Category: learner resources

December 20, 2022

TechSheCan – Resources and Industry Partners

About Tech She Can

At Tech She Can, the tech careers charity with member organisations spanning +40 sectors, we’re on a mission to increase the number of women and girls pursuing tech careers. We work at the very beginning, nurturing and inspiring the future talent pipeline, investing in the long-term with our free schools’ programme and at the later stages too, plugging the immediate skills gap.

About Tech We Can

Our Tech We Can resources have inspired tens of thousands of children to consider a future career in technology. We’re particularly focused on reaching underrepresented groups, and children and young people in social mobility ‘cold spots’ across the UK.

Through our live assemblies and learning materials, children explore the latest technologies, find out about the breadth of careers in tech and discover how these jobs link to their own passions and interests. We offer:

Downloadable Lesson packs for teachers or parents to use at home or in the classroom, with no registration or log-in;
Cross-curricular On-demand lessons for age +8yrs;
Award-winning Animated lessons for age +5yrs;
Live Assemblies – sign up to our newsletter or follow us on social media for updates;
Tech We Can Champions, our national volunteer scheme, placing real-life tech role models in classrooms across the UK. Request a Champion visit here

September 16, 2022

Screening Shorts: reading film and images

This live lesson will give your learners an opportunity to explore film and screen images as texts. They will explore strategies to make predictions about a film, then use still images from the film to learn about sequencing a screen narrative, leading to the first steps to creating their own short film.

The text we’ll be exploring is ‘Mobile’ on Screening Shorts (GLOW LOGIN REQUIRED).

In this adorable animation, a lone cow hangs by herself on one side of a child’s mobile. Although her weight balances that of the others on the opposite side, she feels lonely. When kindly Mouse invites Cow over, and she tries to find ways to join the animals on the other side, chaos ensues. Can they find a balance?

Resources required:
Sharing thinking: anything you’d normally use, such as post-its, or go digital with our O365 Whiteboard | Google Jamboard

Sequencing images: you could do this with pen and paper, print these slides, or go digital and share these slides with learners

Annotating images: you could draw the images and add speech bubbles or indirect speech on paper, or you can use the slides and draw speech bubbles with text or record and add audio to them

Use this link to view all resources

How to make a copy of the O365 Whiteboard | Google Jamboard

How to download or print the slides PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

How to make a copy of the slides and share with your learners PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

How to add speech bubbles PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

How to record and add audio PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

January 12, 2022

Make It Happen – supporting schools with digital learning

What is Make it Happen?

‘Make It Happen’ is a charity who inspire young people in digital technology. Our aim is to encourage young people to go from passive consumers of technology to digital creators.

App-Design Competition

Make It Happen offer App-design competitions for entire schools P1-7. Pupils are given the opportunity to consider how apps could help them solve a problem or make their life easier. They then design their app idea using our paper based submission sheet. The winner of your schools competition will then have their winning app idea built by our team of volunteers and published for all to use.

In regards to the process of running the App-design competition – typically we visit each individual class to present the competition, hear the pupils ideas, answer any questions and get them generally excited about different app ideas and uses for technology. This normally takes around 20 minutes per class and then we leave the submission sheets with staff to complete at a convenient time.

Once the classes have completed their submissions we can collect the final entries, pick a winner and start building the winning app. When the app is built we will return to the school to announce the winner, runners up and inspiring ideas and finally, publish the winning app. I should say, that the whole event is completely free.

All Resources – https://makeithappen.club/what-we-do

Previous Winners https://makeithappen.club/winners

Workshops

At Make It Happen we aim to give all pupils the opportunity to experience a variety of digital learning experiences. We have developed a range of workshops to suit a variety or ages and interests:

Stop Motion
Green Screen
Coding
App Design
Dragons Den
Micro:Bit
Spheros (resource depending)

Make It Happen High

The ‘Make It Happen High’ program is ultimately a ‘step up’ from our original competition, allowing pupils to see how an app idea progresses through the App ‘development cycle’ (app design -> development of app -> test app to find and fix issues -> launch the app). In the series of lessons we use ’Thunkable’ to create a fully functioning app that can be live tested on all devices and subsequently published.

Additional Resources

Digital Progressions planner (Early to Third Level) https://www.makeithappen.club/digital_progression_planner_primary.pdf

August 10, 2021

Microsoft Immersive Reader

Microsoft Immersive Reader is a free tool, built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Office Lens, Microsoft Teams, Forms and the Edge browser, that implement techniques to improve reading and writing skills.

Immersive Reader can:

Customise text size, spacing and background colour
Isolate content to improve readability
Display pictures for common words
Highlight nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
Real text aloud
Translate content in real time
Split words into syllables

back to

View all previous webinars

Explore Microsoft Immersive Reader

Click on the hotspots to find out more about each of the areas within the application

Microsoft Immersive Reader Bitesize Videos

Microsoft Immersive Reader – Text Preferences

Microsoft Immersive Reader – Grammar Preferences

Microsoft Immersive Reader – Reading Preferences

Microsoft Educator Centre Courses

Microsoft Educator Centre Course

Dyslexia Awareness Part 1, in partnership with Made By Dyslexia

Duration: 1 hour

Description

This course will provide essential insights into dyslexia, which we believe all educators and parents should have. Microsoft and Made By Dyslexia have a shared mission to empower every person with dyslexia to reach their potential, and we have partnered to create tools to help make this happen.

Microsoft Educator Centre Course

Accessibility tools: Meeting the needs of diverse learners

Duration: 1 hour

Description

Microsoft’s mission is to empower all people and all organizations to achieve more. The classroom is no different. Microsoft Windows and Windows-based applications like Office, together with other assistive technologies, offer features that make computers easier to use for everyone – giving teachers the opportunity to provide personalized learning, and students an improved experience and equal opportunity in the classroom.

Microsoft Educator Centre Course

Dyslexia Awareness Part 2, in partnership with Made By Dyslexia

Duration: 1 hour

Description

This course will provide an overview of ways teachers can elevate their practice to scaffold support for students in any content area. Microsoft and Made By Dyslexia have a shared mission to empower every person with dyslexia to reach their potential.

Microsoft Educator Centre Course

Empower every student with an inclusive classroom

Duration: 1 hour

Description

This course is designed for educators of all subject areas who want to empower students to utilize tools to unlock their full potential by addressing a diversity of needs.

Practice creating an accessible and personalized experience in Windows 10 and Office 365

Learn the tools and apps available to create accessible content

Understand the importance of personalizing the learning device