Smart Learning - Early Years ICT

Home About Us Downloads Coming Soon Exhibitions Reviews Login Tech Support Links Contact Keep In Touch

Early Years ICT - Reviews

If you would like to leave a review, please click here

Review by:	Rebecca Clevett
Rating:
Review	This review was published in Primary Choice Magazine (2008) and is written by Rebecca Clevett - a Foundation Stage Co-ordinator. The Smart Learning Early Years ICT series has been developed with the belief that learning with ICT can really provide added value in extending learning opportunities for children in the early years. The series has been designed so that practitioners are able to confidently use ICT ensuring that they have an even coverage of the six areas of learning. The topics covered on Disc One are All About Me; Traditional Stories and Journeys and Holidays and the topics on Disc Two are Mini Beasts and Life Cycles; Shape, Colour and Pattern and Celebrations and Festivals. They are fun and familiar topics particularly relevant to this 3-5 age range. Each topic incorporates three units for Nursery and three for Reception. This ensures that suitable differentiation is available where necessary. I really liked that fact that they support accessibility for children with disabilities or Special Educational Needs. Each activity has a replay facility and there is clear visual representation which supports the children with English as an additional language. It is also good to see a good multi-ethnic approach throughout the series. We used the Diwali topic to help support and welcome a Hindu boy who had recently joined our nursery. The children were able to access the activities independently and clearly enjoyed participating. We also used the activities in small group situations to extend learning further. There are additional resources that you are able to print out if desired which will support the units covered. I did not use these with my F1 children but I recognise that these would be useful consolidation activities for some of the units, particularly for older children. The Teacher’s Book links to the six areas of learning and gives the user useful notes in order to extend and enhance the quality of the learning opportunity. It is packed with great ideas and useful websites are referenced at the back of the book. There is also a useful record sheet where practitioners are able to monitor the skills covered and how individual children are progressing through the various skills. Smart Learning have introduced a ‘try before you buy’ initiative where one disc can be ordered on approval. Alternatively, there is an online demonstration from one of the units at www.smart-learning-demo.co.uk/earlyyears which gives you a flavour of the excellent quality of activities covered. The children seemed to love all the activities but the general favourite was the Three Little Pigs from the Traditional Stories topic. They loved the wolf and the voices and illustrations were particularly effective. One of my personal favourites was one of the Pattern activities where you were invited to design a T-shirt, scarf, bag or bed. I used this with small groups as part of our focus on repeating patterns. The children were able to print off their designs and proudly showed their parents at home time! Another personal favourite was the colour mixing activities. This created further learning opportunities with creative development and the children were able to actually experiment with colour mixing for themselves, having already been introduced to the topic on the computer. In conclusion, CD-ROMs 1 and 2 worked very well with this age children and utilising the F2 activities as enrichment activities for the more able provided clear differentiation. I would recommend practitioners to utilise the ‘try before you buy’ option to ensure that the resources would be suitable for your group of children.

Review by:	Nicola Clare
Rating:
Review	We use Early Years ICT with our reception class. They have a 30 minute ICT session every week, working in small groups in our computer bay (six computers), taught by the classroom assistant. They also use the computers independently throughout the week to support their learning across the curriculum. As the ICT Co-ordinator, I really only have positive things to say about Early Years ICT. The children have a focused lesson on finding their way around the software and find it easy to use. As each activity follows the same format, after one lesson the children are able to use the software independently to reinforce what they have learnt in class. The Early Years ICT Series fits perfectly with the topics being studied in our reception class. We can simply tell the children which Early Years ICT activity to choose to relate to the current class topic. There is also the option to “pull bits out” of Early Years ICT to support teaching across the curriculum. Early Years ICT saves time. For example, in the past we have had to copy and paste pictures into our graphics program for young pupils to practise using ‘flood fill’ and simple mark making tools. This is time consuming, so we loved the ‘Birthday’ and ‘Religious Festivals’ units because they have ready-to-use activities for practising these skills. The Early Years ICT software is also particularly good for developing listening skills. We have stressed to the pupils that they need to listen carefully to the activity instructions and have noticed that they have got much better at this. The children love using Early Years ICT and particularly enjoy the self-assessment aspect.

Review by:	Peter Thurlow
Rating:
Review	Testimonial- Smart Learning Early Years ICT Early Years ICT is a welcome addition to the Smart Learning range. The selection of activities is carefully chosen for early learners and is mapped closely to National Curriculum requirements. The activities themselves are a stimulating range of retold and familiar stories, exciting animations, activities, games and carefully recorded audio which together provide very valuable resources for the early years teacher who is a non-specialist but would like to integrate ICT into teaching and learning in the classroom. The activities themselves can be approached as class or small groups, and they are interactive enough for children to manage them on their own where appropriate - all the texts have audio support. I have a personal favourite in Smart Learning’s retelling of the ‘Three Little Pigs’, and I know that teachers will want to use this with their whole class for the sheer fun of it - the illustrations and animations are wonderful! For this age range, interactivity and reward are very important. Smart Learning have come up with a range of activities which contain audio and cartoon clips specifically intended to reward and motivate young children, and I know that they love to search the screen for new discoveries and tricks - the sound files are particularly rewarding and keep children enthused throughout the activities. All the illustrations are engaging and child-friendly, and the variety of artists used adds to the freshness and interest of the product. As usual, Smart Learning have been careful to ensure multi-ethnic representation. A lot of thought has gone into the presentation of the interface - the teacher has control over what the children can do, with a separate menu to enable or disable particular features. This is particularly suited to the age range, but at the same time it is always possible for the children to use the computer as a cross-curricular tool which includes being able to learn initial ICT skills. It’s also the little touches - the way the cat’s smile gets bigger as her selection of creature comforts increases, the incidental bees, mice and ducklings, the wolf… In conclusion, I recommend this product for its child- friendliness, its humour, its ease of use, its interactivity and its capacity to deliver learning experiences suitable for this section of the National Curriculum. Now just show me that pig-builds-her-house-out-of-sticks animation one more time…please?

Review by:	Joan Laws
Rating:
Review	Review of Smart Learning Early Years ICT Disc 1 This Smart Learning Disc is designed to help children in the foundation stage acquire ICT skills through the use of activities, which match the requirements of the early learning goals. The disc has 3 general topics and each topic has different interactive activities for foundation 1 and foundation 2 children. The topics, All About Me, Traditional Stories, and Journeys and Holidays, each have 3 different subtopics with each one providing a starter, a fun basic activity and a more challenging activity. Accompanying the disc is a teacher’s book containing lesson plans for each lesson and specifies the ICT objective, cross-curricular objectives and teacher notes. Activity sheets can be printed out for the children to use away from the computers. The cute cartoons, beautiful photographs and clearly spoken instructions motivate the children to master the skills of clicking, double clicking, using arrow keys, dragging and dropping and turning the pages of talking books. They learn to operate video buttons and colour onscreen pictures. Through the teacher control page the program can be set up to allow or hide the printing button and the children can be restricted to stay on the set task.

Review by:	Joan Laws
Rating:
Review	Early years CD-ROM 2 is the second delightful disc from Smart Learning designed to develop Foundation Stage ICT skills whilst exploring topics which support the early learning goals. This disc contains three main topics, Minibeasts and Life Cycles, Shape, Colour and Pattern, and Celebrations and Festivals. Each topic has a separate section for Foundation 1 and Foundation 2. These topics are subdivided into three strands and each strand has 2 activities so there are thirty six different interactive activities altogether. The accompanying teacher’s book details the ICT objectives and cross curriculum links for each activity and has explanatory notes for the teacher. There are also work sheets on the disc which can be printed out for the children to use for reinforcement. The appealing activities feature cute cartoons, beautiful photographs, talking books, videos, jigsaws, colouring and music making. The ICT skills developed include single click, double click, drag and drop, using icons, using arrow keys, operating equipment (to control a talking book and a video) and printing. There are teacher controls provided which can be used to make sure the pupils remain on a selected activity and also allow or restrict printing. The videos and talking stories could also be used independently to introduce children to the topics. Our foundation children are really enjoying using this program and are motivated to persevere until they have mastered each skill. Joan Laws Mellers Primary and Nursery School

Review by:

Sarah Peart

Rating:

Review

Review of Foundation Stage CD-ROM - Disc 2 for Smart Learning.

Another great piece of software for our youngest children.

The program covers very suitable topics for the Foundation Stage and links cohesively with the Early Learning Goals. It is bright and interactive and each activity has something different so that the children do not lose interest, which they would if every game had the same format.

I think the level of progression from the F1 to F2 section is excellent and would allow our children to really develop their ICT skills as well as making progress in the topic work.

The frogs and butterflies section for F1 is very challenging for the children to use independently but could easily be used as part of a focused teaching activity.

The video and talking book introductions are very well pitched and give teachers a good starting point to use with children.

The accompanying paper-based activities are very suitable and could be used at any point during the topic. I like the variation of the activities, the children would not feel that they were completing a repetitive activity and many of the paper activities could be used as a useful tool to assess the objectives set out for the topic.

Our Foundation Stage is run as a unit and I feel that this program would be a worthwhile investment as it provides children with ample material to use throughout their two years in our unit.

PO Box 321 Cambridge CB1 2XU Tel: 01223 477550 Fax: 01223 477551