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ICT for Education is rolling out a national conference programme that will cover 14 regional locations this year. The first conference was held early this month in Cardiff. A great line-up of speakers, led by NGfL Cymru’s Ian Morgan and including one iPad, one child pioneer Fraser Speirs, attracted towards 150 delegates who were also keen to share their experiences of ICT in the classroom and take new ideas back to school.

The national programme arrives in Liverpool on Friday 24 February. It will host a guest appearance by Andy Hutt, director of Learning Potential, as well as speakers including regional education leaders, ICT practitioners from local schools and experts on national ICT education issues. The conference will also include a Question Time style debate on a topical regional issue and ICT Reviews Live!, a session of live reviews that put popular products and suppliers through their paces.

After Liverpool, the ICT for Education conference programme moves on to Belfast and Dublin in March, presenting local and national speakers covering a wide range of ICT issues and providing delegates with an inspirational and informative experience.

To find out more about this year’s ICT for Education conference programme and secure a delegate place in a particular location visit www.ictforeducation.co.uk

O2 Learn, an initiative that celebrates the skills of the UK’s best secondary school teachers, is inviting teachers across the country to help create Britain’s biggest classroom by building an online video library of the best revision lessons. Following the success of a similar programme last year, UK teachers are being asked to take their top lessons beyond the four walls of their classrooms and share them with secondary school students everywhere.

Teachers can upload video clips of their showcase lessons to www.o2learn.co.uk, with a chance to win from a prize fund of over £150,000, including weekly prizes of £2,000. Every teacher who uploads a lesson will receive a mobile broadband starter pack as a thank you for creating and sharing their lesson.

O2 Learn’s free online library of lesson videos has already delivered around 25,000 hours of teaching via 1,000 lessons from every type of school and college. Gav Thompson, creator of O2 Learn, said: “We know that young people increasingly spend their time online, with some logging on for up to 30 hours every week. By meeting them in the virtual world and providing inspirational material in a medium they’re engaged with, we are confident that the online classroom created by O2 Learn will continue to grow.”

Pupils can choose from a variety of mini lessons, allowing them to explore and discover new teaching styles and approaches that work best for them. The programme runs until the end of November.

PTA-UK, the national charity representing more than 13,750 PTAs across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is to use BT’s free online donation service MyDonate to radically change the face of school fundraising. The partnership with BT means PTA-UK members will have free access to the service, allowing them to collect Gift Aid tax relief on donations online.

The charity said the service will make it easier, more effective and more efficient to collect charitable donations and fundraising sponsorship money. The service also automates the collection process for Gift Aid, making it easier for schools to claim. Currently, less than one fifth of PTAs actively claim the extra 25% tax relief on donations from UK tax payers.

Although only a small fraction of school fundraising events are currently promoted and sponsored online, PTA-UK says it expects use of the MyDonate donation portal to drive approximately a third of all PTA fundraising online by 2015.

David Butler, chief executive of PTA-UK, said PTAs across the UK could look forward to a new era of fundraising. “The ability to move fundraising and sponsorship online will enable school fundraising to become more efficient and more dynamic. PTAs can register for the service very simply via www.pta.org.uk and we’re looking forward to working with BT over the coming months to roll out the service across our 13,750 member PTAs.”

MyDonate was launched in April 2011 to help grow the UK online fundraising market. BT covers the costs of providing MyDonate as part of its community programme. For more information, visit www.bt.com/mydonate

Cyber bullying in schools has reached manic proportions with 91% of secondary school teachers admitting they know pupils who have been victims. A survey of 1,300 teachers commissioned by the Open University (OU) questioned teachers about their attitudes towards technology in schools. It found teachers feel pupils are e-safe on the internet at school, but they are not confident that they are safe at home

The study also found smartphones are a growing problem in schools, with teachers concerned that pupils access inappropriate content. The most common form of cyber bullying is via social networks and teachers feel these sites should be banned during the school day.

Peter Twining, director of the OU’s Vital Programme that helps teachers bring technology into the classroom, said: “I have great sympathy for hard-pressed teachers, but collecting mobile phones in a cardboard box at the school gate is not the answer. The technology is not going away. Schools need to focus on helping pupils and teachers to get the best from smartphones and other technologies, while also developing responsible behaviours and learning patterns.”

Nearly all the teachers surveyed said their schools have an internet safety policy and although many use social networks themselves, this was an area where the fewest number of teachers felt confident in advising pupils. A quarter of primary and half of secondary teachers felt staff had received inadequate e-safety training.

“These findings imply that a significant number of teachers, particularly within the secondary phase of education, want or need more support in dealing with e-safety. Schools need to focus on appropriate staff development. It is a big challenge, but there are many benefits to engaging pupils with technology and a wealth of resources available to help,” Twining said.

Ten academies have gone live with cloud-based finance and accounting services over the past six month as they look to slash costs and improve efficiencies. They are benefitting from a shared services joint venture between Stockton and Darlington Borough Councils in the UK, known as Xentrall, that is underpinned by Unit4’s Shared Journey cloud-based shared services platform.

Xentrall offers schools affordable subscription-based finance, HR and payroll transactional services that include shared IT and operational support. Since its launch in April 2011, Xentrall has signed up 13 schools of which 10 are live.

Ian Coxon, head of transactional services at Xentrall, said there was real appetite for innovative operating models and technologies to help schools drive efficiencies and cut costs. “We have been pleased by the uptake of the services so far and hope that we will come to be seen as a benchmark for other public sector organisations setting up shared services in the cloud,” he said.

Shared Journey allows Xentrall to scale to meet demand, while the academies only pay for services they use. There is no capital outlay for users and no redundant capacity, while flexibility means the cost of tailoring the solution to each academy’s specific needs remains low.

The service, which originally focussed on academies in the Stockton and Darlington areas, is starting to garner interest from other public sector organisations and schools outside these geographies that are looking to reduce costs and improve service delivery.

An iPad package for parents is set to remove some of the practical barriers to effective parental engagement and help with administrative functions around school.

ParentMail, a school-to-home communications service already used by over 5,000 schools, will showcase the portable ParentMail iPad package for the first time at this year’s BETT show. The package includes several new features for schools. As well as being able to use ParentMail’s communications and payment collection system from a PC, the iPad can be used in and around school to help with other administrative functions.

For example, a portable dinner register is designed to simplify the catering and payment process. Parents prepay dinner money directly into their child’s account using ParentMail. Using iPads in the dinner hall, schools can select a photo of each pupil who has taken a dinner to log a purchase. The system then deducts the cost of the meal from the child’s ParentMail account and reminds parents when funds need topping up.

Geoff Jones, director at ParentMail, says the package offers an effective solution to communication and administration challenges. “In combining the recognised, popular elements of the ParentMail system and fresh functionality for use on the move, we hope to introduce a new generation of schools to the benefits of electronic communication and payment, and help remove some of the practical barriers to effective parental engagement,” he says.

The iPad functionality also means ParentMail can be accessed while out and about, for example on school trips, enabling communication with parents and back to school. The iPad package is available on monthly subscription. The system works independently of school internet and WiFi networks, and uses a mobile data service from O2 to send and store all data in the cloud for enhanced data security. Visit ParentMail on stand A16.

A revolutionary and 100% safe social networking site is allowing pupils around the world to develop their literacy, language learning, ICT and communication skills.

Designed for use in the classroom, Smiley Talk was introduced in June 2011 and aims to encourage cultural awareness and an interest in languages among primary school pupils through a stock of pre-translated phrases that allow them to communicate with their peers worldwide.

The ‘walled garden’ website does not allow any free typing, eliminating the risks of cyber bullying and grooming that are associated with open networking sites. Instead, children pick questions and answers from a range of different topics that can be added to by their teacher as more subjects are covered in the classroom.

Currently available in thirteen languages, the software is already being used by over 50 schools worldwide, including classrooms in Japan, India and Poland as well as across the UK.

Smiley Talk’s founder, Martin Harris, says he is confident the website can help children across the world to improve their language and communication skills, as well as their understanding of other cultures, all in a safe and secure environment.

“Our children are leading the way in new technologies and often have a better knowledge than their parents of how mobile phones and social networking sites can be used. It’s more important now than it ever has been that we keep up with their knowledge so that we can monitor their use of the internet and make sure that it is both safe and educational,” he sys.

Smiley Talk has been shortlisted for the 2012 BETT Award for Innovation in ICT. Visit Smiley Talk on stand SW47.

Additional, free resources for Classroom Monitor promise to help teachers address the new Ofsted focus on assessing pupil progress and streamlining teaching processes.

Nottingham based Prime Principle is showcasing new links in its Classroom Monitor Primary workbook to high quality, free web resources that inspire teaching and lesson planning. The online markbooks highlight next steps for pupils, identify vulnerable groups and link to web resources that support teaching in the classroom, helping schools to fulfil the requirements of the new Ofsted framework.

Each Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP) objective in the Classroom Monitor markbook is now linked to a minimum of four high quality and free web resources, including web links to curriculum mapped content from the BBC and the TES. This links assessment directly into planning, enabling a teacher to see gaps in learning and find resources to support those gaps without trawling through old plans or across the internet.

Chris Scarth, commercial director at Prime Principle, explains: “The new Ofsted requirements mean schools are now required to be accountable to local authorities, parents and pupils. The introduction of the free resources will be invaluable in helping teachers to monitor the development of each individual pupil and in helping to progress pupils’ learning.”

The Ofsted framework, to be implemented from January 2012, focuses on the classroom, the quality of teaching and raising achievement. Inspectors will be spending more time in the classroom and will expect teachers to demonstrate their understanding of tracking and assessment. Teachers will be required to keep accurate evidence of assessment and ensure personalised teaching and learning based on a pupil’s individual needs.

Prime Principle is also demonstrating a new self assessment feature for Classroom Monitor Secondary at BETT this year. The feature puts the assessment onus on pupils and encourages them to evaluate strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to take responsibility for their own learning. Pupils can log on to their Classroom Monitor profile to see a list of subjects on which they will be assessed. Once a piece of work has been completed, pupils can check whether they have met their objectives before attaching the work to the Classroom Monitor workbook for teacher assessment. See Classroom Monitor on stand J9.

A former primary school teacher has created a product that brings the world to life for early years foundation stage, key stage 1 and key stage 2 pupils.

Oddizzi from Little Travel Bug comprises an interactive map, a live news feed, 500 pages of fresh and lively content written by teachers and travel writers, games and a tool that enables pupils to communicate with classrooms around the world. With strong cross curricular links, Oddizzi also covers areas of the curriculum such as global awareness, language, art and literacy.

Central to the resource is the OddPod, an interactive map designed to make navigating around the world really fun and engaging.  Pupils can change the view of the map and the view of the world, zoom in and out, move around the world, discover hundreds of Oddizzi pins that have been organised by category and click to expand the pins and access the relevant pages.

The content is linked to national curriculum geography, so material is current and child friendly as well as being perfect for research and discussion. Thousands of images and videos bring the text to life, providing superb stimulus for literacy and art, and saving teachers’ time in sourcing relevant classroom materials.

Created by primary teacher Jenny Cooke, characters Odd and Izzi take children on a tour of the world, its people and places, sharing knowledge along the way. “As a primary teacher it frustrated me that there wasn’t one place that I could send my kids to that featured good quality, well presented material about the world,” Cooke says. “Invariably they would turn up with information from Wikipedia that they didn’t really understand and was far too difficult for them to process. Now teachers can point them to one site that communicates facts in a child friendly manner and in an exciting and engaging way”.

Oddizzi has been shortlisted in the Primary Digital Category at this year’s BETT Awards and recognised by PTA Magazine as a Top 10 Buy. Visit Oddizzi on stand P47.

Northgate Managed Services will show the latest version of My-School, a cloud-based application designed to provide 24/7 single sign-on access to a school’s online learning and teaching solutions at BETT 2012.

Designed to provide swift access to each school’s library of resources, My-School is available on an on-demand, pay-per-user basis, meaning users can deploy the portal without investment in IT infrastructure, an issue high on the agenda, particularly for schools converting to academy status that are responsible for balancing their own budgets.

New features in My-School include an extended widget gallery, now incorporating YouTube, wikis and social media; a multi-lingual interface; and the ability to integrate with Eclipse library software.

Northgate says pushing down the operational cost of ICT is a major driver for investments in technology. At BETT 2012, it will showcase its managed services, infrastructure services and managed cloud services. Teachers and students will be on the stand to speak to visitors about the benefits they have gained across key areas of efficiency and operational improvement.

The company will also demonstrate Northgate Service Manager, part of its managed service portfolio, which allows teachers and ICT technicians to instantly log incidents and requests for assistance from Northgate’s service desk. The system helps schools minimise disruption in the classroom, enabling them to track the progress of their request online and to sign it off only when they are satisfied that the issue has been resolved. Visit Northgate on stand D70.