June has been a busy month for StoryPhones.

We started in Stratford Upon Avon at the National Primary Head Teachers Annual Conference. As always, we had a great deal of interest in StoryPhones, met lots of friendly people and had the chance to walk around Stratford and visit Shakespeare’s birthplace.

The link with Shakespeare and StoryPhones may be a bit tenuous. However, Shakespeare used words and spoken language to tell his stories and this is the core of StoryPhones, using spoken word and language to tell a story. I am sure Shakespeare, not just a play write but also a business man would have made great use of modern technology!

Next, we headed for Bournemouth and the Nursery Show, our stand had a wonderful view of the sea and the rain lashed beach! Meeting lots of visitors to our stand and chatting to them always sparks off ideas. As the result of this, we are putting together a pack of posters and leaflets to help with fund raising efforts, and some special offers to go with it. We’ll post more details later.

Monday, we were in York, attending the National Literacy Trust’s ‘Talk For Writing’ conference. This was held at the National Railway Museum, and we had lunch among the engines! The conference was led by Pie Corbett. The whole day was packed with brilliant ideas and ways of helping our children to become creative, effective writers. If you ever have the opportunity to attend, it is well worth it.

Today, June 24th, we are attending the NGFL conference in Newcastle Upon Tyne finding out about the ways technology can support children’s learning. How about making an audio slide show using audio and still images to tell a story. More thoughts about this idea later.

Schools all around the world are seeing the benefits that using StoryPhones can bring to their children’s learning. Here are some comments from two such schools.

Spain

Luis Fuentes teaches six year old children at Colegio Pinar Prados in Madrid. During a visit to Spain last year, we left one of our StoryPhones systems for him to use with his children. Luis has been using StoryPhones to help teach his children to learn English, and this is what he said:

“I must say that I find them very useful, as students can work on their own or in small groups as the rest of the class is doing something else. I mostly used them for reading purposes. My students are learning to read in English (they are six years old), and it is very helpful for them to hear the story while reading. Thanks to your StoryPhones, this can be carried out with different stories at the same time and without disturbing the rest of the classmates.”

South Africa

Linda Bradfield is the ICT teacher at St John’s Pre-Prep School in Johannesburg, South Africa.  She sent us some photos of the children using their new StoryPhones Headsets. The children were taking part in a lesson about shapes and following a picture storybook. Linda also  loaded  songs for the children to listen to as well.