OllieBray.com

Outdoor Learning - Fun climbing wall holds

  

 A friend asked me for some advice on an outdoor traversing climbing wall that they are building at the Grove Infant School on Portland. I’m a big believer in trying to make good use of space and I think that traversing walls in playgrounds and climbing walls in school gym halls are a great idea.

I’ve been involved in building lots of school climbing walls over the years and also the training of staff to use them safely with their students. One of the nice things about building climbing walls for young people is how the price of handholds have come down over time but also the variety of shapes that are now available.

Here are some of my favorite climbing wall holds to turn an old piece of playground wall into cross-curricular resource.

Dinosaur Holds

Tropical Creatures

Transportation (love the dumper truck!) 

 

Letters (my favorite)

Lots of great activities for letter climbing holds eg: get from left to right using only the letters in your name, get from left to right using only vowels, get from left to right using handholds that spell a long word, etc…

More advice on building climbing walls here.

 

Reflections from UK Education Show 2011 (7 of 8) – Some Great Toys (what teaching health and safety should be about!)

I think there is a place for Health and Safety and the teaching of issues relating to Health and Safety for children and young people. I also think we go far to overboard on some very basic safety issues that should really just be regarded as common sense (eg: taking children into your school grounds).

Anyway, I thought that the range of products from Road Masters UK Ltd were a good start on how issues regarding Health and Safety should be taught in schools for a very early age. Learning through purposeful play, fantasy and dressing up at its very best (I wonder if they make their Garden Centre Facia in my size?).

Reflections from UK Education Show 2011 (5 of 8) – Mind Sets Online [@education show]

I love gadgets and the Education Show is always great for good EduGadets!

Last year my favorites included Great Gizmos and Education Harbour. This year I had a good chat with some of the staff at Mind Sets On-line.

They produce some great early years robotic sets – this is so important if we are serious about developing a future digital economy and also a progression & ethos of content creation by children from an early age.

I was impressed with their Energy and Power sets to help develop an understanding of renewable energy and was also particularly fond of the soil clock!

However my absolute favorite product that they were showcasing was an electric motor powered paper plane launcher! – The more I think about it, the more I think I’m just going to have to get one!

 

Culture, Careers, Credibility and CfE: Why Internet Safety and Responsible Use is Everyone’s Responsibility (#ISRU11)

 
All of the keynote presentations from last weeks LTS / Scottish Government Internet Safety and Responsible Use Conference are now up on-line over on the conference website.

These presentations include:

• Adam Ingram, MSP (Minister for Children and Families) - Ministerial Address

• Helen King (Head of Education at CEOP) - Protecting young people on-line

• Josie Fraser (Leicester City Council) - Digital Identity and Young People (this is a must watch presentation)

My own presentation was titled Culture, Careers, Credibility and CfE: Why Internet Safety and Responsible Use is Everyone’s Responsibility. I've embedded it below for interest and as always would welcome any feedback.

Ollie Bray Keynote from ISRU Conference2 on Vimeo.

Further workshop presentations and other links will be added to the conference website over the next week.

 

Magical Schools – Broadclyst Community Primary School

 

When I visited Broadclyst Community Primary School it was a bit like the tardis. As I walked in through the gate I had no idea how big the school actually was and I just seemed to keep being shown new bits and more and more great stuff!

I spent a great afternoon there (on the recommendation of Merlin John) with the head of governors and the headteacher, Jonathan Bishop. Johnathan is a true visionary committed to providing high quality and engaging teaching and learning opportunities to the young people in his care.

Broadclyst is an interesting school because they were one of the first schools in the UK to truly embrace ICT in a systematic and strategic way linked to a robust and evolving learning platform. They started this vision over ten years ago and as Johnston told me the vision is constantly evolving.

The school makes heavy use of leasing to ensure that it has high ICT provision but otherwise everything that the school has been done has been done using existing budgets and resources.

Key things about learning design at Broadclyst

• All rooms have video conference facilities that are used extensively by teachers and learners.
• All rooms have high quality projection facilities (often linked to a projector and a large LCD display).
• All room have microphones for the teachers (to preserve teacher voices and also to allow lessons to be recorded).
• All rooms have cameras to allow lesson to be captured and up-loaded to the schools learning environment. Remote observation is also possible.
• In years 1, 2 and 3 each classroom has a row of between 10 – 12 machines that are available for student use.
• In years 4 and 5 children are taught in classrooms that have 1 to 1 access
• In year 6 children are taught as one large group (about 65 children) in a large NASA style lecture theatre. Again all children have 1 to 1 access in this space.
• He school has a fully functioning TV studio with green screen and a planetarium in the school field.
• As well as the main teaching classrooms the school also has specialist rooms for music, art and science.
• There is a library that is full of books that are regularly signed out by the children.
• There is loads of outdoor space that is used all the time.

 

There is no doubt about it Broadclyst has great ICT provision but when I spoke to some of the children about there favorite part of the school none of them mentioned ICT. This told me one extra thing about Broadclyst that it has achieved what so many other schools had been trying to achieve for years – ICT was so integrated into the everyday powerful learning opportunities on offer to the children that the technolohy had simply become invisible.

 

A very special school that I would recommend visiting if you get a chance.

Internet Safety and Responsible Use Training Video for Staff and Parents (@LTScotland)

Over the past few months I have been doing more work around Internet Safety and Responsible Use for Parents and Teachers. Quite a bit of this work involved speaking at conference, running professional development for teachers and engaging with parent focus groups.

The work is very important but it can also be quite repetitive so to try and help this and to reach as many people as possible we recently made three films that covers some of the content that I normally address in various talks.

The videos are available to view on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website and I have embedded the one for teachers and parents below.

I feel it contains the minimum amount of content and information needed for all parents and education professionals.

As well as covering some of the issues regarding Internet Safety and Responsible Use it is designed to try and get people thinking about how do we tackle some of these big issues at home and in school.

As always I would be very keen to find out what you think of the resource as I hope to up-date it on a 6 - 12 monthy basis.

Scotland’s Stories [#LTScotland]

There are a lot of hidden gems on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website – sometimes the problem is just finding them!

One nice area of the site that has lots of good content, pictures, video and audio is defiantly Scotland’s Stories

‘The strange and fantastical stories of Scotland have inspired writers, artists and poets for centuries. Scotland’s Stories website aims to inspire children and young learners to explore this rich vein of literary and cultural heritage. It provides a variety of beautifully illustrated classic Scottish tales, with background information, transcripts of all stories as well as fantastic audio and video versions of the stories as told by some of Scotland’s finest storytellers’.

There are lots of great stories to choose from, read, watch and listen to. My favorite is ‘Whuppity Stoorie’ – The Scottish Rumpelstiltskin.

I’ve embedded a video of Ruth Kirkpatrick retelling the story below.



Overall a great collection of media useful all year round – but perhaps particularly useful in the build up to Christmas!


Magic Moments #5 - Sock Monsters

Each week I post a photograph of something that I have seen, like or has just made me laugh.

There was a recent invasion of sock monsters at Mid Calder Primary School. All of the children had made their own monster (complete with Googly eyes!) and offered some useful advice if I ever wanted to make my own.

WARNING: If you are thinking about making your own sock monster make sure you ask the owner of the socks first!

Magic Moments #1 – Gavinburn TARDIS: Powered by Microsoft Vista

Each week I post a photograph of something that I have seen, like or has just made me laugh.

The children at Gavinburn Primary School in West Dunbartonshire have been studying Dr. Who as part of their learning. This topics has included the older children building a TARDIS for the younger children in the school.

During a recent visit, I was lucky enough to be invited inside one (it was a lot bigger on the inside) – and I was even more surprised to see that it was powered by Microsoft Vista!

A snap of the control panel that the children created is below:

 

 

Nintendo DSi XL and Mr Gum ‘Flips’ Books

 

I have a Nintendo DSi XL that I am playing with at the moment. The Nintendo DSi XL is basically a larger version of the Nintendo DSi.

Perhaps I am getting old (or at least my eyes are!) but I like the bigger screen and I also like the optional bigger pen that comes with it as well.

I borrowed the Consolarium copy of Mr Gum by Andy Stanton (Illustrated by David Tazzyman) which come from their ‘Flips’ Series.

Nintendo DS Flips are Simple Interactive Books and although the Nintendo DSi is not the best eBook reader in the world it certainly works and I have been enjoying reading Mr Gum during spare moments on the train. As well as Mr Gum there are lot sof other popular childrens titles aviable for the DS via Flips - more information on the Flips website.

As well as reading the different stories I have been collecting different musical notes on my DS soundboard and also collecting items for the ‘Messy Room’. The Illustrations are excellent and obviously appealing for young people. Some of the illustrations also allow fun interaction including movement and sound.

Books are becoming quite popular for the Nintendo DS – I first blogged about the 100 classic book collection back in 2008. Lots of children have Nintendo DS’s, DS Lites, DSi’s and DSi XL’s – I wonder how many school libraries stock these DS books?

Finally if you haven’t heard of Mr Gum before – you should check out his website. It is kind of a combination between Monty Python and The Twits!