MOBO award winning artists N-Dubz today launch an anthem to support the theme of this year’s Anti-Bullying Week, staying safe in cyberspace.

R U Cyber Safe is available as a free download and you can also watch the video

16-20 November 2009

This year’s Anti-Bullying Week campaign is ‘Stay safe in cyberspace’. The focus on cyberbullying is reflected in the resource pack sent to schools in England and the pack of resources for FE colleges.

More about Anti-Bullying Week

Storyboard is a website where children can collaborate on building a simple picture story book online.  There is a huge library to browse through until you find a set of pictures that you like.  Once you have picked them, drop the images one by one onto the page. All the resizing and positioning of text is done automatically.

You can publish your creation privately, or in the public gallery, for free.

There is no print function at the moment, but this is in development.

Visit the site

For a limited time, Becta are offering a £200 discount to small schools (less than 100 pupils) who apply for accreditation.

More information about the Next Generation Learning Charter and charges involved are available on the website https://selfreview.becta.org.uk/about_next_generation_learning_charter

Are you using Fuse Creator in school?  If so, then why not enter this fantastic competition?  This is a UK wide competition that has just been launched – first prize is an Asus Minibook!  You can download a free trial of the software in order to enter the competition,

There are three categories, Teacher, Primary Pupil, Secondary Pupil.  In summary:

• Teacher – build a sequenced activity, using your own content, to support a specific curriculum learning objective of your choice.
• Primary pupils – create an activity which demonstrates something you have learned in school this year
• Secondary pupils – build an activity for a piece of curriculum revision of your choice

To find out more visit the Fuse website.

Stone Computers can help you recycle.

Once computers and other items of IT equipment have outlived their usefulness they become a problem in that they’re sometimes difficult to dispose of responsibly.  In 2007 the European Directive on WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment) came into force to try and put a halt to the estimated 1 Million tonnes of electrical and electronic waste going to landfill sites every year in this country alone. Stone Computers offer a recycling scheme which schools can take advantage of. The scheme is free of charge subject to a minimum collection quantity (schools may combine WEEE to a single collection point) and the equipment being suitable for recycling (e.g. hard drives and memory have not been removed.)
To find out more about this scheme please visit the recycling section of the  Stone Group website where you can also see a short video of their recycling plant in action. (Guided tours of this facility also available!)

FAO – ALL Interested Staff

I am pleased to inform you that TAG Learning have offered to extend the time available to Staffordshire schools to order Crazy Talk 6 at discounted prices. This is an excellent piece of software to encourage development of Literacy and cross-curricular writing.

If you are a Staffordshire school and want to take advantage of this offer you need to email K.Hickman@blieducation.com quoting Staffordshire CT6 Offer in the subject line. This must be done before the end of November 2nd (first day back after half term)

The price is £9.67 per licence and a minimum order for 5 licences must be placed.

Those small schools who attended the “What’s in my Bag?” project during the summer were provide with a 5 user licence for Crazy Talk 5 – you can upgrade your licences to Crazy Talk 6 for £4.83 each.

Please note

• If you are a Primary school and have been informed that you are getting ICT or Literacy support from September 2009 we will be providing a 5 user licence as part of your support. You can of course order more.
• This is a new release version of Crazy Talk and requires a minimum of 1gb RAM to work.

Want to know more about what Crazy Talk does – then visit http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/

Here is a great way to combine healthy eating and databases.  

The idea is simple – just type the name of the food stuff you are wondering about into the box provided and a list of options will appear below.  From a roast beef sandwich to a chocolate doughnut, once you select the item a full list of its nutrient values is displayed on the right.

Calorie Connect

This is notification to inform you that for security reasons Staffordshire schools will be emailed a new password next week for logging onto Espresso from home.  This email will be sent to your nominated home access email account (usually your office@schoolname  account) on the 21st September 2009.
When saving Espresso Primary from home as a ‘Favourite’ on to your home PC, you need to ensure it is the URL for the log-on page and not the full site after you  have logged on, as this will lead to access problems in the future.
If you are having problems accessing Espresso Primary Home Access please contact Staffordshire Learning Technologies (SLT) on 01889 256290

FAO – ALL Interested Staff

At a recent ICT Network meeting TAG Learning offered Staffordshire schools a discount on Crazy Talk 6. This is an excellent piece of software to encourage development of Literacy and cross-curricular writing.

If you are a Staffordshire school and want to take advantage of this offer you need to email K.Hickman@blieducation.com quoting Staffordshire CT6 Offer in the subject line. This must be done before the end of September

The price is £9.67 per licence and a minimum order for 5 licences must be placed.

Those small schools who recently attended the “What’s in my Bag?” project were provide with a 5 user licence for Crazy Talk 5 – you can upgrade your licences to Crazy Talk 6 for £4.83 each.

Please note

• If you are a Primary school and have been informed that you are getting ICT or Literacy support from September 2009 we will be providing a 5 user licence as part of your support. You can of course order more.
• This is a new release version of Crazy Talk and it has not had time to be tested by Staffordshire Learning Technologies to ensure it works with school networks (notably CC3 or CC4). There was not a problem with Crazy Talk 5.

Want to know more about what Crazy Talk does – then visit http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/