Congratulations to the Summer Games Competition Winners!

…..and the Winner is!

Pearson Fronter hosted a WOW (wonderful online winners’) event this morning, Friday 22nd June,  when around 500 youngsters and their teachers learned if they had won prizes in the Summer Games Creative Design Competition.

Teachers from all over the UK  put in some excellent competition entries:
Prizes went to members of staff from Rushey Mead School, Leicester City; Tuke School, Southwark;  and St Edmund’s School, Enfield.

Pupil prizes were awarded to youngsters from:

Park Road Primary, Sale
Charville Primary, Hillingdon
Heavers Farm Primary, Croydon
Southend High School for Girls, Southend
Oak Parks High School, Redbridge
Canons High School, Harrow

Special mentions were given to pupils from the top 20 school entries. Well done all of you! 

Charville Primary School	Hillingdon
Merton Park Primary School	Merton
Parklands Junior School	Havering
Cannon Lane Junior School	Harrow
Heaversfarm Primary School	Croydon
Southend high school for girls	Southend
St Edmund’s Catholic Primary School	Enfield
Charville Primary School	Hillingdon
Canons High School	Harrow
Lowe’s Wong Junior School	Nottinghamshire
Oaks Park High School	Redbridge
Park Road Primary School, Sale	Trafford LEA
Merton Park Primary School	Merton
Moriah Jewish Day School	Harrow
Walthamstow School for Girls	Waltham Forest
Central Foundation Girls’ School	Tower Hamlets
Horniman Primary School (3 special mentions)	Lewisham
Newnham Junior School	Hillingdon

Congratulations to you all!  

Our thanks go to everyone who entered – we received well over 600 entries. We enjoyed looking at each and every one of them and we’ll let you all know very soon about our next Pearson Fronter schools’ competition!

Winners of the Fronter Creative Design Competition to be Announced!

The waiting will soon be over for some talented young designers and their teachers.

On Friday June 22nd at 11.30am the winners of  the Fronter Creative Design Competition will be announced during a live Elluminate session.

Results will be posted here and on Twitter soon afterwards.

Good luck everyone!  :)

Follow us on Twitter: @FronterUK ,  @Fronterjane, @FronterRosemary, @FronterDeb and @FronterSteve.

Pearson Fronter trainers achieve top rating!

Pearson Fronter trainers collected a resounding 100% customer satisfaction rating from their trainees during the month of May. 

Here are a few of the things teachers said about their Pearson Fronter  VLE trainers:

‘Excellent knowledgeable trainer.  Superb pace.  Nothing was too much effort.  Fantastic!’  (Advanced Admin course)

‘I am really pleased with what I have learnt today, I feel more confident when using Fronter. I cannot wait to start to make changes to my rooms, creating homepages, adding flash, videos, forums and tests in lesson. Fronter will be implemented in most of my lessons from now on, whether it be a quick starter, main or plenary. There are so many things you can do with it.’ (LGfL training day)

‘The course was hugely useful and helpful and very brilliantly explained…’ ( e1 training)

‘It was a  very enjoyable computer course, it was great working in pairs and M was a great teacher.  I have learned not to fear VLE now.  Thank you.  I look forward to using Fronter in the future.’  (Belfast Fronter demo workshop)

‘I thoroughly enjoyed the day.  An excellent introduction to Fronter for a complete novice.  Pace was fast but perfectly pitched for the group.  J was very approachable and clear.’ (NI Fronter workshop)

For more info about Pearson Fronter training, follow this link.

Southend Champion Awards – a Great Success!

Richard Poth from Sacred Heart Primary School in Southend was presented yesterday with the Southend Fronter Champion Teacher Award. He received this prestigious prize from Justin Reilly, the MD of Fronter, who told Richard he had been, ‘An inspiration to many other teachers in Southend and beyond.’

Sacred Heart School now becomes the Champion School in Southend for the next academic year.

The Award ceremony took place at the Celebrating Success in Southend event, which also saw prizes being given to Fronter teachers and pupils in the Best Fronter Room and Best Fronter Page categories.

Sarah Imbush of Southend Girls’ High School and Nicky Barratt of Belfairs School, both received Ambassador Status on behalf of their schools.

Mark Lawrence of Southend High School for Boys won a special category prize for his Fronter room.

Congratulations to all the winners!

 

 

East Midlands Fronter Event Today!

A big welcome for delegates at the Fronter East Midlands conference which is getting underway with a stirring and inspirational presentation from eLearning evangalist Russell Prue.

Russell is talking about the amazing power of social networking and blogging and their collective impact on education.

Global brands are looking increasingly to Facebook for advertising and recruiting; Russell suggests that teachers could be more aware that this is the world their pupils are operating within. ‘Where schools create mutually workable Acceptable Use Policies, then Facebook can be safely accessible in school for pupils’ educational benefits’  he says.

Russell is also enthusing about the Harrison Primary School DVD – it’s a super twist on the usual sports day/drama presentation!   http://harrisonprimaryschool.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

Fronter N Yorks Roadshow Day 2 – Children from Kirby Hill

Children from Kirby Hill school are presenting this morning, on Day 2 of the Fronter North Yorkshire Roadshow. This is what they have to say!

Royal Wedding

Pupils are telling delegates about their own ‘Royal Wedding’ which they held in school and are now proudly showing on their Fronter learning platform.

Year 6 Mentors

Year 6 children were ‘enlisted’ to help with the initial roll out of Fronter. They were invited to join ‘Fronter Club’ to help them to become familiar with the facilities available in the learning platform before they began to act as eLearning mentors for other pupils.

Messaging across the school

Kirby Hill made the decision to allow messaging throughout the school; they find it easy to manage and very beneficial for effective school communications.

Contrasting localities in Geography lessons

Setting up this aspect of the geography curriculum rolled along more quickly and effectively than first anticipated! The children become involved and engaged with the topic very readily indeed.

Fairtrade topic

Kirby Hill set up a room for the Fairtrade topic in geography, but found that an added benefit was how easy it was to add a link to their newly acquired Fairtrade School status.

Links to Brunei

Time differences presented no problem to North Yorkshire children wishing to communicate with school friends in Brunei. Children have been using Fronter to share learning tasks and activities, they use the vote tool to check each others’ opinions and forums to discuss their ideas.

After School Club

Activity news from the Kirby Hill After School Club has been well received by parents – they can keep up to date easily with what is going on week by week, and make sure their children have all the right kit for their activities!

Update / Reboot

Kirby Hill have found that like any resource in school, their Fronter Learning Platform needs to be kept fresh and interesting. So, last Christmas they organised a Nativity Quest which guided the children through areas of Fronter which they needed to be reminded about, as well as helping them to learn about the Nativity.

Created by Kids 4 Kids

Year 5 Children at Kirkby Hill have been given ‘ownership’ of some subject areas  -they are creating pages for music, ICT, MFL amongst others. There are plans for more subjects to be added next term. Teachers also make subject areas and the areas work in parallel.

eSafety

eSafety is very important at Kirby Hill. Children are confident that their space is safe and they have easy access to excellent eSafety materials from sites such as http://www.thinkuknow.com

I like Fronter because…..

…….it’s like Facebook, but better

……we (children) can edit pages in Maths and English

……..it’s amazing

……you can learn computer rules to be safe

……it’s safe

……you can speak to your friends safely – it is locked by a password

………….you can learn things

A really super presentation children  - thank you!!! 

Fronter Roadshow Day 1

Fronter is pleased to welcome colleagues to the Skipton leg of the N Yorks Roadshow.

We’re watching some excellent uses of Fronter forums from Water Street Primary School – pupils have been writing very creative, reflective responses to a  number of thought-provoking topics, including cup-cakes and penguins!

Thanks to Kate for her inspirational presentation of the great eLearning work going on in her school.

Call for Case Studies – ILP and Goal

Calling Fronter schools who are making use of the ILP and Goal tools!

Are you interested in offering a Case Study to share your good practice with other schools?

Many teachers will be interested to read about other schools’ experiences with the ILP and Goal tool before taking the plunge themselves. So, we’re happy to facilitate if you have a good story to share. We’ll make sure you get the credit, and also that your Case Study properly protects pupil/staff data before anything goes public.

Contact Fronter on uk@fronter.com to submit your idea for an ILP / Goal tool case study. We’ll be pleased to hear from you!

UK National Conference 2010 Roundup

Despite the volcanic disruptions that affected the rest of the country last week, we are pleased to announce that our National Conference still went ahead as usual.  We were looking forward to a great day of seminars and demonstrations, and our fabulous speakers didn’t fail to deliver.

It was also great to see all our Fronter friends and to see your tweets throughout the day.  From conversations over lunch we now know that talking to colleagues from across the UK and sharing Fronter ideas is a benefit to us all.

Click here to see photos taken at the National Conference!

We would also like to congratulate our Implementation Award winners, this year the awards went to:

• Primary Implementation – Joint award went to South Otterington and Sessay Primary from North Yorkshire
• Secondary Implementation – Manor School from Nottinghamshire

To see their entries, follow the links:

South Otterington Primary School

Sessay Primary School

Manor School

We really feel that building a community is vital for making the most of your learning platform, so if you would like to stay in touch with other Fronter users and share your good practice, please visit our site  www.fronter.com/community

Now you can use Fronter to collaborate and share knowledge with other Fronter users around the UK. Using ‘Fronterbridge’ to enable you to access areas direct using your own Fronter username and password.

Fronter.com/community will have dedicated areas for users from:

• Local Authorities
• Primary Schools
• Secondary Schools
• Special Schools
• FE/HE

You will be able to access case studies of how Fronter users have been making use of Fronter in different areas. You will be able to ask other users questions and to share exciting news of how you have been using Fronter in your school or LA.

How can I get access ?

Contact the UK Support team by emailing community@fronter.com – we will provide you with instructions of how to become an individual member or to request enrolment for all your staff.

www.fronter.com/community

We look forward to hearing your stories and examples of Fronter use from around the UK.

Net Books – Taking the Lesson Home

St John Baptist School in Lewisham, London, are leading the way in personalised learning with a project combining their Fronter virtual learning environment and the portable net book laptops. Now in its 3rd year, their net book project has really taken off. It’s given the students aged 8 – 11 responsibility of their own net books – and of their study. John Goodey, Head Teacher of St John Baptist School, tells us how the project has helped to personalise learning and given students motivation to continue their lessons at home.

“The children have loved it. They have no problems at all with using the net books, and are acquiring the skills they need to prepare them for when they move on to secondary school. They enjoy the responsibility it gives them, and in turn, that gives them motivation. They are using a multitude of programmes, and using different tools in their virtual classroom such as forums and web pages. The children at St John Baptist see learning as important and know they can learn at anytime and anywhere. Learning is not something that only happens between 9am and 3.30pm.” John Goodey, Head Teacher

Find out more about this project: Read full case study