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Digital Leaders

 
Welcome to Digital Leaders
 

Four of our Digital Leaders attended the BETT Show in London on Friday, 23rd January. BETT is the world’s largest education technology conference, attracting over 30,000 visitors across its three-day event. This annual trip has become a key opportunity for our Digital Leaders to explore the latest innovations in educational technology.

 

At Birchwood, we value ‘pupil voice’ and actively seek our pupils’ input when considering new software and technology for the school. During the event, our Digital Leaders visited hundreds of exhibitors, evaluating different technologies and sharing their insights with staff on what caught their attention and what they would love to see introduced at Birchwood.

 

As part of the day, the pupils presented alongside Mr Bailey on Empowering Learning with Digital Engagement Tools to delegates in attendance. Their involvement in such a prestigious event was a fantastic experience, and we had many exciting conversations that we look forward to following up on in the coming weeks and months. We hope these discussions will lead to incredible new learning opportunities and resources for our pupils.

 

This week, the Digital Leaders met to discuss the important issue of staying safe online over the Christmas Holidays. Because many children will receive new devices as Christmas presents, we discussed how to be safe when using these new devices or downloading new apps. The Digital Leaders were given some information to take back and share with their classes. Parents will also receive copies of some top tips to set up Parental Controls on devices. With everyone knowing this vital information, we will all be able to enjoy our new devices and apps safely this Christmas and beyond.

Congratulations to our new Digital Leaders, who were voted in by their classmates this half term.

 

This year, we have some really exciting trips coming up, and we hope to involve as many of our Digital Leaders as possible.

 

We will be visiting our friends at the TTS Headquarters in Nottingham to celebrate Bee-Bot's 20th birthday party. We will be heading down to the Business Design Centre in London as part of the 'Testing Team' for this year's SEND show. Additionally, we will be presenting on stage at the ICT Conference held at Villa Park, Birmingham. We also look forward to our annual trip to the Excel Centre in London for the Bett Show. Furthermore, we hope to take up the offer of a visit from our friends at 2Simple in London and Cosy Direct in Tutbury to learn more about the 'world of work'.

 

In the meantime, we will continue to discuss all things Computing, spread messages to help keep all our children and staff safe online, and enhance our coding skills with sessions from Mr Bailey, our Digital Enrichment Leader.

parental-controls-on-new-devices
setting-up-apps

Four of our Digital Leaders joined children and staff from Lanchester Primary School on our annual visit down to London for the Bett Show. The British Educational Training and Technology Show at the ExCel in London is the world’s leading education technology show, home to hundreds of the most innovative education service providers and distributors.

We spent the day exploring all the stands, exhibitors and their new products. Our favourite educational resources were ‘Scan Computers’ International with their full motor racing simulator robots and ‘zSpace’ and their interactive experiences.   

Our Digital leaders had a fantastic time exploring BETT and looking at all the technology, including the use of AI that will soon be a feature of classrooms and schools up and down the country.

After a busy day at BETT where a lot of walking and talking were done, staff and children were then treated to lunch at the Theatre Café and then were able to enjoy a performance of ‘Mrs Doubtfire the musical’ at the Shaftesbury Theatre. The following morning we also managed a bit of London sightseeing of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, before making their way back home on the train to Tamworth.

Three of our Digital Leaders met up with some of our friends from Lanchester EP Primary to visit Bletchley Park - the home of the 'Codebreakers'. The children really enjoyed discovering all the incredible achievements of Britain's World War Two Codebreakers, in the place where it happened. The children's favourite part was visiting the Intelligence Factory which focused on Bletchley Park's wartime operations and seeing the statue of Alan Turing, who famously cracked the Enigma code.
Three more of our Digital Leaders were invited down to the Head offices of Wonde in Newmarket. Over the years of visiting the Bett show in London, we have built up a really strong relationship with Wonde. Wonde are a data company that look to simplify technology in schools and in the classroom. One of their most well known products is the single sign in system for schools. During the course of the day staff from all departments presented to the children the skills and attributes needed to be successful in each of their roles within the company. We had a fascinating and thought provoking day. We would also like to thank Wonde for sponsoring our up and coming Bett visit next year.

This week some of our Digital Leaders met with Mr Bright to discuss how our children and staff keep themselves safe when online.

At Birchwood we follow the SMART rules –

  • S encourages young people to be safe by not giving out their personal details online
  • M draws attention to the risks associated with meeting someone you only know online
  • A highlights the risks of accepting emails, pictures and text messages from unknown sources
  • R is a reminder that not all information found online is necessarily reliable
  • T encourages children to tell someone if something happens or they meet someone online that makes them feel uncomfortable

Listen to our podcast about this, on the link below. This will soon be available on our school website under the curriculum tab, Birchwood Beat Radio.

https://www.mixcloud.com/BirchwoodBeat/online-safety-smart-rules-61023/

Hello! Us again!

We recently came into your classes (KS2) with a quiz - how did you do? Did you remember how to stay safe online? We think you did a great job and we hope you remember this when you are online over the summer holidays. 

We know you are all super at keeping yourselves safe online after our quiz, but have you thought about your network of trusted adults recently? Who would you speak to if you were worried about something or had a problem online? We hope you have a fantastic summer and stay safe online!

Bye for now! Digital leaders

For our turn in the Chatter this week, we wanted to tell you about our trip to the BETT Fair in London. The BETT fair is a computing fair. We saw lots of educational games, interactive walls and there was even an E-Sports section with a moving seat that moved with the game as if you were actually sitting in the racing car!

We found out lots of new things about Purple Mash and got to code the newest coding robots. We loved it!

We also met Michael Rosen who signed our books and did some sightseeing of London's landmarks (Tower Bridge, London Bridge and the London Eye) while we were there.

This was one of our favourite trips as digital leaders!

Thanks for reading!

Year 4, 5 and 6 digital leaders.

Just before we broke up for Easter, four of our Digital Leaders attended BETT (British Educational Training and Technology Show) at the ExCel in London alongside colleagues and children from our partner school – Lanchester Primary EP. BETT is the world’s leading education technology show, home to hundreds of the most innovative education service providers and distributors.
 
Our four Digital Leaders spent the day exploring all the stands, exhibitors and their new products. Our favourite educational resources were Scan Computers International with their full motor racing simulator, Clever Blocks with their coding for robots and Amazing Interactive with their ISportsWall. It was also nice to catch up with companies that we have had a long association with as a school. Net Support interviewed our children about their experiences at BETT and also sponsored our trip, 2 Simple demonstrated all their new features and gave our children lots of freebies and Now Press Play have kindly agreed to offer us a huge discount for our subscription in the future.
 
Our Digital Leaders had a fantastic time exploring BETT and looking at all the technology that will very soon be a feature of classrooms and schools up and down the country. They also really enjoyed the benefits of being polite and engaging by bagging themselves lots of ‘free stuff’ along the way.
 
After a busy day at BETT where a lot of walking and talking were done, staff and children were then treated to lunch at the Theatre Café and then were able to enjoy a performance of ‘Frozen the Musical’ at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The following morning, after some well-deserved sleep, staff and children from both schools did a bit of London sightseeing of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, before making their way back home on the train to Tamworth. Our children were brilliantly well behaved and everyone had a really interesting and enjoyable two days.

Mr Coleman

Hi everyone!

Last time you saw us doing our Digital Leaders work was on Safer Internet Day where we shared some online safety messages about being kind online. Can you remember the ideas we shared to keep ourselves safe online?

We have a big surprise coming to Birchwood. It is an Oti-bot! You might remember us telling you about it after TTS came to see us. We were excited about Oti-bot after our visit to TTS and were super excited when Mr Coleman said we could get one! Oti-bot can help us with all different subjects and can show all emotions: happy, sad, angry, confused and excited. He can be controlled with an app so we hope you have been learning lots about algorithms to help you control Oti-bot. We can't wait to show him to you!

Stay Safe!

From the Year 4 Digital Leaders