resources update issue 56

• Final Score
• e:maths
• Living Phonics Pack One: The Alphabet and Key Digraphs
• Bioscope

• Victorian Britain: Life in 1881
• Gigajam Essential Keyboard Skills Course
• Abersaff
• Living Library: Secondary Version

Final Score is an interactive drama that engages the user through clever use of celebrity culture and the media, raising several issues about celebrity privacy and media intrusion. The package is initially aimed at English KS4, but
could easily fit into KS4 media studies and ICT.

The whole program has been developed using imaginative and dramatic scenarios with a rich resource, providing opportunities for a variety of investigative work, speaking and writing styles, in a step-by-step approach.

The comprehensive teacher notes and teacher and student activity sheets (all in electronic and printed format), broadcast quality video, resources CD-ROM and network version of the program certainly give plenty of opportunity for the software to used by the whole class, by a small group of students, or by individuals studying alone.

Victorian Britain: Life in 1881 stimulates and gives purpose to children’s writing in the primary school. The children are introduced to thirteen characters living in the town of Burton
in the year 1881, each with a story to tell. The user becomes personally involved with the lives of the characters, and at certain intervals is faced with choices as regards the direction to be taken.

The package contains teachers’ notes and help as well as lots of worksheets and activities. It is also linked to a website for further activities connected to online stories.

The whole package is a very adaptable resource with whole class IWB activities, small group activities and individual research. The more you use the resource the more possibilities of classroom use you find.

eMaths is an excellent resource for teaching and assessing maths topics. It is highly interactive and covers a huge range of topics and levels to suit the whole age, experience and ability range. There is a range of activities featured from straightforward question and answer activities to those requiring more complex problem-solving as well as some lovely time–based matching games.

eMaths marks students’ work, giving a choice of marking question by question, or at the end, when an activity has been completed. An excellent feature is that students can record their progress and even print out certificates on completion as the software stores students’ scores topic by topic.

I like the organisation and presentation of this software. It is clearly and attractively set out and extremely straightforward to navigate.

Gigajam is an expandable software package comprising of: an Essential Skills Course, a KeyboardXtractor, and the Gigajam Analyser. All support materials and installation information for this software is available on the CD-ROM.

All you need to get going is a basic midi keyboard, midi PC connecting lead and a PC. The Skills Course is designed to provide keyboard tuition, which is easy to follow and take you from basic skills through to advanced techniques. It includes 10 professionally written lessons, which include video clips and playalong files. Performances can be recorded into the KeyboardXtractor for editing and mixing.
After recording the pupil’s exercise, Gigajam Analyser assesses their performance and gives it a percentage rating (I have still not got 100%!!) This enables the student or teacher to track the student’s progress throughout the course.

Living Phonics Pack One: The Alphabet and Key Digraphs

Ransom Publishing

Living Phonics is a comprehensive program for teaching Foundation Stage and Key Stage One phonics. Supported by CD-ROMs and paper based materials, the teachers’ CD-ROM explains the program in some detail and includes very helpful video clips of the elements in action in the classroom.

The digital materials include whole class lessons, preferably for use with an IWB, and individual ICT activities to support the main lessons. Concepts and knowledge are supported by clear, attractive visual images (such as embedded objects relating to each letter), animations, songs and actions. Pupils are encouraged to learn each letter phoneme and grapheme as well as the correct formation through a series of multi-sensory activities which include on-screen activities. This is a very
comprehensive resource and the materials are easy to follow for both teachers and pupils.

Storybook Phonics offers a stimulating storybased approach to phonics practice which helps children to read with confidence. It was easily installed on my computer and could be linked in with my existing planning and the Early Years literacy targets.

The software can be used with small groups or for whole class teaching with an interactive whiteboard. The stories, titles and ‘cover’ pictures can be discussed. Each word is highlighted as the story is ‘read’, the pace is excellent as is the sound quality. Navigation between pages is simple and the children were delighted with the colourful animated features. The games were engaging and included matching phonic sounds, identifying initial, middle and final letters with key blend sounds and the record sheets were simple and easy to use.

This software is essentially a virtual microscope enabling the clear magnification and display, focusing, manipulation, and measurement of a library of 56 varied and colorful zoological and botanical slides. Its use with any class would guarantee the clear observation of biological
specimens with no distracting bubbles or other foreign bodies present. To facilitate this observation there are task sheets for all activities. As well as developing microscope
skills the slides and tasks can support content of the National Curriculum Key Stage 4 biology and AS and A2 biology syllabi.

Menus offer a full tutorial to guide the firsttime user through all the microscope controls, including adjusting magnification, focusing, and moving specimens as well as the introduction of a stage scale and eyepiece graticule to enable the detailed measurement of specimens.

Living Library is a massive collection of online curriculum. It makes available at the computer screen thousands of curriculum-linked materials from major educational publishers - encyclopaedias, maps, current news and archives dating back to 1992, photographs, videos and
sound clips. The addition of revision guides really makes Living Library truly comprehensive.

These resources are designed to motivate and enthuse pupils in their learning. Having all of these learning resources in one place helps to save teachers’ and pupils’ time, and encourages independent learning and the development of ICT skills. Living Library brings together
hundreds of appropriate educational websites, saving students and teachers time in getting to relevant information, and the frustration often encountered when trying to find useful sites. Furthermore, it ensures a safe environment for pupils to do research unsupervised.

Make sure any new software will run on your current hardware - some software may require particular hardware and vice versa
• Carry out an audit of your existing hardware and find out current plans for purchasing.
• Consult the school ICT policy
• Identify any further hardware or software requirements in the light of the above and ensure that these correlate
• Don’t forget, if it is an on-line product, to check you have enough band width