Ingots Course - Monday 11 December 2006

I'm off to Bolton TIC on Monday 11 December to find out about the new systems for assessing INGOTs now that the qualificaton has acquired QCA approval and is an examining body. If haven't heard already, INGOTs are now worth points in the OpenQuals framework - I believe that Bronze is Entry Level, Silver is Level 1 and Gold is Level 2, but I will have more precise information for you all when I return after the course.

M. P. Jones
Head of IT

Strike that last post

We now seem to have gone back to using the school VLE for pupil e-mail. The system is called MyMail and I've put some instructions here on how to use it. You will need to login to see these materials.

Both staff and pupils can have free web-based accounts here, which can be accessed at home and in school. You need to login with a username and password to use the MyMail system.

M. P. Jones
Head of IT

E-mail for the Bronze INGOT Award

We now have an e-mail facility in school which can be used to cover the Bronze Ingot requirements. It is called SquirrelMail and it allows pupils and staff to send internal e-mails - no messages can be sent to external e-mail addresses.

To use SquirrelMail you first need to send a list of pupils who will be using it to Matt who will then create an account for each of them. The staff accounts have already been set up.

In school, type http://squirrelmail into a web browser (Internet Explorer) and you will be presented with a login screen. All logins take the following form:

Name: firstname@howfen.internal
Password: Surname (starting with a capital letter)

e.g. for Fred Bloggs:

Name: fred@howfen.internal
Password: Bloggs

SquirrelMail is a typical webmail system with all the features you would expect from something like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail.

Pupils will be able to e-mail each other and their ICT teachers, reply to messages sent, send and recieve any e-mail attachments, forward, CC an BCC messages, organize their e-mails into folders and keep an e-mail contacts address book.

Although they don't need to demonstrate all these things for the Bronze INGOT, they should be taught how to do these things as they are skills for work and life.

M. P. Jones
Head of IT

INGOTs Course in Leeds - 8/12/05

Just got back from the INGOTs course in Leeds. Met lots of nice people there (Hi if you're reading this). Loads to tell you, but the bottom line is that I will use this qualification this year with my 11ab ICT pupils (you know who). You may also have some Year 11 pupils who are 'falling through the examination net' - let me know if you do.

I think there's a good chance that we'll also use it as a motivator for Year 9 and Year 10 pupils this year, but we'll discuss this at our next ICT Department meeting. We need to work out whether it would be best to be an INGOTs Academy for ourselves and feeder primary schools or just a Centre.

Got some certificates and badges to show you, and I think I can safely say that we're all now Bronze, Silver and Gold Assessors for this course.

See you in school.

M. P. Jones
Head of IT
jones_mp@yahoo.com