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Introduction
In war, it is said that no battle plan survives
beyond first contact with the enemy. It has been
my experience that no learning resources survive
intact, contact with a teacher worth their salt.
They always want to adapt any given resource to
reflect their pupil’s learning needs and their
teaching styles.
For that reason, the resources designed to
support the Reso are not meant, in any
way, to be definitive. They are simply starting
points for your own work.
The resources are designed to be open-ended and
to address the following areas:
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Maintaining pupil concentration to enable
them to complete the text
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Developing Reading for Meaning and
Interpretive skills
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Stimulus material for empathy / drama /
discussion activities
It is worth stressing that any school which has
purchased the Reso may freely download
any of these resources. I grant you permission
to use all the images in this section, in
support of learning in your school, and by
extension to your pupils working at home. You
may use and make derivative non-commercial
resources from the images in this section
without seeking prior permission.
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Use of ICT to Support Learning
The use of ICT to support learning across the
curriculum is making progress in UK schools,
although there are large variations in practice.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that
generating resources through ICT is far more
efficient and, used carefully and
discriminatingly, more effective in engaging the
imagination of learners.
If this observation is generally true then the
impetus in making resources and deploying them
effectively to raise standards must be to ensure
that every teacher can access and develop such
resources.
For this reason, the resources related to the
Reso have all been made with the lowest
common denominators of ICT so as to ensure that
the majority of teachers can access and use them
in the classroom with data projectors or
Interactive Whiteboards.
Alternatively, they can be downloaded onto your
school intranet and accessed by teachers or
pupils from there. Looking to the future, the
resources can be accessed from the school’s
learning platform. This will have the additional
advantage of allowing pupils to access them on
an anywhere / anytime basis to support
individual reading of the book or extension
exercises.
In truth, for many pupils, the use of ICT to
support the Reso is a stealthy way to maintain
their engagement with reading. ICT, particularly
interactive resources, tend to have a level of
engagement which occupies pupils longer than
text alone, particularly in my experience, boys.
We may applaud or deplore this fact but it would
be unwise to ignore it. Many of your pupils will
be online authors in their own right through
social networking websites and we need to
exploit the potential of Web 2.0 technology to
give them vibrant learning opportunities.
And, if you want a quick overview of what Web
2.0 really is – this is as clear as it gets -
The Machine is Us by Michael Wesch of Kansas
State University:
http://mediatedcultures.net/mediatedculture.htm
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The Supporting Resources
The Resources are grouped by software or file
type:
Gallery of Jpegs
The gallery of Jpegs are colour images of Rhyl
taken in 2007 to illustrate places mentioned in
the book. You may download them and use them as
you please.
I have included a couple of sketch maps of Rhyl
which can be annotated with places mentioned in
the text.
You may like to combine them with …..
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Microsoft’s Local Live
For teachers familiar with
Microsoft’s Local Live(http://maps.live.com)
it is possible to focus in on a hybrid image of
Rhyl for pupils to interpret using the sketch
map. This is a terrific free resource.
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Powerpoint Resources
Being part of the Microsoft Office Suite,
Powerpoint is universally available in schools.
The picture and map resources presented in
Powerpoint (PPT) are the simplest way to insert
and distribute images to schools.
Any of the images can then be copied and pasted
to other applications.
The use of call-out boxes is the simplest way to
annotate images and maps. The pupils will, in
all probability, already know how to use this
function and will certainly know how to animate
their presentations.
A little used aspect of PPT is the Outline tool.
This allows PPT to be used as a compiling rather
than a presentation tool. Working with a class
you can organise paragraphs as points and sub
points.
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Photo Story 3 from Microsoft
Forgive me if this looks like an extended advert
for Microsoft, but their resources are
ubiquitous and this one is a free download from
the Microsoft site.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92755126-a008-49b3-b3f4-6f33852af9c1&DisplayLang=en
Photo Story 3 is an entry level still picture
editing tool that allows you and pupils to make
vibrant picture galleries with images,
animation, text, narration and music.
If you provide your pupils with limited numbers
of pictures, it is perfectly possible for them
to complete a resource in the course of a single
one hour lesson.
The use of motion in the images, and creating an
appropriate music track, mean pupils are taking
authoring decisions about appropriateness for
audience and interpretation of the text.
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Magic Studio Resources -
www.magicstudio.co.uk
Magic studio is a free resource designed
to allow teachers to make flash-enabled
resources without having to learn any additional
ICT skills. I can thoroughly commend it across
the curriculum and recommend you look at the
range of teacher made resources on the site.
The usual way to compile a Magic asset is to set
an image as a background and then overlay text
and/or images. The text or supplementary image
is highlighted when you click on it.
You can see an example of this in the Rhyl
Promenade in the Sixties asset.
To find this and other Reso assets go to the
Magic site and click on explore resources. All
the Reso resources are in Type: Interactives /
Subject: Citizenship
You can also make assets which are set up as
timelines and this too has many uses across the
curriculum.
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Feedback
I’d welcome feedback and suggestions about the
use of these resources and any others you would
like to see developed.
If you come up with a novel idea for using the
book I’d be happy to include it on the site.
At present I am working on the second book in
the trilogy which is provisionally entitled
Beyond the Reso and takes the action forward
to the 1970s. David begins the new decade moving
to secondary school and also faces a move off
the estate, which, like an increasing number of
things in his life, does not go smoothly.
Your feedback will help me complete the novel.
You can contact me through the Educationalists
site
www.educationalists.co.uk
Or by using the email address:
Educationalist04@aol.com
Best wishes for your enjoyment of the book,
-
Ambrose Conway
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