Happy Summer Holidays

Wishing all a happy and restful period over the summer - I hear it will start on 15th August - and see you in September.

Change of venue- 14th June- Greenfield

I hope people don't mind me making a unilateral decision on the venue for the lesson next Thursday but it would seem sensible to do it here at Greenfield. The attraction of going to Brigshaw was the possibility of having a PC per pupil and it turns out that this won't be possible. Also, I think I might need a whiteboard. It will be "cosy" in our suite as it isn't huge but I'm sure we'll be fine.

Hope this is OK with you Richard.

The lesson will start at approx 9.10 and is planned to last for about an hour. The school day starts at 8.50 so this will allow some time for registration and our daily aerobic energiser!

I should be able to get some cover for my class for half an hour afterwards so we can chat.

Feel free to arrive early for a coffee. See you then...

Can we confirm 14th June?

Is this date OK with everyone?

Shall we say start between 9.15-9.30? Richard could we have the bus at Greenfield for 9am?

FYI -I have invited Tony too.

Patricia, John M- confirmed in previous post.

Karen- you're OK with date I think...

Can you let me know in a comment...

Thursday 14th Planned Actitivy

Change noted again Karen. A contact for Richard as I am in a bit of a rush and would have to look up e-mails, etc. Is everything ok for the planned activity for Thursday 14th? Has everything been ok with downloading the screen capture software, etc? John M and I are planning to be there on Thursday, John M would have to do some re-arranging, but, everything is a-go here. We were also wondering whether we could arrange for your school-bus to transport Greg's class to Brigshaw on the 14th, and then you could invoice the project?

KIppax Ash Tree observation still not planned

Sorry, unable to arrange an observation for the suggested date yet again! I shall contact Richard in Brigshaw ( on the telephone) and write another blog when arrangements are finalized.

Planned activity for Greenfield observation

Just to keep you up to date with my plans for the observation.

I have created a spreadsheet on Google docs and spreadsheets and invited my class as contributors. I have asked them to record the number of pieces of fruit and vegetables they eat each day and the number of minutes of exercise they do each day too. This links to our Healthy Eating Science topic.

They can then input their data in the relevant cells. Google docs and spreadsheets is excellent for collecting data because all children can access and update the same file (even at the same time).

With this real and usable data, I intend to cut and paste it into Excel or Openoffice as Google does not have auto-fill which is a very useful feature for filling the formula of a number of cells at the same time.

I'll illicit questions we can ask about the data and look at ways of getting the answers. They probably won't be exclusively data handling or formula based. We'll wait and see.

I've sent you an invitation so you can have a look at the data as it arrives and so you can laugh when some mischievous child deletes it all. Thankfully I'll be able to both tell who it was and go back to a point before the deletion- which is handy.

Brigshaw/Kippax Triage Meeting 21.05.07

In response to this meeting held at Brishaw High School, arrangements were made for a lesson observation to be held on 27.06.07. This lesson was to be taught by K. Avery at Brigshaw School, its title being " An introduction to using simple equations and calculations in spreadsheets". Unfortunately this date is not possible, but I am asking if the morning of 28.06.07 could be an alternate date.

New community.

A new community has been created on the NCETM website.
Find it here. If you'd like an invitation to join leave your email in a comment.

Clarification of project objectives

From the minutes, we have decided that the use of spreadsheets is our primary focus.

To help me (and perhaps others), I was hoping we could clarify the objectives of the project.

How about we have a go at completing the following statement:

You can do anything in this project as long as ...

Minutes of 20.03.07 meeting

Leeds NCETM KS2/3 ICT group
Notes from meeting of 20 March

Present: Peter Hallam, Patricia George, John Monaghan, Tony Staneff, Richard Street, John Threlfall, Rich Wayman
Apologies: Karen Avery, Greg Perry, Tony Shepherd

We welcomed RS who teaches years 5 & 6 at Killinghall Primary and will be in the triad with PH and TSt.

JM quickly recapped the financial position – contact either JM or PG if you are not clear on this.

We recapped the discussion at the end of the last meeting and asked – do we go for spreadsheet work or something more? A full discussion ensued, the outcome of which is – we go for spreadsheet work this year. Having said this it was hoped that the group would continue well beyond this calendar year and there is nothing to keep us to spreadsheet work in future years.

The main part of the meeting discussed the forms this work may take. It was decided that each triad would do something in common and something different. The ‘in common’ activity was data handling. It was recognised that the way this was done would vary even within triads. However, a shared focus is likely to be the way in which spreadsheets open up possibilities for inverting the usual relationship between data and graphs, for example how to duplicate a given graph on a spreadsheet, or determining the data that would generate a given graph.

Other matters
1) JM has a resource, the Shell red box, which is a useful source of ideas for the interpretation of graphs and which may be borrowed.
2) JM can probably (90% certain) find some extra money for bussing pupils between schools.
3) It was agreed that we would, whenever possible, video lessons but anyone at any time has the right to say ‘no’.
4) There will not be another whole group meeting until, at least, the end of the school year.
5) PLEASE inform Patricia well in advance of any meetings or lessons.
6) PH, TSt & RS produced a grid of ideas (see PDF for table here).