Welcome to Nikkidev

Just want to welcome Nikkidev, who has joined our team to help publish more regularly to this blog. As some of you will know, this blog was started up as an experiment to see how effective blogs can be to share ideas between ICT leaders/co-ordinators within Derbyshire. I have to confess that at times I've found it hard to find the time to post, and many of our teachers who had their arms twisted to join in at the start have faded away. This has helped me to understand that blogging is a very personal thing, my own views - great for people to read, but not always the best tool for collaborating, which might be better with a discussion or a wiki. So that is exactly what this is, my own views (and now that of Nikki too), as two professionals who work as leaders of ICT in Derbyshire schools (myself at LA level, and Nikki at the chalkface/[IWB-face?])... and are not necessarily the views of Derbyshire County Council ;-)

Story Creator 2 - online application

I've been using Story Creator 2 with our Year 2, 3 & 4 children. Although this online application is part of E2BN's Myths and Legends web site, it can be used to create many types of stories. Using the backgrounds, characters and object clipart provided, children can build stories from a few pages long to real epics with many chapters. They are able to add speech and thought bubbles, narrative text as well as using sound to really bring their stories to life.

So what do the children think of it - they love it!

One of the most exciting outcomes of using this online application has been that the majority of those children who have home Internet access, have used it to continue their stories at home or even create new ones (by using the accounts created for them at school). It also appears to have become a family affair, with several children reporting that their parents and siblings also enjoy using it!

It's really worth persevering with this tool, the children eventually do get past trying to make too much happen on each page and start to adjust their stories using the storyboard to add and delete scenes.