Our distributer in the Netherlands, Heutink is hosting a seminar day at Apeldoorn for 600 teachers. Along side the seminars and talks, the Dutch teachers have the opportunity to attend an exhibition of products available from Heutink’s catalogue. Storyphones has received a wonderful response from all of the dutch teachers. They were very impressed that there were ‘no wires to chew’ and thought the whole concept was amazing. It’s been very interesting to meet teachers from a different country and to find out about their approach to education. It seems that everyone’s concerns are similar regardless of which country you teach in and speaking and listening skills are definately high on the agenda.

Most children know something about bats, some of which is quite likely not to be true! We were delighted to invite Paul Lupton along to answer some questions about bats and dispel some popular myths. Paul was a teacher for many years and  now runs his  business, Argus Ecology, full time. Paul and his colleagues are a mine of information about bats and have put together a fact sheet for us along with some of their photographs. They are very keen to encourage children to find out more about bats and to help them understand how they can create a bat friendly environment.

If you would like to find out more about bats then you can visit the Bat Conservation Trust or The Year of the Bat’s websites. These websites are  full of information and have lots of resources to download.

The Podcasts

There are two podcasts suitable for different ages and that cover the following information.

Over 7’s: Different species of bat, food, size, mothers and babies, bats in winter, myths, bat sounds and creating a bat friendly environment.

Running time: 9m 10s

Under 7’s: Different species of bat, food, size, mothers and babies, bats in winter, myths, bat sounds and creating a bat friendly environment.

Running time: 6m 39s

You can download the podcasts and accompanying fact sheet and photographs here.

Once again, 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 1st November at 2.00pm and 4.15 pm, at The Greenhouse, Greencroft Park, Annfield Plain, Co Durham, DH9 7XN. Every setting 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.

Places for the seminars are filling rapidly and we only have a few spaces left for the 4.15 session. If you would like to attend then please phone 0845 652 0906 to book your place.

StoryPhones has been shortlisted for a Nursery World Award.  Our innovative MP3 audio system has been shortlisted in the Three to fives – tried and tested favourite category.

We are delighted to be on this shortlist. We are proud of StoryPhones and to be judged by well known experts and professionals from across the Early Years sector makes this a significant achievement for us.

We would also like to thank all of the schools and nurseries who supported our entry. It is the enthusiasm and creativity of practitioners  and children who make StoryPhones such a  successful resource.

The judging takes place on Friday 30th September, so we will be keeping our fingers crossed until then.

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.

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.

StoryPhones are running a free seminar and demonstrations on

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.

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

StoryPhones has been able to support a  Comenius Project. Our local school, Lanchester EP Primary, has been planning a project with their partener schools designed to involve all the children from eight different countries throughout Europe. The aim of the project was for the children to learn at least one song and dance from each country and to perform and record these. The children will also be able to find out more about their own culture and the culture of the partner countries and to understand what it means to be European and how their culture and identity fits into the united European community.

StoryPhones offered to donate one of our loud speaking MP3 players to each school and to develop a website where the schools could  upload and download audio files and share their recordings. The new website is password protected, schools and pupils can log in using passwords making it a totally safe environment for children to use. Schools can upload their MP3 tracks, edit them and download MP3 tracks from other schools.

Monday April 11th saw the arrival of teachers and pupils from Holland, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Greece to Lanchester Primary School. A fantastic week of events has been planned by Mrs Davies, the Head teacher and all of her staff. We were delighted to be invited to the school to meet everyone, explain about the new website and how the MP3 players worked. The school had been decorated beautifully and the atmosphere was buzzing, food was being shared, and it left us with a strong sense of different cultures and countries coming together, truely reflecting the aim of the Comenius programme.

The Eurostars project will continue over the next year and we will be following it with interest. We would like to thank Mrs Davies and her colleagues from all the partner schools for making us feel so welcome and for their enthusiasm for the new website.

“We have loved using this resource. The benefits over a traditional listening post is the lack of all the wires. The students are able to get on task quicker and pack up quicker since they don’t have to detangle wires etc. From a teachers point of view it is quite easy to put the files on and off the devices. I can see benefits using these over iPods due to the ease of transferring files. It is also a benefit to be able to put different content on the different StoryPhones. All in all they are a great product.”  Thank you to Hambledon State School, Queensland, Australia for this comment.