SIMPLE IDEAS TO GET TEACHER'S AND CHILDREN COMMUNICATING ONLINE - LET YOUR GENIE OUT OF THE LAMP...!!!

Just wanted to report on a fantastic day we have spent with some Year 6 children - looking at bringing children and thier teaching staff closer together through E-MAIL.

Lots of Schools across the UK now have LEARNING PLATFORMS, whereby taching staff and students can start to use this online resources as a great way to engage and communicate in more personalised way.

How well is this working in your child's school??? - I think we would all have a very varied response here.- Do you even know waht a  LEARNING PLATFORM IS??, AND WHAT IT CAN DO??

Anyway, a great sarting point to break down the "fear of change" factor for many adults/teachers is to simply get your pipils to think about a really exciting and creative question, (such as "Why do Manchester United play at Old Trafford??"), - and then get the child concerned to think of which member of staff would be best equipped to answer this "ENQURING MINDS" STYLE OF QUESTION.

Next, get the child to E-Mail if off through your Learning Platform, and tell them there will be a reply from teaching staff concerned. Staff now feel obliged to answer the mail, and in doing so it srts to get even to most rsistant teacher's involved.

The children will love getting thier E-Mail answers back - believe you me.

ALL YOU TEACHER'S OUT THERE - TRY IT BEFORE CHRISTMAS - IT WILL GET A REALLY, REALLY POSITIVE RESPONSE FROM ALL INVOLVED.

REMOVING BARRIERS THROUGH MUSIC TECHNOLGY

The CUTE MEMORY TEAM have been away for the last couple of weeks in the NORTH of ENGLAND - working with a range of secondary schools bringing in the latest MUSIC TECHNOLOGY ideas and hardware into their everyday MUSIC CURRICULUM.

One of our greatest successes was the introduction of MIGHTY POCKET PUNCHED SIZED KORG KAOSSILATOR - This was a massive hit with both the STUDENTS AND TEACHING STAFF ALIKE:

Here is some of the the positive feedback from ONE of the new SCHOOL ACADEMIES we now work directly alongside:

"Your KORG KAOSSILATOR system would be a really useful tool in school as the results are virtually instant. The majority of student in KS3 and 4 do not play musical instruments as this is often an expense that many families in the area cannot afford. We often therefore end up with students who are keen to learn about music, compose, create, DJ etc but without any kind of formal music training. For these students the Korg would be REALLY useful as they can access music creation with a simple interface which allows them to create and record without any prior musical training or without having to learn more complex software such as CUBASE or REASON before they can start recording - even then they would normally require keyboard skills or have to enter musical data with a mouse by hand which is very slow and therefore not an engaging and creative method of working. The Korg allows hand on instant musical gratification. It also allows groups or individuals to work in other spaces around the department or in cross curricular projects with other departs e.g. media, art, ict drama"

EBOOK READERS - THE NEXT CHAPTER FOR SCHOOL READING...???

There was a great fanfare of expectation when the SONY E- BOOK READER was launched here in the UK in 2008.

As we are all involved in technology in education here at Cute Memory we were really interested in the impact this would have in changing the face of many of our traditional "dust gathering" school library shelves.

We are now pleased to report that this rather false dawn for the E READER has at last stepped up a promising gear  with the arrival of at least 3 more "next generation" heavyweight readers to the market. Lets have a sneaky look at them then:

• The Amazon Kindle.
• The Nook.
• The Alex

We think that the ALEX could provide us with something very interesting:
The Alex is shortly to launched by SPRING DESIGN - There are very strong rumours that this will have at last a colour 3.5 inch LCD touchscreen.
Also,another fantastic feature is that your EBOOK TITLES can be downloaded wirelessly into your ALEX.
The power to surf the  web will also not be a problem with the ALEX, - as it will reportedly using the same operating software as presently used by smartphones.

One is also potentially very exciting and ambitious here with the ALEX is there use of a DUAL SCREEN.

It is widely rumoured that appropriate AUDIO SNIPPETS, VIDEO CLIPS, AND RELEVANT WEBLINKS will come up underneath the chosen text. This could be potentiall really exciting in providing an "entry" to much wider learning opportunities.

The company has been in discussions with content providers for the past two years, and claim deals will be announced soon. The Alex reader will appear before the end of the year. No pricing information has been provided.

However - there might be a sting in the tail - UK based tech company PLASTIC LOGIC have just anounced its QUE PROREADER which will be realeased early next year.
PLASTIC LOGIC are promising all of the above SPEC - but also it will feature a FULLY SHATTERPROOF SCREEN - IDEAL FOR THE ROUGH AND TUMBLE OF THE SCHOOL SETTING

SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE

One guiding ligth here at CUTE MEMORY has always been to  encourage, persuade and enable young people to SAVE, SHARE, AND COMPARE their computer based work.

This is central to our CORE OBJECTIVE of personalising and building new and more poweful links between what goes on at school and home etc. etc.

Consequently, it is great when we can start to produce a USB MEMORY STICK which builds upon all of the work we commit to with the Schools and their young people.

We would like to introduce you to the world of the BRICK STICK....!!! - Great for saving your work, and it looks damm good too - Everyone seems to love this product at the moment. I think it is time to at last get away from the sterile, emotionless, and "ONE SIZE FITS ALL" memory sticks which have been fostered onto us!!

COOKING MAMA.......!!!!

NEW GAMING IDEAS FOR MATHS YEAR 6 INTERVENTION WORK

Over the last 8 weeks the CUTE MEMORY TEAM have been partnering with several schools in the East Midlands region of the UK to introduce and evaluate the power of games based learning activities to start Year 6 maths intervention lessons.


Using the NINTENDO DS LITE HANDHELD CONSOLES - every child starts there small group maths intervention session with 10 minutes using MATHS BRAIN TRAINING GAMES.


Our early feedback and research from the children and teaching staff involved has been really, really positive. Using the NINTENDO DS LITE HANDHELD CONSOLE appears to be a very motivational start to the sessions. The children now take on the responsibility of collecting their DS LITE'S.
The MATHS BASED BRAIN TRAINING ACTIVITIES really do get the children reved up regarding their mental maths work. They are also very keen to record thier own scores and progress, and they want to improve thier score from session to session.


More findings and feedback to follow - over the next 3 months the students will be involved in a series of "student voice" discussions to get an even stronger feel of the impact of this GAMING RESOURCE-with the intention to introduce it as a WHOLE SCHOOL RESOURCE.


WANT TO CONTRIBUTE AND GET INVOLVED - THE CONTACT US HERE AT CUTE MEMORY ON cm.enquiries@cutememory.co.uk to send us your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions - ALL WELCOME.

STAND CLEAR..!!! -THE LEGO CATAPULT DESIGNS ARE HERE

After all the fun and excitement of our FIRST LEGO CATAPULT TOUR this year - the team thought it would be great to start showing some of the brilliant CATAPULT DESIGNS which the young people have developed trough their involvement.

We are starting our NEW AND BIGGER CATAPULT TOUR this DECEMBER, and so if you know of a group of young people who would really benefit from this experience, then please get back to us on cm.enquiries@cutememory.co.uk

Introducing the Schools Robotics "Catapault Tour" 2009 - 2010

AUGUST, 2009 - "LET THE ROBOTICS BATTLE COMMENCE" - OUR SCHOOL BASED CATAPULT TOUR

We have just completed our first "CATAPULT TOUR"" - covering over 20 primary and secondary schools in the UK.
Children aged between 8 to 12 years worked in small groups to design, construct, and operate their own unique Lego based Mindstorms Robot. This was just the start of the challenge, as within these fantastic creations each group then had to build in their own VOICE ACTIVATED POWER CATAPULT ARM.
So .........it was a case of programming to get into the right position, and then see who had the teamwork skills to hit the range of targets..!!!

LATEST NEWS FOR 2009 -2010
Because of the huge success of the CATAPULT TOUR - we will be launching a longer 2009 - 2010 tour in OCTOBER, 2009. So ... if your school is interested in Cute Memory visiting your students, then you need to contact us straight away at cm.enquiries@cutememory.co.uk so that we can send you some further exciting information to get you involved.

OUR CHILDREN'S PARTY FLYER - GIVE YOUR CHILDREN A GREAT DAY AND ONE THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER

Please check out our Party Information Sheet

CUTE MEMORY - CHILDRENS PARTIES WITH A PURPOSE...!!!

We wanted to take this opportunity to tell the world about our fantastic CUTE MEMORY CHILDREN'S PARTIES which we have been hosting over the last year or so.

Very unhappy, frustrated and confused with what was out there in the UK - we started to present out own PA RTIES, which were designed to to enable all those involved, (the ages range from 5 to14 - AND THEIR PARENTS...!!!), had tremendous fun - but at the same time got some real VALUE out of their special day - They were no longer just running around like MANIACS...!!!

it was from this ideas that our "PARTIES WITH A PURPOSE" took off in the last year or so.

Please take a look at our flyer, below, if you are interested in finding more details of what these fabulous parties are all about.

And, please doe contact us here at cm.enquiries@cutememory.co.uk if you would like us to host a party for your children - Making their special day one which they will always remember..!!!!

JUST LOOK AT THE FANTASTIC "RACING" ANIMATION WHICH ONE OF OUR 9 YEAR OLD PARTY GOERS CREATED - TOTALLY AWESOME!!