An email too good not to share

I had a phone call from a school in Hull yesterday asking me, as an Excellence Award winning school for some ideas about developing ICT so the school can prepare for the ICT Mark. Our conversation was unfortunately brief as snatched chats on the phone often are and my advice centred on making better use of systems already in place, such as how to bring all the students onto the staff Exchange email system and how you can monitor and manage a 1000 extra users and then get some great but simple e-learning going.

We also chatted about Learning Platforms and how getting a full blown VLE off the ground take time and effort but some simple Open Source tools can develop in school intranets into the basis of a great Learning Platform.

Also I talked about incentivising innovation and risk taking in pedagogy by talking about our annual Curriculum Innovator bursaries. I followed it up with an email containing links to extra information about our work and other places to get ideas from and I then decided the linked were too good not to share here:


I assume you found us via http://awards.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=41304 so have seen the clips and case study there. Here are some other links to look at;

Teachers TV Using moodle for a virtual field trip http://www.teachers.tv/videos/hard-to-teach-secondary-geography-using-ict

Using moodle to record voice in MFL (FFWRD to 4:09) http://www.ict-register.net/lp-video.php?v=101

Environmental Learning with Learning Platform and handhelds http://www.ict-register.net/lp-video.php?v=107 (FFWRD to 4:40)

(if you google 'Paul Haigh Mobile Phone' http://bit.ly/agUVEX you'll see I've rather a reputation in this area- but I'm more excited about students' ipod touches than their phones, despite how I'm represented in the press for a balanced and researched article read this in the TES)

Next generation Learning presentation for the ICT-Register Showcase Event http://www.ict-register.net/presentations2010.php is an overview of our 'virtual school' with a Joomla portal leading to the Moodle VLE, the Serco Facility MIS for online reporting and lots of other open source stuff.

To see more about our Open Source work watch this interview I did after presenting for Open Source Schools at BETT 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiNVQFficvE and read my case study on their site http://opensourceschools.org.uk/award-winning-open-source-notre-dame-high-school.html