A New Year - More ICT

With the arrival of a new academic year came the arrival of some much anticipated tablets to our school. As I wrote about, at some length, we decided upon going for a Windows based tablet in order to simplify their integration into the school and the network.

As such, we have purchased 11 HP tablets for the school. After some initial delays in configuring the Windows 8 tablets to work with the Windows 7 network (we had not considered the issue of pupils logging onto two different operating systems) we are now up and running.

The first stages of getting the tablets in wider use within the school has been a little impacted by strain on the server which has hopefully now been resolved. I have noticed one issue that we are looking for a solution to, it is that the 'tiles' that appear on the desktop of the tablet change regularly. On occasions one can see just the main Windows 8 apps, on other occasions, this includes a desktop shortcut and IE shortcut, the third option that shows itself is for the user to be able to see all of the programs that are available through the school network.

This is currently not a problem and we are trying to work out what causes this to happen, the idea solution would be to add tiles for the software that we use the most at a certain point in the interface. I was put off for a while with the fact that the IE logo often disappears until a student saved my blushes and pointed out to me that Bing is also involved with the internet. The famous phrase involving wood and tress springs to mind.

So our current status is that we have a class set (1 between 2) of tablets in our school as well as the ICT suite. My mission for the year is to develop staff confidence in using the tablets for a range of activities whilst further testing and developing the ICT syllabus that I worked to develop last year. Oh and the assessment sheets that I have uploaded.

Aim for July 2013: School-wide tablet policy and staff training completed, ICT syllabus tested and reviewed for the first year (compared against the new NC ICT as well as the Chris Q skills that it already uses) and assessment developed, pupil self-evaluation and teacher evaluation against 'I Can...' statements.