Education Show 2010

I attended my second ever Education Show yesterday. I really enjoyed it and acquired a tonne of information and ideas. It was great to meet some interesting people too.

When I got back, it took me a while to work through all of the free mugs, free pens, chocolates, flyers and brochures that I collected, but I believe I have various things that I will try to explore when I get the chance over the next few months.

Whilst I'm not endorsing any of these resources, I thought I would mention the ones that I plan to investigate further or those that I purchased at the event.

Software:

• I acquired a copy of 2Simple's 2DIY for evaluation. I have heard such a lot about this on Twitter, finding the 2Simple stand was a priority for me. I will enjoy exploring this and hopefully the school will be able to afford to purchase a site licence at the end of the trial.

Websites:

• www.peplanning.org.uk - this interesting looking planning resource is in its testing phase. It's something I will pass to our PE subject leader.
• www.millionaireforschools.co.uk offers eduational quizzes for the children. I like the look of this, but I'm not sure we can afford it yet.
• www.asthma.org.uk/educate
• www.thepuncs.com
• www.iamlearning.co.uk - whilst I'm not necessarily a fan of revision, I was really impressed by the learning through games at this site.
• I renewed our subscription to Education City.

Learning Platforms:

• After spending nearly three years establishing our Uniservity learning platform in school I am reluctant to move to a different LP provider. Having said that, I was very impressed by the simplicity of the service offered by www.dbeducation.co.uk.

Resources:

• I'm a big fan of Polydron resources. I bumped into a director of the company who asked a while ago if he could include some of the videos from our Polydron work onto their website. I told him that I had quite a few more so he should be expecting an email with details soon! (You can see them at our vimeo channel at www.vimeo.com/churchlane.) The Polydron Engineer sets look really promising.
• Classical Comics: I love their version of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and so I was pleased to purchase copies of the teacher booklets for these plays.
• We purchased some PDF ebooks for excellent prices which were produced by www.topical-resources.co.uk
• Filmclub sounds simple fantastic! The school will certainly be looking into this!
• We found some brilliant lino cutting materials which will be great for our William Morris art project in the summer. www.educationalart.co.uk
• I loved Rory's Story Cubes and I will definitely purchase the iPhone app!
• www.GoodMorningChildren.com seems like pretty good value and seems a pretty good way to start each day.
• www.memory4teachers.co.uk - After signing up for a free memory stick last year I was annoyed that I never received it. The salesman explained that there had been supply issues last year. Yesterday the memory sticks were given out at the show!
• www.lightningeducation.com - APP Assessment Angel looks like really good value and a great idea for a manageable solution to recording APP information.
• I'd love to get a Support Your School initiative started at our school.

Money & Careers topic:

• The Primary Enterprise Game produced by Halton Education Business Partnership looks amazing but very expensive. I'm not sure we'll be able to afford this just yet.
• www.credit4life.co.uk is a pfeg approved board game which encourages discussion about credit cards. I would love to buy these, but the cost may prove to be a barrier for a while.
• Raising Aspirations looks like a good resource for promoting higher education to pupils in the primary school.

Residentials:

• We chatted to a salesman from Manor Adventure who gave use some really good ideas for how we could further improve our visit to France next year.

As you can imagine, a lottery win would only just cover the cost of buying all of these resources. But it's great to know what is available, and, if finances allow, what could be bought to help to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools.