Education secretary Damian Hinds recently announced new non-statutory guidelines supporting schools to teach pupils how to stay safe online when studying existing and new subjects. The guidelines make some general recommendations but also mention some specifics such as teaching how URLs are made and what an IP address is, as well as how companies make […]
Read moreEach week in our newsletter we highlight a favourite free or low-cost app/tool/resource/piece of software and give a brief rundown of how you might use it in the classroom. Every month or so we round them up here on the blog. We’d love to hear what you think about them if you give them a go, and any […]
Read moreAt London Connected Learning Centre we think everyone should know about Linda Liukas. After all, she’s the digital champion of Finland and, in 2014, her Hello Ruby coding book for children raised $380,000 on Kickstarter, making it the platform’s most highly funded children’s book, But why, as an educator, should you know about her? If […]
Read moreIn October last year we previewed Apple’s free resource, Everyone Can Create, designed to help inspire teachers as well as pupils and students to extract maximum creative and educational value from iPads. The resources sit alongside Apple’s #EveryoneCanCode campaign, and focus on the impact that the technology and apps can have in supporting every student […]
Read moreFinland’s exceptional education system and thriving technology scene are both well documented. But how do they fit together? London CLC’s co-director Sarah Horrocks explored the Finnish approach to computational thinking in schools in a week-long trip to Tampere, and shares her findings. Companion podcast: listen to an interview with Linda Lukias, Finnish creator of the […]
Read moreRecorded in Tampere, Finland, Linda Liukas, creator of the Hello Ruby resources, discusses computational thinking, different practices across the world, her experience of the coding backlash and how her illustration and storytelling background helps her explain concepts. Plus, London CLC’s Sarah Horrocks and Rowan Roberts, who spent a day working with Linda in workshops at […]
Read moreLondon CLC is experienced at supporting schools as they move to the cloud. Migrating your data and applications to a cloud-based service can certainly save your school money but, for greatest success, implementation needs to be staged. That’s where planning comes in. We work with schools on their long-term planning, to decide on what they […]
Read moreEach week in our newsletter we highlight a favourite free or low-cost app/tool/resource/piece of software and give a brief rundown of how you might use it in the classroom. Every month or so we round them up here on the blog. We’d love to hear what you think about them if you give them a go, and any […]
Read moreMay 11 is Scratch Day, an international celebration of coding on Scratch’s free, block-based coding platform. London Connected Learning Centre’s Rowan Roberts shares her love of Scratch and suggests three great Scratch activities to try. Why is Scratch such a great tool? Scratch allows you to develop a deep understanding of the logical structures used […]
Read moreScreen time – that shorthand for the hours children spend on digital devices – has become a contentious topic in recent years. Blamed for everything from obesity to sleep issues and cyber bullying, kneejerk reactions have tended towards the hardline. Politicians have called for time limits on social media and the debate has become both […]
Read moreWith our London CLC Humanities conference coming up on 1 May and the third London History Schools Day on 24 May we direct the spotlight onto London’s rich history and the benefits of using digital technology to support children’s learning, especially to bring the local context to life. London History Schools Day, which was launched […]
Read moreLondon CLC responds to the government’s new EdTech Strategy and argues that context – and funding – is everything. The government launched its EdTech Strategy this week, designed to help tackle 10 key education challenges including reducing teachers’ marking workload, boosting training opportunities and levelling the playing field for people with special educational needs. The […]
Read moreWe’ve been working for a few years now with IBM on the Robo Challenge project that invites teams of children from local primary schools to compete in a series of programming challenges. This year, for the first time, the competition was exclusively for girls. There’s a significant gender gap in the programming sector – girls […]
Read moreWhat’s a critical learner? What are the skills children and young people need to develop in order to question and safely engage with information they come across online? How can educators support them to develop these critical skills? In this podcast experts from the award-winning London Connected Learning Centre look at the latest research to […]
Read moreThe Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has today published Using Digital Technology to Improve Learning, a guidance report (download it here). The report reviews the best available evidence and offers schools four recommendations of how technology can improve teaching and learning, It also includes guidance on tailoring school communications to encourage parental engagement and offering more […]
Read moreAccording to the recent Carnegie Trust report on digital inclusion, Switched On, 10% of households have no access to the internet and 11.3 million people in the UK lack digital skills. This has far reaching impacts. Increasing numbers of basic services, from benefits to housing, are accessed online, not to mention job searches and shopping […]
Read moreThe world wide web turns 30 years old tomorrow and there are celebrations taking place across the world. For educators it means a bonanza of resources and activities about the world wide web that can be adapted for use in the classroom. Here’s our roundup of what’s happening and our choice of activities to mark […]
Read morePeter Lillington responds to the government’s draft guidance on Health, Sex and Relationships education The world in which children and young people are growing up has in many respects changed considerably since 2000, the last time that Health and Sex and Relationships Education guidance was updated. The government’s draft guidance, which was actually published for […]
Read moreLondon CLC is heading back to Tate Exchange and this time it’s bigger than ever…. Well, longer than ever anyway. Just as in previous years, London CLC is a Tate Exchange associate. This means that we take over the Exchange floor on level 5 of Tate Modern, giving pupils the chance to create digital and […]
Read moreEach week in our newsletter we highlight a favourite free or low-cost app/tool/resource/piece of software and give a brief rundown of how you might use it in the classroom. Every month or so we round them up here on the blog. We’d love to hear what you think about them if you give them a go, and any […]
Read moreThe online safety curriculum keeps evolving – and it needs to. As children and young people’s use of online media evolves, so too do the safety challenges that arise. Last week’s Ofcom report into children’s media lives provides a snapshot of what children are doing online and how online interaction is changing. For example: YouTube […]
Read moreStories are at the heart of so much that we do and children have an innate drive to create, tell and retell stories. While storytelling is as old as human culture itself and requires nothing more than an imagination, digital tools can help us to tell the stories in new forms, from creating Minecraft worlds […]
Read moreLondon CLC is a Bett award winner! Last night our work with schools was recognised in the support and service category at the Bett show, the most prestigious awards in the schools edtech world. The award celebrates companies and educational organisations that provide effective services, support and professional development to ensure that technology really makes […]
Read moreBett is one of the largest edtech trade shows in the world with nearly 1000 exhibitors and around 35,000 attendees, and this year it’s bigger than ever with the addition of the Education Show, aimed at senior leaders. We know it can feel overwhelming. So we’ve pooled our knowledge about the show and gathered our […]
Read moreHow was 2018 for you? It was a busy one in the world of education and digital, from a new education minister at the start of the year through to Nesta predicting that AI will mean the end of exams (in 2019 – so watch out for that…) via Life in Likes, phones in schools, fake […]
Read moreCan you spot a fake news story? Can you teach somebody else how to? We all need to approach the online world with a critical mindset and our Bett talk will explore what that means in an age of deep fakes, fauxtography and deliberate disinformation spreading swiftly across social media. How do children make sense […]
Read moreWith research showing that teachers spend more than half their time on admin, we’ve rounded up some of the most effective productivity tools and techniques to stay on top of email, planning and collaborating. Teachers in English schools won’t be surprised by a recent report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) which […]
Read moreEach week in our newsletter we highlight a favourite free or low-cost app/tool/resource/piece of software and give a brief rundown of how you might use it in the classroom. Every month or so we round them up here on the blog. We’d love to hear what you think about them if you give them a go, and any […]
Read moreWith the news this week that the number of data breaches reported by schools increased by almost a quarter in just two years to 703, and further warnings about the increasing vulnerability of schools to cyber attacks, London CLC’s Krzysztof Jurek looks at three areas where everyone can help to keep their data more secure. […]
Read moreLondon CLC is through to the finals of the Service and Support category of the Bett Awards 2019. The award celebrates UK-based companies and educational organisations that provide effective services, support and professional development to ensure that ICT really makes an impact in the classroom. It recognises the fact that educators need ongoing support for […]
Read moreLondon CLC’s Peter Lillington explores this hot topic and recommends some new resources to help you teach it in the classroom. In September we wrote about and podcasted about the place of digital literacy in computing and the wider curriculum, and highlighted our participation in a newly formed News Literacy Network with national partners such as […]
Read moreNot only is Scratch a brilliant tool for teaching the basics of programming, but it can also have great cross-curricular applications. Recently I worked with year 3 children to help them program their very own neolithic style cave paintings, writes Rowan Roberts. Building on their year 2 work around compass directions, they started by predicting […]
Read moreLondon CLC’s Peter Lillington had a preview of Apple’s new resources for inspiring creativity with iPads and he’s impressed. Many schools are looking at ways to make more of the investment they have made in iPads. Apple has responded with a free resource, Everyone Can Create, to help inspire teachers as well as pupils and […]
Read moreKanye with the expert 000000 passcode pic.twitter.com/blUMExjfnN — Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey) October 11, 2018 If your password is: “password123456” or anything similar (or 00000, looking at you, Kanye West) – it is not going to be effective. You may think that using a long and complicated password, such as; “YourName+yourDOB” will protect your account. Bad […]
Read moreEach week in our newsletter we highlight a favourite free or low-cost app/tool/resource/piece of software and give a brief rundown of how you might use it in the classroom. Every month or so we round them up here on the blog. We’d love to hear what you think about them if you give them a go, and any […]
Read moreOn National Poetry Day, Caitlin McMillan explores the apps that can help children engage with and perform poetry. Hip Hip Hooray It’s National Poetry Day And we’d like to say…. We think poetry is a key component of the English curriculum, but the manner of pupil engagement with it as an art form is evolving. […]
Read morePeter Lillington, London CLC teaching and learning consultant, shares his highlights of the first Edtech Podcast Festival. Sophie Bailey, the voice behind the popular and well regarded EdTech podcast, has long had a dream to bring together listeners and contributors, educators and edtech companies in a festival of ideas. The result was the Edtech Podcast […]
Read moreWhat is digital literacy and why is it important? How and where should it be taught – as a subject in its own right or weaved through computing, citizenship, history, English or all subjects? Should ‘fake news’ always be published in Comic Sans font…? Having the skills to be critical about information that’s encountered online […]
Read moreAs London CLC announces a new digital literacy collaboration with First News and the Guardian Foundation, and a free CPD session for teachers, Peter Lillington explores what exactly literacy means in a digital world. Digital literacy has become something of a buzz phrase. At first appearances its meaning seems obvious but it is frequently used […]
Read moreLast month we wrote a response to the government’s announcement that it was putting education technology at the heart of education, welcoming the initiative and arguing that it must be led by teaching and learning needs rather than the ed tech industry. Bob Harrison has also responded to that ‘vision’ in a no-holds-barred article, Don’t look […]
Read moreDuring September schools will have a chance to bring classes of children to London CLC for a flavour of gamelan music making, combined with animation. London CLC’s teaching and learning computing consultant Peter Lillington participated in the International Gamelan Music Festival in Java earlier this month and gives an insight into the spirit of gamelan. […]
Read moreDamian Hinds’ new initiative to put technology at the heart of education is an exciting and overdue development but it must be led by the needs of learning and teaching – not the edtech industry, says Sarah Horrocks, director of the London Connected Learning Centre. Education secretary Damian Hinds today set out his vision for […]
Read moreEach week in our newsletter we highlight a favourite free or low-cost app/tool/resource/piece of software and give a brief rundown of how you might use it in the classroom. Every month or so we round them up here on the blog. We’d love to hear what you think about them if you give them a go, […]
Read moreGamelan is the collective name for an ensemble, orchestra or group of instruments that come from the fourth most populated country in the world – Indonesia, and the islands of Java or Bali in particular. The instruments are mainly but not exclusively percussion, and learning basic playing techniques is quite simple – so the gamelan […]
Read moreA CAS conference is always a pleasure to attend, writes Peter Lillington, London CLC’s computer teaching and learning consultant, and this year’s 10th anniversary event in Birmingham was no exception. Having been to the London conference in the spring I knew that CAS is fantastic at bringing together academics, teachers, industry and business, enthusiasts, consultants […]
Read moreWelcome to the latest episode of the London Connected Learning Centre podcast, in which presenter Julia Lawrence explores with expert guests how technology can be used in early years settings. The discussion focuses on challenges and opportunities while also unpicking some of the debate around online safety and screen time for very young children. “Our […]
Read moreFrom design thinking to Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling, unplugged computational thinking to light-up cities, you can guarantee that a London CLC primary computing conference will be varied, enlightening and always inspiring. Twice a year, primary school computing subject leaders gather at London CLC’s HQ in Clapham for a packed day of CPD. What can […]
Read moreWant to see, at a glance, the nearest edtech mover and shaker to you? With the Education Foundation’s new edtech interactive map you can do just that. It plots the people, products and projects around the UK that are making a difference in the edtech world, with the option to click on the points […]
Read moreThe Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills in Schools, published its Fake news and critical literacy: final report yesterday. It is a must-read for teachers and school leaders, writes Sarah Horrocks, director of London Connected Learning Centre. Key findings are that only 2% of children aged 5-16 have the critical […]
Read moreWelcome to the latest episode of the London Connected Learning Centre podcast. What’s turning girls off computing and what can be done about it? In episode no 2 on gender and computing, presenter Julia Lawrence explores with expert guests the question of where children are getting the idea that computing is more for boys and the […]
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