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Here you'll find some in-depth information about the work
I have been doing over the last ten years or so. Things are constantly moving
on and I continue to acquire new skills at the rate dictated by jolly IT. Apart
from the practical experience you'll find on these pages, I spend a lot of time
training myself and taking various courses. I also keep up with the latest
developments via a number of professional groups. I am available for both long
and short term contracts and rates are always negotiable. For further
information, mail me or use the
technology of your choice.
Please note that the opinions expressed below are my own and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the organisation mentioned.
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Story Teller 7-12 - Autumn 2007 This is my first project with the new Hopscotch as run by MA Educational LTD. It's me with that bee in my bonnet about creativity and looking for ways to get it into school without making it too scary. Story Teller uses random pictures to encourage children to use seat-of-the-pants creativity to come up with stories. I've done a support site with all sorts of walkthroughs and documentation as well as a demo to have a go with. Take a look. |
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Story Scaffolds - Now for more year groups The success of the year 6 version of this has created a demand to cover the entire junior age range. I've just completed versions of years 5, 4 and 3 which are being launched by Hopscotch early in 2007. Visit the official site to download a demo which now shows examples from all year groups. |
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textThing PLUS and textThing MFL textThing has had a fairly major going over during 2005/6. First was what's now being called textThing PLUS - here I've radically overhauled the whole options side of things in an attempt to simplify it. It was a rather painful journey, but I think we were all happy with the result in the end. textThing MFL is a response to the UK government's sudden enthusiasm for Modern Foreign Languages in schools from Key Stage 2 onward. textThing was always capable of dealing with foreign languages if users were prepared to dig into the options, what I've done here is rationalise that and make it a lot easier to use the pre-set languages or create new ones. It looks pretty good :o) |
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Moodle/Virtual Classroom Moodle looks like becoming quite the thing for 2006 and I'm up to my armpits in it. The practical stuff is going on in the virtual classroom where I'm developing asynchronous courses in a variety of subjects including GCSE English, KS3 ICT, basic English skills, study skills and art. |
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Story-Writing Scaffolds Met the Nice People at Hopscotch a while ago and we came up with the idea of creating a computer-based version of their Very Successful materials for supporting year 6 story writing. It's taken a while (doesn't everything?) and been rather scary for us all as it's Hopscotch's first entry into software, and my first time taking on product support. Luckily Topologika has been involved in the development and their support was vital - it wouldn't be here otherwise. You can see my outline of its main ideas, or visit the official site to download a demo. |
| Virtual Classroom Starting September '03 I have been working on this project for an LEA. We're currently addressing the needs of several groups:
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British Library - 21st Century Citizen Starting September 2003 I was working with the library to develop ways in which schools, nationwide and beyond, could get the most out the their citizenship site. There was certainly a lot of potential in using the library's huge archive to explore the reasons for the way we live now and I enjoyed working with schools and other interested organisations involved. You can find the site at www.bl.uk/citizenship My work with the library included a project exploring different cultural views of the body. The first public-facing phase of this was on line as part of the library's Explore the World's Knowledge site. |
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Keeping Up With the Kids I've wanted to work with the Read on Write Away project for years - they get up to all sorts of kewel and innovatory (is that a real word? Is now.) stuff in Derbyshire working in many areas of community based literacy. I'll be working on their ICT bus, showing parents what it is that their kids are doing with computers in school. I've co-written a follow up course for this which I piloted in autumn 2003. |
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Finally - Tell a Tale 2 released What a busy year it was, and no mistake. Tell a Tale The First was aimed at pre-school, elementary, KS1 children. It let them create their own three-sentence stories from a wide range of options, hear it read to them and see it animated. With Tell a Tale 2 we took the idea further by adding optional adjectives. So, children can make stories about a rusty robot, a sad robot and so on. See some pics and animations, or visit 4mation to place an order (the cats need feeding!) |
