National Primary Headteachers’ Annual Conference 8th and 9th June 2011

The Holiday Inn, Stratford Upon Avon

We are exhibiting at the Primary Headteachers Conference in Stratford. If you are attending, we will be delighted to meet with you and demonstrate our award winning MP3 audio systems. We will have our classroom displays with us and lots of ideas about different ways to use digital audio in the classroom.

The Nursery Show, Bournemouth International Centre, 17th – 18th June 2011

Visit us on Stand S39

We are returning to the Nursery Show this year and looking forward to meeting everyone on our stand. We will be demonstrating our award winning StoryPhones MP3 players and Little Listeners, our loud speaking MP3 players. You can also find out about the wide range of audio downloads available in the Bookshelf download store..

The importance of listening and communication skills has been highlighted by the recent Bercow Report and the Year of Communication’s ‘Hello’ Campaign. StoryPhones will help you to support and encourage your children’s listening and communication skills. Vistors to our stand will be able to chat to our experts and find out about using digital audio and MP3 players in your nurseries, preschools and homes.

Seminars and Demonstrations

This week we have been running a series of seminars and workshops. We invited everyone along to join in with a seminar, see our classroom and download store exhibition and take part in brief training and demonstration sessions.

We were delighted with the response and had a wonderful time meeting everyone and telling them about all of the audio resources available in the download store. Most people also took the opportunity to take part in some training sessions and explore all the different features StoryPhones can offer.

The Seminars  

We  ran a series of seminars sharing and exploring different ways MP3 players and digital audio resources can be used to help support and develop children’s learning. These were led by Eleanor Johnson, the creator of StoryPhones. Eleanor summed up the main theme of the seminar by saying “digital audio can be versitile, mobile, inclusive and responsive and encompasses individuals and groups across all areas of learning. All of these elements encourage the development of vital early communication skills.”

We talked about the way digital audio reflects children’s home experience and the need for children to be able to use technologies to support their own learning. This discussion was quite timely since a report has just been published entitled ‘Multimodel Literacies in the Early Years’ which looks at exactly how different technologies are used in school and homes. If you would like to read the report then click here for more information.

It was fascinating to find out about the huge range of activities which are taking place in schools who are using StoryPhones. Thank you to everyone who shared their ideas. If you would like to find out more about some of these, then you can download our information sheet here. You will soon be able to watch some videos from the seminar on our YouTube page if you follow this link

Everyone felt that the event had been very informative and effective and we will definately be holding similar ones in the future.

Once again, Ros Bayley has created a lively set of songs which will appeal to children and adults and guarantee to get those toes tapping. Beautifully composed and sung by Nick Foster, the rhythm, reptition, rhyme and steady beat  are ideal for encouraging and developing children’s language and communication skills.

You can stomp along with dinosaurs, fly into space or bang along with the drums. These songs will have everyone jumping, clapping, stamping and tapping all around the room.

The Wicked Action Songs album is now available as a download in the BookShelf download store.

New Stories From Egmont Publishers

We would like to welcome Plop the Owl, Stripy Horse, Mr Wolf, Suzi the Cat, Sir Charlie Stinky Socks, Rory the Polar Bear, Kitty the Cat and the Night Monkey and Day Monkey to the StoryPhones download store!

We have just added eleven new titles to the BookShelf download store. All of the story sets have audio stories, songs, games and listening activites. They have been beautifully recorded by well known personalities such as Jo Brand, Dawn French and Imelda Staunton.

They’re  funny, noisy, gentle and surprising. Children are going to enjoy listening to these audio stories and songs and we are so pleased to be able to make all of these titles available to everyone using StoryPhones.

StoryPhones are running a free seminar and demonstrations on “Using Digital Audio in EYFS and KS1″ and we would like to invite everyone to come along and join us.

The seminar will be led by Eleanor Johnson, the creator of StoryPhones who will explain how MP3 players are opening up the world of audio for children and allowing practitioners to be more creative than ever in their use of audio stories, songs and resources across the curriculum.

The seminar will run on Tuesday 17th May or Wednesday 18th May 2011 between 12.30 and 6.00 pm, at The Greenhouse, Greencroft Park, Annfield Plain, Co Durham. Every visitor attending will receive the StoryPhones Bookshelf software and a free audio book.

Running alongside the semiar will be a classroom demonstration area, opportunities for hands on demonstrations of StoryPhones and an opportunity to see the huge range of audio resources available from the BookShelf download store.

The seminars are free and anyone can attend. Alternatively, you can drop in at any time for a demonstration and a chance to chat to our StoryPhones team. If you would like to know more, then please click here.

We didn’t have too far to travel this time to the National Early Education Conference at Bolton. It was a very well organised conference and we enjoyed meeting all of the organisers and delegates.

Everyone must have had a very good day since there was a wonderful line up of speakers. The theme of the conference was ‘The Cleverness of Boys’. In the morning, delegates listened to talks by Nikki Buchan from Mindstretchers and Gary Wilson, Education Consultant and author. In the afternoon, they were treated to a wonderful session lead by Ros Bayley and Sally Featherstone which at times was informative and moving as Ros told us stories about some of the boys she has taught over the years.

Although I was only able to attend the afternoon session I learnt so much about the way boys brains develop and that by changing and adapting  the ways we teach boys we can work with these differences to make their learning experience a positive and sucessful one.

Our International Sales Manager, Piero Alberici has just returned from Dubai after visiting GESS (Gulf Education Supply Show), the biggest education supply show in the Gulf region.

Piero was invited to attend the show by Projection House, our new distributors for StoryPhones in the UAE. Piero joined Lita Matthews and her collegues on their stand to demonstrate our StoryPhones systems. He chatted to teachers and visitors from around the Gulf region, including Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar and Kuwait.

Piero was delighted with the teachers response. Children’s educational needs are the same the world over and the teachers were excited by the creative possiblities that StoryPhones would offer them.

A Very Special Offer From StoryPhones!

For the month of May in 2011, we are delighted to offer our award winning StoryPhones audio systems for a very special price.

Order 2 or more systems and receive £100 off each system * 

Making a 6 way system only £495 and a 4 way system only £395

*  Offer ends Friday 27th May 2011

Just look at what you get for this fantastic offer:

* Set of 4 or 6 Headsets with built in MP3 player

* A Remote Console: loud speaking MP3 player and recorder

* Multi-way battery charging and storage base unit

* StoryPhones BookShelf software with site licence

* Exclusive access to the Bookshelf audio download store

* USB and power cables

* 2 year warranty

* Online and telephone support

* Free monthly resources newsletter packed full of advice, hints and tips as well as details on free downloads.

BookShelf Audio Download Store

StoryPhones is the only audio MP3 system to have its own download store.

BookShelf is the exclusive digital audio download store for StoryPhones providing guided reading audio books, curriculum audio resources, audio stories, songs and music. You can buy titles from an ever growing rage of leading publishers including Little Tiger Press, Walker Books, Oxford Reading Tree, Rigby Star, Yellow Door and Sticky Kids and many more.  For full details of all of our audio downloads, click here to download the catalogue.

1000’s of settings are using StoryPhones – here are just a couple of quotes from practitioners:

“Hi, just read your newsletter and thought you would like to know how we have been using our StoryPhones.  We have two reception classes who share the set of six StoryPhones. They are very popular and often have children waiting to listen to a variety of stories and songs.Over the last term we have used them for traditional story-telling and writing. We have downloaded a few of Ros Bayley’s traditional tales. The children have learnt the raps; their favourite was the goat rap which they preformed for an assembly to retell the story in a different media. They have used the StoryPhones to listen to stories and draw story maps to help them retell the tales. This has been a great resource and is very popular with all of the children and adults in our setting.”

Thanks, Kim Wallace (reception class teacher)

“Our new StoryPhones are a hit with both staff and children. Children listen to stories independently. This leads to a lot of discussion amongst the children about the story/track they are listening to as they compare against each other.

StoryPhones are used during guided reading sessions. Children have recorded their own voices onto the remote console and played back. This enables them to listen to themselves and talk about how they can improve their speaking voice.

Our Key Stage 2 children are using the Remote Console to record their own stories and to play back to the younger children. The Remote Console is used to stop stories and to discuss at various stages, suggesting what might happen next.

I am sure our teachers use them in many more ways, but these are a few that I could think of.”

Carol Tooth, Flakefleet School, Lancashire

Please click here to visit our website to download the May Offer order form.

The delivery date for your system will be confirmed on receipt of your order.

If you have any questions regarding this special offer please do not hesitate to get in touch with Hilary.

hilary@ameeca.co.uk
Tel: 01207 524 847
Fax: 01207 524 868