Day 12 - 20th April Nuneaton Schools

We visited two two fantastic local schools today. We were very impressed. The atmosphere in both these schools were great, and we enjoyed our time there.
 
We went to Micheal Drayton Junior School - has 7-11 year olds, and were shown around by the headteacher John Buxton. 
A school of around 440 children. Web site www.mdjs.co.uk was very impressive school. From an ICT perspective they had interactive whiteboards and datashows in every room along with teacher laptop, and then had 2 or 3 desktops available in each room. They also had a very large computer suite (all PC) of about 40 computers. This meant two classes could be in at one time and teachers as well as children could share ideas.  All schools we have visited have been noted as schools with high levels of ICT - Mark of BECTA. A special award given to certain schools. 
We had a class demonstrate a haka from a recent study - which they really enjoyed perfroming for us. The kids were great in all schools visited so far.
They have a huge range of resources - scanners, cameras, printers, used IPods for sound and video capture; access to the Warwickshire portal which gives them access to software and hardware backup etc.

We had a nice lunch at a local restaurant. Angie again needed her food cut for her again. She is finding out how many things she can't do.

Second school we visited was Wembrook Primary. This is the largest primary in Warwickshire with about 650 children from 3 years to 11 years. Very friendly children - Principal Simon Pearson showed us around. Some buildings older than others but great displays in corridors and classrooms. ICT wise interactive boards in all rooms plus a couple of desktops. They also have a computer suite of about 30 desktops and 2 PODS of 20 laptops that can be borrowed. Their latest initiative is to go wireless (wi fi) across ther school and have toshiba notebooks for all Year 4 pupils. This will over the next 2 years go across to all Year 5 & 6 children. Pupils can (and are expected) take these home and work on them at home = and also to charge them every night - they have a 9 hour battery which is amazing. Laptops are all labelled from the school as well. They have software that allowed what every child was working on in the room to be displayed on the interactive whiteboard. They can display that work and copy information across to other computers. The teacher can also interupt pupils work by in effect freezing their computers by saying "pay attention" - although one pupil did say he knew how to get around that!!

Now back home - heading out for a chilly bike road with some locals - could be interesting since I haven't ridden for a fortnight!! Although the weather is fine, there is certainly a chilly wind. I will report back later on this.

ps addition later - managed the bike ride thanks to a friendly local who lent me his bike. They were a bit faster than me but kindly didn't leave me behind - mainly because if they had I would have been lost - amazing riding through a maze of small windy country lanes and then whizzing through little villages with thatched roofs and corner pubs in every village and an occasional church - bit like the Tour de France - just a lot slower and only 3 of us! Would love to do more riding in the area - but if by myself would need to carry a detailed map or better yet a GPS system like in the car or would get horribly lost. Still survived the ride - chinese for tea!
Off to Nottingham tomorrow to visit another school - wonder if we will run into Robin.(Hood of course) - will stay there overnight. Got wireless in hotel so should be able to keep blogging!