Monthly Archives: March 2019

PurpleMash for all Primary Pupils

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Whether it’s inspiring writers or boosting creativity in your children, Purple Mash has very much to offer teachers of children with SEND and it is simple to use and loved by all.

PurpleMash is a suite of online programmes that cover almost every area of the computing curriculum and provide templates and tools for every area of the Primary Curriculum. There are activities to practise basic computing skills, like keyboarding & mouse skills; activities to teach online safety, activities to teach phonics and get children reading, writing, listening and speaking. There are tools for counting, graphing, mind mapping, painting. There are activities for problem solving and learning tables. All the tools are brightly coloured, easy to navigate and use; however if you need it there are videos and PDF guidance for every tool. In the teacher’s area is all the documentation you might need: Schemes of Work with lesson plans, assessment tools, suggested timetables, cross curricular links etc.

There are many activities for different subject areas with template and tasks labelled with a suggested age appropriateness but there are lots of ways of differentiating within tasks.Themed writing projects have sentence starters and word banks to scaffold work for some groups.

It is very easy have access to PurpleMash at home. Teachers can set tasks for children to do in class or at home by using 2Dos.

Minimash is the area for children in the Early Years, which might also be suitable for older children working at P levels. It has themed activities and many games and creative activities like music making and painting as well as delightful figures to colour in.

Serial Mash is a collection of online books for children from 5 to 11 with excellent (subject related) themes. They can be read on screen, (background and text colour and size can all be altered if necessary) or printed out as a PDF. Then a collection of activities testing comprehension, spellings, punctuation and grammar all centered on each chapter. (Most books have a new chapter each week.)

 

 

 

Easier editing with text to speech

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I was recently asked by a sixth form student about text to speech, she wanted to have her coursework and essays read to her as she found this an easier way to make sure it all made sense than reading it back. I know what she  means, often when we read back our work we see it as we meant it to be rather than as it is, and fail to notice errors – particularly when it is on a screen rather than on paper.

As she and I were talking I realised how many ways there are to get text from a screen read aloud, and, actually, how easy it is.

For a start, all operating systems have a screenreader built in. InWindows this is ‘Narrator’ and it can be turned on and off by pressing Ctrl + Windows Key + Enter. On Macs, and iPads, they have ‘Voiceover’ which can be found in the Settings of the  device. These are designed for users with visual impairments, so will often read the entire screen, starting from the top with the document title in word-processors, such as MSWord, or the URL on a  webpage, which can be a bit disconcerting. They will also describe each action, such as opening a dialogue box, or clicking on formatting. It is more information than most users need, which is why it is often better to use an add-on or plug-in with a more limited purpose.

Last summer Microsoft added reading functionality to MSWord. If you have the most up-to-date version installed this will appear as a ‘Read Aloud’ button under the  Review menu in the ribbon. But even if you are not completely up to date you can add a ‘Speak’ plug in. From the  File menu choose Options, then Customize Ribbon and change ‘Popular Commands’ to ‘All Commands’ in the left hand  drop down menu. Find ‘Speak’ and choose to add it to the ribbon. (You may be asked to create a group to make this possible. This will appear as a folder in the right hand list, which you can select.)

They are both straightforward to operate by putting the cursor  at a point in the text, or highlighting some, then clicking the button in the toolbar.

In the online version of MSWord, in Office 365 a similar functionality can be found under the Immersive Reader button. This has a few more functions than simply reading aloud. (You can find out more about Immersive Reader here.)

 

Another option is to install a bespoke program that will read anything on the screen, usually a toolbar that sits on top of all open windows, such as WordqSpeakq or Read and Write Gold. Both of these offer support for writing as well, with predictors and speech to text available, too. They work well and offer flexibility in that they are always available, no matter what you are working on, whether it is an essay, a presentation or even an email. Although if you only want a screenreader they can be an expensive choice.

If what you are after is improved accessibility when online then there are add ons available for the browser. Like many people I use Chrome most of the time, and I have found the Read&Write plug-in very useful. It is turned on and off with a click in the browser bar, which opens a set of controls, including play/pause and skip forward or backward. 

 

You could also opt for ReadAloud which copies the text into a separate box on screen so you can focus on the section you want read.

Overall there are lots of choices, all of which can make revising and editing text easier and more accurate. What’s not to like?

Quality assured resources for digital safeguarding

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The London Grid for Learning  is bestknown for providing broadband and services, such as email, to over 95% of the capital’s schools. It is less well known as a charity that provides good quality curriculum content to its subscribers, including many free resources for anyone  who wants to use them. This is particularly true of its advice and materials for online safeguarding.

At www.lgfl.net/online-safety you can find lots of free to download materials, including policies on acceptable use for staff, visitors, contractors and pupils (including symbolised ones for those with low literacy levels); advice to stakeholders such as governors on online safety; guidance on British values; a model e-security policy; and official documents such as the Ofsted Handbook, among many others.

You’ll also find blog posts at https://safeblog.lgfl.net/ such as a recent one, “Parents – scare or prepare?” about how to alert parents to online safety issues, and specifically the advice not to list specific apps and websites, because this can spread panic and see them looking out for named ones rather than having a general awareness, it is better to equip them with an understanding of the issues overall, so they can deal with any threats that come along. Whilst there are apps you might have real concerns about, such as Bodyeditor which allows an uploaded image to be altered – perhaps by an individual seeking the perfect figure, thereby reinforcing attitudes of dissatisfaction  with their own appearance – in the long run these may be supplanted, or supplemented, by other ones.

There are also resources to address the very real problems associated with sexting. Very powerful testimony to the damage this can do was given by Megan Hinton when she spoke at the 2018 Digisafe Conference http://tinyurl.com/yy3cjlur . It is a thought provoking talk that will make anyone consider carefully the potential consequences of sharing possibly compromising images. More resources can be found at www.sexting.lgfl.net , amongst them the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) guidance for Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSL) on how to respond to incidences of it in school, and the College of Policing briefing note for Police Officers. Links off from the site include www.disrespectnobody.co.uk , which is aimed at young people and includes consideration of questions such as ‘What is consent?’

For many school staff it can feel as though issues that arise are isolated ones that others may not be experiencing, so for a broad overview of children and young peoples’ online lives the ‘Hopes and Streams’ report, https://www.lgfl.net/online-safety/hopesandstreams, based on the answers of nearly 40,000 school age respondents, helps provide some insights. It offers statistics and case studies analysed by factors such as age and gender and could provide a useful starting point for CPD sessions.

Alongside the materials for staff are links to resources, such as the BBC’s Ownit videos, https://www.bbc.com/ownit which pitches content at an age appropriate level using presenters from their own programmes, or well-know Youtubers, to address issues of life online. You might also want to look up the Calm Harm and Clear Fear apps for smartphones that give an immediate response should someone be considering self-harming, or be feeling overly-anxious.

It can be difficult in school to find the time to source the materials and resources you need to teach, deliver training, or develop policy and strategic approaches to the whole area of digital safeguarding. The LGFL intend to help by providing this rich resource. A few minutes research here could save hours of scrabbling around with Google.