You may not have realised that the Lego brick is 50 years old this year (Google themselves changed their logo for a day). Around here we think the only thing cooler than Lego is Moovl, so here is the Moovl logo rendered in the beautiful little bricks.

The annual BETT Show is taking place in London Olympia this week – “the world’s largest educational technology event”. The show is now a massive event, with 700 exhibitors and nearly 30,000 visitors. There are also 100 seminars, with titles like:

Captivate students and enhance learning with a learning platform

Personalising learning – what’s in it for me?

ICT and the Primary Framework for literacy

Moovl will be available for demo on the Heinemann stand (B40). In addition here are a few other ‘picks’ that are worth a visit, some of them friends to Moovl:

Futurelab, Stand J6 – “Futurelab is a not-for-profit organisation, passionate about transforming the way people learn.  Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, it is developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century.” Futurelab helped in the early stages of Moovl development.

Training Zone, supported by Schoolzone - The Training Zone features practitioner-led workshops and a self-help area where you can gain access to online training.

Ode, Little Bits of Learning, Stand N30 – Ode is a BETT first-timer with high ambitions. “Ode is a next generation digital content store for educators. In odeworld you will be able to buy or rent ‘little bits of learning’ from across the curriculum. The ode platform provides a flexible, personalised teaching space that you can use to buy, organise and display elearning objects.”

I’m very pleased to announce the winner of our Go Green competition. The winning school is White Rock Primary in Torbay.

The school used Moovl during their regular weekly ICT club, and the pupils showed some great creativity to fit our theme of ‘Going Green’. The judges were particularly impressed with the range of drawings, and also the imaginative use of the Moovl tools (for example the text tool and the animation tool).

Thanks to all the other schools who also entered the competition.

A selection of the winning drawings is show-cased below.

Back in June I blogged about The Big Draw - the Campaign for Drawing’s annual showpiece.

There’s now much more information on the Big Draw website, including an online events calendar and details of the national launch event on 30 September. You can also register your own event as part of the programme.

The Campaign invites everyone to join in, using drawing to engage with the past, present and future. The eighth Big Draw runs from 1 to 31 October 2007, with a special focus on Saturday 13 October. Any drawing event in October can be registered as part of this programme.

As part of the national launch, there is a session on interactive drawing at Queen Mary, University of London. More details can be found here, but an insider tells me that as well as discussing Sodarace, there will be a demo of Moovl.

The range of activities for the national launch is impressive, and there are hundreds of other events taking place around the country during October.

In follow up to my post about the BA Festival of Science, the CurriculART website is now live. When it is fully up and running the site will provide:

illustrated instructions for hands-on, creative arts and crafts projects linked closely to the National Curriculum.

The website won’t be free – there’s a subscription for full access, with details available on the site.

We’ve just launched a Moovl Go Green competition for UK Primary Schools. All your school needs to do is to create the best animation or drawing that shows how your pupils can go green using Moovl as a creative toy. Ask your pupils to create an animation of an aspect of daily life, either at school or home, showing how they could make life more energy efficient or environmentally friendly. Using Moovl, pupils can work individually, in groups or as a whole class with teacher support. Winning entries will be judged on the best use of Moovl’s unique online functions and the greenest ideas.The fantastic winning prize is a three-year subscription to Moovl worth up to £450, plus £700 worth of other Rigby resources.

To sign up and see full terms and conditions go to the Go Green competition section of the Moovl website.

I’ve been pointed in the direction of CurriculArt by my friends at bestsciencelessonever. The CurriculArt website is an on-line resource for primary schools with art and craft ideas linked to every curriculum subject.

The website isn’t live yet, but will be launched in York this September at the BA Festival of Science.

We’ve decided to launch a Moovl Summer School for a select group of lucky children (sorry, it’s invite only, but you can still try the demo version from the home page).

We’re hoping Moovl will help to while away a rainy hour (of which I think there will be plenty in the coming weeks) – and hopefully we’ll get some good feedback on Moovl from the children who try it out.

To help things along, there’s now a new tab at the top of the page (called, imaginatively ’summer school’). We’ll use this to post some hints and tips to get people started, but also to showcase some of the drawings (as long as they’re happy to share them).

Although the BETT Show doesn’t take place until January, the BETT Awards process is well underway. BETT apparently stands for ‘British Education and Training Technology’, though these days everyone just uses the acronym.

BETT is the world’s leading educational information and communications technology (ICT) event, with over 20 years dedicated to showcasing the best in UK and international educational technology products, resources and best practice.

The BETT Awards are a joint effort with BESA - British Educational Suppliers Association and Becta  - British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (just let me know when the acronyms get too much). The awards are an annual scheme focussing on e-learning and other digital products specifically intended for the education marketplace.

The judging is in two main areas: a technical evaluation which focuses on the strength of the product architecture; and a ‘pedagogical’ evaluation, which includes an appraisal of design and educational effectiveness.

The awards have been running for several years now, but each year they grow in importance and popularity. For 2008 the awards are separated into 13 different categories:

1. Digital Content – Primary (Core Subjects)
2. Digital Content – Secondary (Core Subjects)
3. Digital Content – Primary (Other Subject Areas)
4. Digital Content – Secondary (Other Subject Areas)
5. Early Years Solutions
6. Special Educational Needs Solutions
7. Digital Content – Post-16 Education and Training
8. Primary and Secondary Hardware
9. Supporting Institutional Leadership and Management Solutions
10. E-Assessment for Learning
11. Creative and Constructive Tools
12. Learning Objects to Support Personalising Learning
13. Learning Objects Developed by Teachers (new category – see below)

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that we’ve decided to enter Moovl for an award in category 11. Creative and Constructive Tools, which is defined as:

Content-free tools that stimulate higher-order thinking skills and support analysis, hypotheses testing, modelling, decision-making, simulation and intellectual challenges for one or more curriculum areas.

The judging process is a long one, and we won’t know if we’ve made the shortlist until November. If we do make the shortlist then there’s a nail-biting wait until the 9th January when the winners are announced at the BETT Awards dinner.

On a related topic, I was intrigued to see that BETT have added a new category this year: Learning Objects Developed by Teachers, which is defined as:

Small pieces of learning developed in educational institutions and used by other teachers. The object should be 15-30 minutes in duration, covering no more than two learning objectives, with a focus on innovative design specifically for delivery on a learning platform. All products should demonstrate how they contribute to personalising learning.

I think the move to include teacher-created content is a good one, very much in line with the increasing prevalence of ‘user generated content’ in the education space. Platforms such as the TES Resource Bank and the US site TeachersPayTeachers are already facilitating the sharing and promotion of teacher-created materials, but the BETT Awards are taking this one step further with a focus not just on lesson plans/worksheets, but e-learning ‘objects’. It will be fascinating to see the shortlist for this category!

We’ve decided that next term (from September) we’re going to launch a national competition for Moovl. We’ll be asking Primary schools across the UK to take part – and will be providing a free trial of Moovl so they can get started right away.

All teachers need to do is ask pupils to create an animation of an aspect of daily life – either at school or home – showing how they could make life more energy efficient or environmentally friendly. Using Moovl, pupils can work individually, in groups or as a whole class with teacher support. Winning entries will be judged on the best combination of Moovl’s unique online functions and the greenest ideas.

The competition will run from September until November, with the winners announced at BETT.  More details of how to enter will appear here over the Summer.

If you can’t wait until then, you can try the demo version of Moovl - or sign up for a 30-day free trial.