEN statuses were included, which will run parallel with the old status.

There are new options for Educa-tion, Health and Care Plans (E) and for SEN Support (K). The School Action (A) and School Action Plus (P) options are being removed at the end of the academic year; these codes should not be used for new pupils.

With even greater responsibility for the progress of children with SEN, it will become increasingly

important for teachers to be able to access the relevant data to monitor the effectiveness of support and interventions. There’s never been a better time to consider using SIMS in the classroom. Schools will also find themselves needing to demonstrate they’re engaging with parents and pupils to ensure the right support is in place.

Please share this information with colleagues who use these areas of SIMS. For full details see the release notes: http://intranet.hants.gov.uk/sims-summer2014

The search box on the SIMS home-page has improved making it easier to find information. Simply hover over the search result, and you

will notice more search criteria has been added, such as first contact information. For secondary schools, the ability to search for a

student name and a time will identify where that student can be located. Primary schools will find upcoming birthdays useful too.

SIMS SEN Code of Practice

2

1

The Home Page


Hampshire IT Schools - Autumn 2014

SIMS Newsletter

4

Schools will be aware that since September 2014 all Reception to Year 2 pupils are entitled to Free School Meals. Universal Free School Meals for Reception to Year 2 pupils was collected in a new panel for the

School Census.

Panel 6. Dietary Eligible for Free School Meals in the student record should continue to be maintained to record free school meal entitle-ments for disadvantaged pupils.

Parents of disadvantaged pupils in Reception to Year 2 will need to be encouraged to apply for the Free School Meal entitlement so the school can record it and receive the correct Pupil Premium funding.

SIMS can now import the latest Department for Education pupil premium funding category data,

providing senior leaders with insight into why their pupils have been categorised as requiring pupil

premium funding and enabling them to provide evidence to Ofsted.

A major inclusion in the Summer 2014 release is the introduction of an assessment-mapping tool so schools or local authorities already

using SIMS Assessment can map their aspects to the Capita aspects and immediately take advantage of the graphs and analysis in

SIMS Discover.

This reduces the work it currently takes to set up Discover.

Supporting the new Staff Perfor-mance in SIMS Personnel, Capita has introduced new pre-defined reports so you can now report on

progress against the professional standards defined in your school and also on the number of observa-tions and achievements for each

overall grade. As mentioned in the last newsletter, Staff Performance is an additional, priced option you can request via the IT Help Desk.

Universal FSM3

Pupil Premium

5 SIMS Assessment-Mapping Utility

6 SIMS Personnel: Staff Performance

Senior leaders will be interested in a useful new feature in SIMS Learning Gateway: you can now see and monitor which parents have

viewed reports online and which have not. This will help to provide evidence of the effectiveness of online communications, whilst also

providing a valuable indicator of which parents require more support to involve them in their child’s learning.

7 SIMS Learning Gateway



SIMS Newsletter

11

With the SIMS Discover Summer 2014 upgrade you can now copy pop-out and grid information to the clip-board and easily paste it into school documents. The graphs now have a white background, which reduces

the high costs of printer ink. They look better too. In addition, graphs can be produced in percentage formats instead of raw numbers, so you can make comparisons more easily than before.

SIMS Discover8

There is also a result set selector on true/false Assessment bar graphs:

More information and guidance can be found in the è



SIMS Newsletter

And new graphs, for example a Progress stacked bar graph. This shows progress in one subject over time:

çdocumentation centres from the Discover Help icon

To get this new functionality please ensure that you upgrade SIMS Discover to keep the version compatible with SIMS, by making sure you complete the relevant sections in the upgrade notes.

We have found that Discover is sometimes a version behind and that schools have opened IT Help Desk calls because they have errors with the transfer between SIMS and Discover.

This applies even if SIMS Discover is not being used.

This will be important in supporting the current implementation of the SQL 2012 migration, which will fail if the versions are not synchronised.



SIMS Newsletter

13

SIMS Development RoadmapCapita has provided provisional dates for when they will release the next two upgrades to local authorities:

• Autumn 2014 release – December 2014• Spring 2015 release – February/March 2015

As always, we will work hard to complete our testing and produce the guidance notes so we can deliver these to schools as quickly as possible. Key areas of developments include:

• Assessment KS3 resources• Enhanced resources for the new curriculum • Substitute Aspects when cloning Marksheet Template• Raise ONLINE style SIMS School Report• Flight-path pupil tracking graph on Student Teacher View

Here’s a preview of two of the planned enhancements:

1. Raise ONLINE Style SIMS School Report:



SIMS Newsletter

During 2014 and 2015 Capita will focus on ensuring that the SIMS Exams functionality continues to work with the changes imposed by the Joint Council for Qualifications’ A2C Project. Just in case you didn’t know, A2C stands for ‘Awarding Organisations to Centre’. They are working with the JCQ on their A2C Data

Exchange Project and are aiming for a Summer 2015 release for schools to use from September 2015. Capita plans to make the majority of changes as seamless as possible to minimise noticeable changes to exams officers’ working practices.

2. New Flight Path Widget on Student Teacher View:

Other new developments include:

SIMS Examinations

Marksheets: In line with functionality already available in SIMS, there will be a new Marksheet summary in SIMS Learning Gateway with the Autumn 2014 release.

This will provide an overview of the marksheet content. There will also be improvements to the Homework functionality and the Data Collection Sheet Wizard.

SIMS Learning Gateway



SIMS Newsletter

15

Hampshire IT will review the SIMS Teacher App when it becomes available, and we will inform schools when it is ready to go live. Here is a graphic of the new App showing the Attendance Register:

There has been lots of interest since Capita SIMS announced its move into the dynamic world of tablet devices and unveiled its plans for the SIMS Teacher App at the last Bett exhibition. The staff role-based app will initially allow teach-ers to take their registers and record behaviour and achievements on the go, feeding this information straight back into SIMS

(when connected to Wi-Fi). The Teacher App will be developed to introduce additional features, such as recording Assessments and Cover, and to incorporate other useful enhancements to help teachers with their day-to-day tasks. The SIMS Teacher App, which is part of SIMS Learning Gateway, is being piloted in 2014 with an anticipated launch date of January 2015.

SIMS Teacher App



3-D printers will become as much an essential for GCSE technology as laser-cutters are now, but their future in the teaching of STEM subjects could be harder to gauge.

That’s the prediction of Mark Campbell, Head of Technology at Court-Moor School, Fleet, and Assistant Head of Technology, Richard Moore, both enthusiastic advocates for a new technology that is big on wow factor with both pupils and their parents.

Court-Moor, a specialist science college, acquired its first 3-D printer as part of a Government trial in 2012-13 to check out the poten-tial of 3D printing for supporting innovative and stimulating ways of teaching STEM and design subjects.

Another machine was bought using community relations money from global engineering and construction company, Fluor, which has a branch in Farnborough.

According to the Government report, 3-D Printers in Schools, Uses in the Curriculum, produced at the end of the trial in 21 schools, 3-D printing is now an established industrial technology used for

prototyping and manufacturing products and components in many industries. But while the Govern-ment was keen to see its potential exploited across the STEM subjects, the report noted that use of the new printers tended to be led by technology departments, with less use in other STEM subjects.

Mark said: “I think 3-D printers will certainly become an essential tool for secondary school technology

departments, just like laser-cutters and CAD/CAM milling machines. We got our laser-cutter seven years ago when they were fairly new, and now it’s part and parcel of what we do.

“Court-Moor would certainly like to see 3-D printers used in all STEM subjects, and our intention is to

pioneer the use of the technology in science and maths classrooms, with the support of targeted INSET. In fact we have already used it in maths to create shapes to enhance learning. In the past these would have been flat shapes cut by hand or cut using a laser and then assembled to create a 3D shape. But with the 3-D printer we were able to make things – shapes - which would not have been possible before because of the complexity, such as a scaled-down bus, and a battleship or even a piece of jewellery with moving parts.

“One of the issues that emerged during the trial was that it takes quite a lot of time to develop the skills, expertise and confidence to make effective use of this new tech-nology with students, so to pioneer it in school you do need people who are inspired enough to invest quite a lot of their own time. 3-D printing is much more accessible for technology teachers than it is for teachers of other STEM subjects.”

“Mind you,” added Richard, who runs an after-school club for kids interested in designing and

Focus on....

Do you need a 3-D printer?Interview with Mark Campbell, Head of Technology, Court-Moor School, and Assistant Head of Technology, Richard Moore

“Parents who watched the 3-D printers in action on an open evening were fascinated, watching us printing out spacemen as giveaways. It was a great show-stopper.”

– Mark Campbell

Court-Moor School’s Technology Team with two 3-D printers (LtoR): Catherine Gregson, Richard Moore, Mark Campbell, Jacquelyn Miller


17IT Help Desk 01962 847007

3-D printing, “Some of them are very able and grasp the technology very quickly. Sometimes you find you’re only half a lesson ahead of them.”

As well as the shapes made for maths, the school has produced cases for mp3 docking stations for year 9 and for GCSE electronics, money-boxes in the shape of a Harry Potter treasure chest, tank turrets for remote-controlled vehicles and a clear, plastic pig that lit up.

As predicted, the printers have got design students really excited. Richard said: “The students have to prove to us that using the printer is justified. They can’t just print any-thing out, not just because of the cost but the time. Year 8 have been doing 25 minute prints – animals, flowers, dragons in clear plastic sit-ting on top of colour-changing LEDs - so most of the group come away with something which really looks good.”

But the school record is a 15 hour print. “One of the students wanted to make a wheelhub for a lorry, so it had to be really strong, it had to be nearly solid, so it used a lot of plastic at very high density,” Richard said.

Why buy a 3-D printer?• To enhance STEM provision

• To explore further ways to enhance CAD/CAM.

• To develop further 3-D mod elling using 3-D software

• To develop creativity (rather than having the restrictions of a laser cutter (2-D net)

• To produce cases for GCSE electronics

• Wow factor with students

• Wow factor with parents

Find out more from Court- Moor SchoolCourt-Moor School staff are happy to talk to anyone thinking of buying a 3-D printer and are particularly keen to work with their feeder schools.

To have a chat or to visit Court-Moor to see the printers in action email: [email protected]

What you need to get started3-D printer: “Our Ultimaker 2 is very, very good, but you can buy a small 3-D printer in Costco for around £500.”

3-D modelling software: “Google’s free software, Sketchup Make 2014 has been brilliant.”

Software to prepare your design for printing: “Opensource Cura is designed specially for Ultimaker, and it’s free.“

SD card slot or adaptor: “Use to transfer the artwork from your laptop to the printer.”

Plastic – PLA or ABS: “ABS is more flexible but can be harder to get it to print. On large prints the heat from the bed can warp the design slightly. With PLA we’ve not had that problem.”

Inspiration and patterns: “Thingiverse website”

Time: “We had to learn the design package at home or after school. There wasn’t time during the working day.”

PrintworksLeft: 3-D printed scanned student head

Above: 3-D printed funnel

Below: 3-D printed treasure-chest and tanks



“ICT is a Critical Success Factor when teaching pupils who are hard to engage,” according to Dominic Coburn, Headteacher of the Forest Education Centre, at Dibden Purlieu.

For Dominic, ICT delivers a punch way beyond its weight in terms of pupil engagement, academic progress and empowering staff to “believe the impossible and shoot for the unreachable.”

That’s why, as part of the current rebuild – a £5.5 million new school to replace the existing circle of Portakabins arranged around the school yard - Dominic is spending £150,000 on a brand new network, state-of-the-art Clever Touch interactive screens, a 3-D printer –and Google Cardboard.

When Dominic took over as Head three years ago, he inherited a

poorly performing local network, “computers that were older than my students and a staff skills gap needing urgent attention.

“Pretty early on, I decided that investment in ICT was essential for school improvement. We needed to generate student engagement through modern technology, increase speed of access to software and learning resources and, most of all, equip our teachers with the skills and confidence to inspire our learners. I needed to change the school culture. I wanted staff to realise that nothing is impossible and that ICT is one direct route to school improvement. You get immediate results with ICT, so I used it as a springboard in my first year.”

Fortunately for Dominic, when he arrived, all seven Hampshire

education centres were already examining the business case for signing up to Hampshire IT’s Hosted School Service. Signing up to HSS meant the day-to-day management of ICT hardware and software passed to the County Council, so that when, in year two, he hired NQT Tom Webb to teach ICT and undertake the role of ICT Co-ordinator, the two colleagues were able to take a close look at how they could use ICT to enhance teaching and learning, freed from the burden of managing day-to-day technical issues.

Since then, the ICT offer at the education centre has grown and grown. At the start of this school term (September 2014), the roll-call of equipment included:

• SMART Boards in every classroom

HSS school: Our ICT


19IT Help Desk 01962 847007

“ICT has transformed things for me. The students choose their method of learning, whether that’s an iPad or a laptop or a Whiteboard or old-fashioned pen and paper. I subscribe to teachit.co.uk. It’s got interactive games like hangman, a clock, anagrams and so on. We access it on the interactive board or on the computer, and we set it up for ‘Beat the Teacher’. The children love that.

“We have fun. Sometimes they listen to music on their headphones while they work. It makes them feel safe and comfy. I don’t have any behavioural problems.

“We get children coming

in who have been studying for different exam boards. I had some boys who were studying The Woman in Black, which I hadn’t been teaching. We downloaded the book and also some revision aids they could use while still within my lesson. I took the book home myself. I was worried that they wouldn’t be ready for the exam, but, thanks to the technology, they went in prepared.

“Last year we began using laptops for exams. The children come to me in years 10 or 11. If they know their handwriting looks like a spider on acid, it creates a barrier to learning, so we give them the choice of writing by hand or using IT. The key thing is to get them through their exams. However, we don’t rely on technology. They type their final pieces, but they make their initial notes by hand, and if their handwriting is bad, they are given remedial help.”.

• an iPad ratio of one per student• 60 laptops and PCs, with dongles

for home tutors to access broadband internet in students’ homes

• an iMac with Adobe Creative Suite • two MacBooks with Photoshop

Elements • six Microsoft Surface tablets • Apple TV for all core subjects

The school also has a laser printer for CD design and uses data-loggers in science, Raspberry Pi for computer-programming and digital presenters to share students’ work across subject areas.

Alongside an improved network

with wireless access everywhere, the school also broadcasts to the world using its own radio station and has a birdbox webcam connected to a video-monitor in reception.

Dominic said: “We have loads of kit for a school of our size, but we make a lot of use of it. It is fantastic for students who don’t engage easily. Many of our students have such a short attention span that standing in front of the class and teaching in the conventional way doesn’t work.

“Even our PE teacher, Ray Jones, uses ICT, with apps for different sports, which spectators use for keeping score. Ray uses the Coaches Eye app, and he has a Flip

video camera for comparing the performance of our pupils with global sports stars.”

The encouragement pupils receive to use ICT has paid off in post-16 progression. One boy who was difficult to engage made extensive creative use of the school’s digital SLR cameras and Photoshop and is now studying photography in a mainstream sixth form college.

Of all things digital happening at Forest, Tom Webb thinks the iPads have been the greatest success so far: “They give you so many routes to enable learning. There’s something in App Store for even the hardest-to-engage pupil.”

“If I could take one thing from Forest’s use of ICT back to mainstream teaching, it would be the iPads, although you do need laptops as well. Devices perform different functions.

“In teaching mini-carrot cakes, for example, I might use a film-clip on oven safety played on the Whiteboard, followed by a PowerPoint breaking down the recipe, before providing print-outs to use as a guide to make and bake!

“The pupils evaluate their work using Excel on the laptops and use the iPad to photograph the cakes. The recipes, photos and evaluations are combined on the laptops, printed out and placed in hard copy folders. Sometimes I film

the pupils – sink clean-up or knife skills for example - and replay them on the SMART Board for discussion and peer assessment.

“We make ICT serve us by thinking first what we want to achieve then using it to help us meet these aims better, faster and more accurately. For example, we use Excel to perform nutritional analysis and compare dietary information to dietary reference values; model costs of portion sizes, weight and percentages; present sensory evaluation results such as the hedonic scale. We surf the internet for research, use data-logging to record temperature changes and create flow-charts showing production plans.

“As a teacher I must equip pupils with the skills to enter the workforce. The food industry is very technologically advanced. Cafés use smartphones and iPads to take our orders, and food-processing factories are run by elaborate computer systems.”

ICT for English – Julie Burman ICT for food tech – Sue Kent



Footage from a birdcam placed in a nest box was streamed live onto the free live video platform, Ustream, generating

500-600 views. Unfortunately the baby birds were eaten by a woodpecker, and the box remained unoccupied this year. Bella, Year 11, remembers the birdcam well: “It was absolutely amazing because the birdcam got me closer to nature. I had never seen inside an inhabited nest before, and it was an experience to see the eggs hatch into baby birds. I was very upset when the woodpecker broke into the bird box, but that’s nature for you.”

The FEC radio station is a small studio with the traditional, glowing “On Air” warning over the door during live broadcasts. Supplied

by Anderson Tiger, a £10k investment bought the equipment needed to deliver the output of a professional radio station, including sophisticated mixing-deck, monitors, headsets, amplifier and presenter microphones. Now that they are signed up to the digital music service, Spotify, Tom Webb says: “It’s about as professional as you can be in a school.” Mark, Year 11, was very involved in the radio station for two years, which helped his communication skills. He said: “We have used the radio station for many things, including when Dr Julian Lewis [MP for New Forest East] visited our school. We used the radio to interview him. We also used the radio during lunchtimes, when I did live broadcasts around the school.“Before I left Forest, I handed over the controls of the radio station to a new student, so that the radio can be continued. This was very rewarding for me because I had been involved in the radio for two years, and it is nice to know the radio will be used throughout the rest of Forest Education Centre.” Ofsted Inspectors said: “The school internet radio station is a key feature in helping students to gain confidence, engage with the community and develop their social and cultural awareness.”

• In 2013 Ofsted judged Forest Education Centre to be Good with Outstanding Behaviour.• The Centre is one of seven specialist Hampshire schools that educate students, aged 11-16, who are at risk of exclusion, medically unwell or emotionally vulnerable.• Up to 35 students are taught on site. Another 40 are taught at home by specialist tutors.

• The curriculum includes English, maths, science, ICT, art, food technology, design & technology, work skills, PSHE and PE. Academic targets are set using FFT data.• Pupil Premium is used extensively to improve academic progress, especially in literacy and numeracy, where e-learning resources have proved invaluable (Rapid English, Goal online).

• Extra-curricular opportunities include ocean-sailing, bushcraft, dance, theatre, gardening, sport and peripatetic music (using electronic instruments and laptops).

• Each day ends with “enrichment” – 30 minutes in a club of the student’s choice, including photography and Photoshop, film (Netflix) and computer games (Xbox).

About Forest Education Centre

Forest takes to the air

Forest’s birds"


21IT Help Desk 01962 847007 "

interview with Carole Bishop

Carole is Head of Peel Common Junior School, Gosport, and is a member of the ICT P/SICATS group.

My IT

"I was a late convert to IT and was renowned in my previous school

for not being into technology. I didn’t even have a mobile phone, and I’m the only person I know who isn’t in love with their iPad.

Conversion to mobile phone use was the result of having teenage children, whom I needed to communicate with, and then I discovered that I could do all sorts of things online that were just too difficult without it. Because I rarely finish at a time when I can go to a bank, I do all my banking online, also my shopping, and when my children were young I employed a nanny, and everything to do with her employment was done online.

I still don’t really like IT, but on the other hand, I couldn’t run my life – or my school – without it. When I had a problem with my internet broadband at home a while back, it was a nightmare.

Most of my internet use at home is on the PC. All the family have their own laptop, and I have my work iPad and an iPhone so I can check emails when I’m out of the office. I use the iPad for browsing but little else. I haven’t got to grips with the various apps, and I still like my paper diary.

Having said that, our school has embraced a lot of technology and also social media.

Again it was down to usefulness. Our school is in an area where par-ents aren’t great at reading letters, so we have an email system, texting system and online payments.

However, a lot of the parents don’t read emails either, but we know that virtually all of them are on Facebook. I’m not a great fan of Facebook, but we had colleagues in from another school to talk to us about how they set it up, and all my staff were saying to me it could be good.

The prospect of easy communic-ation with parents sold it to me, and we started it last academic year.

It’s been very positive, and we get a lot of feedback. We did a sleepover for our years 3 and 6, and the next day a lot of parents put positive feedback about it on our Facebook page.

Parents have to request to be a friend, and it’s a closed group, so they are checked against our list of parents. Parents will sometimes put an inquiry on there, if there’s something going on at school, and very often parents answer the queries themselves.

Sometimes parents use it for things we would prefer them not to – it’s supposed to be for information-sharing - but we just have a quiet word, and it stops. For example, one parent wanted loom bracelets banned. Another one didn’t, and it got a bit heated. We picked that up with individual parents.

I would say I use IT for a purpose, not for fun. I wouldn’t play a game or browse the internet without good reason, but if I can see a purpose for it, and it makes life easier, then I use it. I don’t think you could function in school without it. Everything is online now.



Teaching computing

Robot Clubs at Crofton Hammond Junior Schoolby Liz Stoneham MSc in Information Systems

I work with Year 6, running Robot Clubs in several schools and find

that robots can be used in a fun and challenging environment to cover many aspects of the new computing national curriculum, in particular controlling and simulating physical systems.

Here’s what the National Curriculum in England Key Stage 2 computing programme of study (September 2013) says: “Design, write and debug programs that accomplish specific goals, including controlling or simulating physical systems; solve problems by decom-posing them into smaller parts.”

I run afterschool clubs at Harrison Primary, Whiteley Primary and Alverstoke Junior, with lunchtime clubs at Crofton Hammond Junior – where I have been running clubs for around ten years - and day workshops planned in other schools. Nearly 60 children take part, but disappointingly only six girls have taken part, so currently I am working on more female- orientated tasks.

I run my clubs with the ratio of one robot to two or three children maximum. You cannot skimp on

equipment as unless you have all the parts and motors, you cannot use the robot, and lessons are delayed. This leaves children disappointed, and they lose interest. The advantage of having a specialist, such as myself, is that I ensure all the EV3 Lego equipment is fully operational. It needs time-consuming, routine maintenance – charging the batteries, installing software updates on the laptops and the bricks, sorting the Lego and taking apart and rebuilding, when necessary, ready for the next session.

In my clubs/lessons I introduce flow-charting at each stage to help the children coordinate their thoughts to systematically break the task down (abstraction). I do this even for a simple task to get them used to the concept of computational thinking. I generally get the children to walk through the task before they start to programme and to produce a step-by-step solution or an algorithm.

Topics coveredThe following shows an outline of topics covered during the course of

the clubs/lessons:

Topic 1 Initially I introduce the children to the EV3 brick and the Mindstorms programme on the laptop. I encourage them to investigate the basics on the soft-ware, such as motors, sound and pictures, and then download their instructions to the EV3 brick. The children are surprised at the immediate response of the EV3 to their instructions when sounds and pictures are displayed and the attached motors move.

Topic 2 Next the children build a fairly simple robot that takes about 20 to 30 minutes. The length of time varies between seven minutes (yes, there are children that are that quick!) to 50 minutes. I do not intervene unless they are desperate, and they usually get there. Then it is basic programming to get the robot moving and turning.

Topic 3 Depending on the number of weeks for the club, I provide a roadmap for the robots to navigate that requires moving forwards and backwards and turning. Distances have to be calculated and tested, along with angles. This exercise is fairly straightforward but


23IT Help Desk 01962 847007

repetitive and gets the children very familiar with the software. They are very competitive to complete the task first.

Topic 4 Then it is on to using sensors; the ultrasonic is always a fun session. The EV3 robots are programmed so that when you put your hand in front of the robot it will stop or possibly turn away and stop. If you put a repeat loop in, it turns away from your hand again and again (iteration). The children enjoy this as it is similar to developing their own toy, and who can blame them as it is fascinating to watch and play with the robot that you have programmed.

Topic 5 The colour sensor is another great sensor to use. You can programme the robot to detect a dark line and then give it instructions to move away. Again, by introducing repeat loops, it can do it continuously, and if you draw a circle with a thick, dark line, successful programmers can keep their EV3 robot within the circle.

When all the robots are put in the circle together, it is chaotic, as the EV3s knock each other over. The last robot standing is the winner, and, wow! do the children get enjoyment out of this exercise. You have to be a good programmer to win.

Topic 6 There is a third motor that attaches to the EV3 brick that drives a gripper or pick-up object attachment that the children have

to build. Once programmed and working, the ultrasonic sensor is then added to detect an object for the attachment to grip/pick up. Programming is becoming more complicated at this stage, and it is possibly time to consolidate and regroup.

Topic 7 The final session of the term is a fun session when the children accessorize the robot. It involves designing, extensive building and working as a team to produce a good, working robot.

ConclusionsIn the first term of the club/lesson, we have already achieved much with motors and sensors. The next term involves consolidation and more advanced programming with switches and extra sensors.

Recently I have purchased the EV3 Lego Space Challenge. It is perfect for reinforcing the previous sessions in an exciting futuristic space environment. Depending on the ability of the child, they have to solve challenges that can be completed at many different levels from easy to advanced.

When I watch children program-ming and downloading to the EV3 brick to drive their robot, I see the delight on their faces. It reminds me of a quote from Seymour Papert, Professor of Learning Research, MIT, inventor of Logo computer language and collaborator with Lego to produce Mindstorms:

“Children learn best when they are actively engaged in construct-ing something that has a personal meaning to them – be it a poem, a robot, a sandcastle, or a computer program.”

Finally I think it is important to relate to what robots are used for, from robotic vacuum cleaners, car park barriers and remote medical operations to searching for earthquake survivors.

I play many videos showing working robots at the end of my sessions. As I have a keen interest in space and exploration, I introduce workshops with talks to link our robots with the unmanned ‘robotic’ missions that are currently under-way and controlled from Earth so as to fuel the imaginations of the children. Current missions include Juno, Curiosity, Cassini, Voyager 1 & 2, Rosetta amongst others.

I like to think that one day our young roboteers will be inspired to play a part in developing robots to change the world for the better. But if not, at least it will, hopefully, make them think about and be aware of the increasing role of robots in our everyday lives.

This article is adapted from a longer article that appeared in the HIAS newsletter, User Friendly. To find out more about the Robot Clubs, please email liz: [email protected] or visit: www.robotkidsandspace.co.uk

A wealth of practical courses aimed at enabling schools to get the most out of SIMS and ICT.

Look for the brochure in your school and at events, or look online at: www.hants.gov.uk/elearneteach

www.hants.gov.uk/elearneteach

TRY BEFOREYOU BUY

FREEEVENTS

ONLINEGROUPS

FACILITIESHIRE

BESPOKETRAINING

2014 – 2015

LOOK OUT FOR HAMPSHIRE IT’S TRAINING BROCHURE

Hampshire IT Schools Autumn 2014 edition is produced by Hampshire County Council The Castle, Winchester SO23 8UJ. Tel 0845 603 5638

Autumn 2014 Hampshire IT Schools...successful women working in IT and then write 100 words saying which woman impressed them most and why, plus a further 100 words saying what they

Documents