Wednesday, 30 April 2008

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It’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Remote Learning with SuperClubsPLUS Mobile

Another great story from teacher James Blomfield and his pupil, Chris, explaining how using SuperClubsPLUS Mobile helps Mary Poppins child star keep up with his school work.


Chris: "My school gives me work to do on my Palm and it’s much easier than taking books and writing it down ‘cos I can just store it on here."

James: "Interestingly, one of the reasons we started with handhelds and wireless networks was because one of our pupils was in a London show, Mary Poppins, and his parents were very concerned that he was missing a lot of school work. Having the handheld device has meant that Chris can be part of the school when he's out of the school. He doesn’t feel so excluded because we can post him work online and keep tabs on his progress, so it’s made him and his parents feel more comfortable that he can keep up."

"Chris: The school work I'm sent is basically the work that we do in class but sometimes the tutor sends an extra bit because I do quite a lot of tutoring up there [London] and I normally finish most of it. And it’s also good in a way because it [the Palm] connects to the web and the school has SuperClubsPLUS and I can email my friends and teacher from up there."
- James Blomfield, Capel Le Ferne Primary School at Be Very Afraid III

Wow Words and Connectives

Improving Writing Skills with Peer Tutoring

Teacher James Blomfield and his pupils visited Be Very Afraid III at Bafta to show their WW2 movie project and explain how using SuperClubsPLUS Mobile has helped their writing.


"In addition to higher order skills it’s encouraging creative thinking. For example, the children have been doing some collaborative writing using a secure online environment called SuperClubsPLUS.

They are writing science fiction stories, posting them up on the Internet, then getting their friends to send in their comments - positive and negative. So making positive suggestions like, "Maybe you should use more connectives, better sentence openers". It’s a peer learning effect where they are helping each other to raise the level and standard of their writing and that’s without me.

I started the project, but they are making it happen. We've been using hand held devices to enable and empower the children to walk around the school or to take the devices home and work from home. We found that giving children that capability has completely changed their relationship to the technology and to the course work.

So often, the problem for primary school kids especially year 5/6 when they are nine and ten years old, is that they have to wait at home - they're the last person to use the Internet after mum and dad and after older brothers and sisters doing their GCSEs. So giving them kit which enables them to connect to the Internet really transforms their ability to work."
- James Blomfield, Capel Le Ferne Primary School at Be Very Afraid III