I have also spent some time at Kirn Pre-5 and Primary 1 who are part of the authorities Early Level pilot and travelled to Cardross Primary to see how they are operating their P1 class this year.

On Thursday I took an iPhoto course at Inveraray, the first course I have led for some time. I really enjoyed the day and it made me re-appreciate ( is that a real word) what a fabulous application iPhoto is. I also showed them ComicLife which is also a great application. Don’t you just love ICT?

Most of all I just love working with the younger children again and having the opportunity to work with so many interesting and hard working colleagues is certainly inspiring.

It appears that one excellent site www.northpole.com, triggers our firewall into action….but not always and not on every machine. Today even Northumberland’s ngfl Christmas area fell foul of the system that keeps our cherubs safe. I now must phone up to discover why a disco dancing Santa and some festive games of pelmanism cause such a stooshie. I reckon the word ‘game’ is the culprit. The difficult thing to understand is that the first time I logged onto the northpole website I had no problem and used it successfully on every machine with a class!

A link within the Kent ngfl Christmas area takes you to www.citycreator.com which has proved extremely popular with the children. Whilst looking at it at home my 19 year old son asked me why I was always looking at ‘weird stuff’ on the internet. He then hijacked the laptop and created his own city for a good half an hour. Worth a wee look. You can send it as an e card and one of them is snocity. Very festive.

Best laugh was the question about mistletoe……..What do people do under it?

a Sing a carol

b Say a prayer

c Kiss

All 22 children voted either a or b and were horrified at the thought of kissing under it!

Biggest surprise was how long they sustained their concentration. I had thought to wrap it up but the children wanted to continue and voted for another 15 minutes until playtime.

So this afternoon with Primary 5 we registered the pods and got going with a Christmas Quiz, downloaded from the Promethean Planet website. There are  an increasing number of Activote flipcharts in the resource area, including one that I made up on money for P2.  Many of the flipcharts have been good, but you really need to try them out for yourself to see if they fit the bill. Occassionally there are errors in the chart, but as they have all been submitted by busy teachers, no wonder.

I spent time on Friday in the other P5 class showing their teacher how the Activote pods work. She is using a PC with her board so the interface was a bit different but she is very keen to get going with the voting system now she has seen it in action. I shall entrust the pods to her in the meantime so that she can get used to using them.

Went online with P3 this morning to look at www.northpole.com , an interactive seasonal website. Much fun to be had.

I found a set of shape stampers and an ink pad, which proved incredibly popular, as were the Clever Sticks. The children also had the option of using the shapes area of the ActivPrimary software but are disappointed that the PC version doesn’t have the ‘hoover”, to sook away their mistakes. I have managed to get the Smart board in the P1  classroom working at last so they have been trying it out with their class teacher ( woohoo).

I have been without internet access during this time so have been surfing to my heart’s content since I got home. Pickford’s managed to unload my car of its contents and I certainly won’t need any novels for Christmas this year!

Despite at times feeling a bit overwhelmed, mixed with fear and flashes of “help ma boab” it promises to be a very interesting and exciting time ahead.

I will enjoy being immersed in Early Years and have just been looking again at TTS whose stand I visited at the Scottish Learning Festival. They had a super product which looked like a wee dry wipe board but you can record 6 or 10 seconds of speech.

I checked it out again and they now produce a 24 page talking photo album. This looks to have brilliant potential for PLP’s , talking story books made by the children and changeable displays to cover so many curricular aspects. Children can also revisit and develop their ideas by simply re-recording. They also produce a 1 to 24 button strip, a bit like a big ruler which can be displayed beside children’s work. The work can be named and numbered enabling children or parents to hear what their child has to say about a piece of work, model or drawing they have completed.

I know how much the older children love the record facility in Kidspiration so this would be a gem of a resource to have in Early Years.

Back to school tomorrow and will be working for most of the morning with Primary 1 who are a lovely bunch. We are going to explore 2D shapes and will use the ActivPrimary software as well as some super foam shapes I found in the resource room. I shall get the children to photograph their shape models and print them out to display.

Now if I had a talking photo album…………..

In the afternoon Catherine McMillan who won the ICT in Education Award this year, presented her work to us. I enjoyed seeing again what she has achieved at Bowmore. Well done Catherine.

Back at school, I have now rejigged the Pre-5 computer area and put ActivPrimary onto their laptop so that they can begin to make use of the Promethean board in the GP room.

P7 made use of the Activote pods this week for the first part of a Christmas quiz which I downloaded from the Promethean website. I have been using the set of pods I have on loan and managed to put new batteries in 2 which were not working. A special screwdriver is required and it was only when I got my new set that I discovered where it is kept in the box. Of course another couple have gone on the blink since their last use so I need more batteries now!

This week the children have been learning how to export clipart from Kidspiration to the desktop, which they can then drag into ComicLife giving them more options for their creations.

Primary 1 were using PoissonRouge again today and had to be prized away from the computers, requesting to come back after lunchtime. Those not online were exploring KidPix and were delighted when I showed them the sound tool, adding another element to their pictures.

Nativity rehearsals are now well underway and as usual those lovely tunes are playing around in my brain, morning, noon and night.

Next Tuesday and Wednesday I will be back in Inveraray for  2 days training for my new job. I briefly met the other Early Level Teachers at the Pre-5 conference and look forward to learning more next week.

All this has happened over the course of a couple of months as it is only one of a number of jobs needing done, in between teaching and installing software, fixing printing problems and setting up Promethean boards.

Anyway, off to the Smartboard website to look for updates …………….maybe I shall get it working this week.

The pupils at school have been busy creating slideshows using KidPix Deluxe 4. They are delighted with their early results and incredibly engaged in the activity. ComicLife is now available for Windows and our authority has licences for it so I shall install it onto the PC’s tomorrow.

I had problems getting the Promethean software to work on our newer iMacs. I installed Version3 and still had problems, eventually after a couple of phonecalls to Promethean have managed to get two more of our classroom IWB’s up and running…… at last.

Today Primary 1 were with me in the computer suite. They are all developing super mouse skills and two even managed to cope with the trackpad on the laptops. One of our pupils with additional support needs works on the whiteboard using the pen, and was literally jumping up and down with delight at what happened when she used the 2Simple Paint program. The others were on KidPix and I love to watch the way they share their discoveries and immediately offer support to show how they did it.

We then went onto look at PoissonRouge, my absolute favourite website for Early Years. The children were enthralled by the number activity and as I put a match to each firework and set it off there were squeals of delight. The children then took it in turns to complete an activity…what fun learning!

Also on our return the technicians had been in and installed the new PC desktops in the computer suite. 8 lovely PC’s…well as lovely as a PC can be….which all work! I installed Revelation Natural Art onto them which I purchased using the Tesco vouchers and am in the process of putting the ActivPrimary software on.

Today I taught the P1/2 class for the first time and it was great to watch them try out the computers. The P2’s gave a little support to the younger ones before they were let loose on KidPix. Of course although they were meant to be trying out the paint tools one or two found the scary pics and were soon embellishing their pages with skulls, bats and pumpkins. Hey, go with the flow!