50 Things To Do This Summer: Number 49 “Make a PicCollage”

July 31, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey Apps, early years, Outdoors

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I am an advocate for using Spread The Happiness resources for more effective partnerships with parents.

Last year Shonette Bason-Wood introduced 50 Things To Do This Summer; a checklist of activities to get families having fun together. It's full of real simple ideas that sometimes get forgotten in busy life, but when we look over it as adults, we remember those things from our childhood – well most of them!

Number 49: "Make a PicCollage"

Technology is part of children's lives now and 'screen time' gets a lot of bad press. Not all screen time is the same though. No doubt many of us are in settings where children's communication, language, social and physical development are behind age-typical development so we are quick to assume this is because of their use of technology.

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Through the fire, I’ll keep burning on.

July 27, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey early years, Leadership and Managemant

“When it goes wrong, I’ll take my time and keep on holding on”

Chase & Status: All Goes Wrong (feat. Tom Grennan)

Will Kennard, of Chase & Status fame, shared his story at the Apple Distinguished Educators Academy this year. In an hour long special appearance, he told stories of his influences and inspirations. Tales of creativity and collaboration took us on a journey where obsession, attention to detail, failure and perseverance have lead to success. Will reflected that collaboration can only be successful when there is a balance of personalities and experiences. Everyone has something to contribute and his best work comes together when different people work with a shared vision.

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Draw and Tell app

July 25, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey Child Initiated Learning, early years, English

Here’s a spotlight on an app I discovered Apple’s Get Started with Code teacher guide. This is a mark making and story telling app which crayons, paint brushes, stickers and templates. It’s free, it’s lots of fun and it’s another tool to engage children in early writing skills.

The launch screen has 3 options:

Blank paper (start a new picture)
Colouring (access to templates)
Your drawings (saved work)

The screenshots in the tiles above show you what happens as you move through the ‘Blank Paper’ option and begin a new drawing. There are heaps of tools available, all of the tools you would expect in a digital painting package (including a rainbow crayon!).

Why not paint, draw and mark make with real art tools though?

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Getting Started with Code

July 25, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey Coding, early years

“Early Learning Goal: Technology. Children recognise that a range of technology is used in places such as homes and schools. They select and use technology for particular purposes.”

Early Years Outcomes, 2016

The Early Learning Goal for Technology is limited in Early Years Outcomes and often practitioners feel lost at developing this area of learning. What we forget when reading the Early Learning Goal for technology, is that our curriculum is best taught cross-curricularly. The technology goal is a prompt to make us consider how best to teach technology skills through other areas of learning; just like we do with English and Maths!

**The real problem is, what are these links to other areas?**

First, you need to decide which part of the Early Learning Goal we are trying to teach. Do you want children to use technology to enhance other skills (by using video, animation, photography, audio recording etc.) or do you want to teach computational thinking skills which will lead in to programming, problem solving and algorithms? Most likely, we sway towards multi-media skills because we are more confident with that than we are with code! But we really should put more emphasis on coding across our curriculum as the Technology strand will lead in to this area in Key Stage 1.

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One Best Photo Gallery

June 17, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey art, Collaboration, early years, Outdoors, photography

Saturday 17th June

Here is a day that has been marked on my calendar for several months, but also a day that 2 years ago, I never have thought would have been marked on my calendar!

One Best Photo launched at Sherwood Pines.

What is One Best Photo?

This project came about through a partnership with myself and the Learning Rangers at Sherwood Pines. In 2015, I met the Rangers to talk about ways in which I am using technology outdoors on field trips to their forest. For several years I had been taking classes of Foundation Stage children (aged 4 – 5) and leading photography walks with them.

Why?

Children have access to cameras in devices and photography is huge part of their every day lives. We now have a responsibility to teach them camera skills and what it means to be a photographer. If we don’t, then this will continue to happen on our devices when our young learners use them…

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One Best Photo with Polly Youngs

May 14, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey early years, Outdoors, photography

In the summer of 2016, I worked with the education rangers at Sherwood Pines to develop Screen Shot 2016-05-22 at 09.05.04

a free technology toolkits for use at Forestry Commission sites. One Best Photo is an outcome from this partnership and is a resource that can be used with early years and primary aged children. In the planning pack, teachers learn how to teach photography skills to young learners whilst children capture the relationship between people, wildlife and timber. This resource is available for free on iTunes and the education rangers at Sherwood Pines are welcoming groups to their forest to use this pack for free. All you need to do it pack up your iPad devices and get your group to the forest!

Since publishing, One Best Photo has made its away to classes around the UK and across the world. Recently, Polly Youngs attended one of the many events One Best Photo has featured at and was inspired to use it with her nursery class. Polly tells a story of using One Best Photo in her setting where children used Pic Collage and the iPad camera. She then arranged a trip to their local Forestry Commission site to apply these skills and capture striking images of people, wildlife and timber; the three key principles of the Forestry Commission.

Thank you for writing in and sharing this work with me Polly, over to you!

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One Best Photo with Chloe Webster

March 1, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey early years, Outdoors, photography

In the summer of 2016, I worked with the education rangers at Sherwood Pines to develop Screen Shot 2016-05-22 at 09.05.04

a free resource for use at Forestry Commission sites. One Best
Photo is one outcome from this partnership and is a resource that can be used with early years and primary aged children. In the planning pack, teachers learn how to teach photography
skills to young learners whilst children capture the relationship between people, wildlife and timber. This resource is available for free on iTunes and the education rangers at Sherwood Pines are welcoming groups to their forest to use this pack for free. All you need to do it pack up your iPad devices and get your group to the forest!

Since publishing, One Best Photo has made its away to classes around the UK and across the world. At the Nursery World Show in January, I met Chloe Webster from Pebbles Childcare. Chloe took on some of the principles and practices of One Best Photo at her setting and kindly shares her experiences using this resource.

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The Re-Working of Work.

February 17, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey early years, Leadership and Managemant

We are so lucky in the Early Years. We have a passport for change: Enabling Environments. It’s been in print from Development Matters 2012 and it means we are allowed to make changes that enhance the learning in our settings. Here’s what Development Matters says about Enabling Environments:

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It is an overarching principal which is still present in Early Years Outcomes, 2014, and we must hold on to this tightly with both hands because we are allowed to decide what an enabling environment looks like for the children that we teach every day! This post explores how I am using Future Work Skills 2020 to enable learning in my early years environment.

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Apple Classroom Counts for Early Years

February 7, 2017August 2, 2017 marcwithersey early years, Maths

With the introduction of Apple Classroom this summer, our iPad deployment at school became a lot smoother and manageable for teachers.

For a long time we have relied on Guided Access in the Accessibility settings to manage learning in focus groups. Triple tapping the home button on each iPad was commonplace in our early years setting, locking in apps for particular tasks during the day. Now with Classroom, the whole process of teaching and learning is more robots. From the teacher iPad we are able to open, lock and view the screens of every iPad in our classroom.

This is really handy when using iPad 1:1 with our young learners. Even though our desirable outcome is for children to select and use apps for a purpose, when teaching a skill in Maths for example, Classroom really does count!

A Closer Look at Classroom

This is a view of my teacher iPad running the Classroom app. You can see I have 5 iPad devices locked in to the Number Frames app. Each of the 5 iPad devices has a live view of the iPad screen in real time. I can tap the Lock icon at any time to freeze the iPad devices and I can launch any other app, book or website I want the group to use.

You can also see that I am managing different groups of iPad devices. There are 29 iPad devices all using Number Frames in the class and I can tap this group to see what each child is doing on their iPad. I know where and when to intervene just from glancing at Classroom at any time.
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