[eal-bilingual] Notifications and Announcements

Dear All,

This week's notice includes: 

1. ICT Excellence Awards open for entries!
2. Smart Cat Profiling

Full details below. 

If you have any announcements, information about courses, details of conferences, job vacancies that you would like included in future notices please email details to: eal-bilingual-owner at lists.becta.org.uk

Regards, 

Jason 
Becta

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1. ICT Excellence Awards open for entries!

The ICT Excellence Awards aim to identify and reward those schools throughout the UK who are leading the way in their outstanding and innovative use of ICT, benefiting their whole community both inside and outside the school building.

By recognising whole-school best practice, these awards are closely aligned with Becta's self-review framework and the ICT Mark. While rewarding the school as a whole, there will also be a focus within the awards on those individuals leading change within the school and making an impact across it.

This year there will be 8 national awards, across 5 categories, with winners receiving a cash prize to spend on ICT equipment, provision or training.  

The categories are for primary and secondary in each of:
*	Learning Experience
*	Beyond the classroom
*	Leadership Management and Collaboration

The Best Whole School category will be judged and awarded regionally, with one national winner to be named.  There are separate categories within this award for early years, primary and secondary settings.

Entries are welcome from all schools, including special schools (and any DCSF-registered provider of education for children between the ages of 3 and 18) in the above 4 awards categories. 

The Support for Schools category will reward those organisations supporting schools in their use of ICT.
The final deadline for entries is 30 April 2008. Schools and organisations that are shortlisted for an ICT Excellence Award will be visited by judges during June, July and September. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in November.  
Application forms and details about the ICT Excellence Awards can be obtained from www.becta.org.uk/excellenceawards  
For more information, contact Becta's Awards Team on email at excellenceawards at becta.org.uk, or by telephone on 024 7641 6994

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2. Smart Cat Profiling is an online, Bett-award winning assessment tool for 4-5 year olds, EAL and SEN children.  www.screenlearning.com

The games have been translated into BSL, and we have been working with experts at the Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre, UCL, in adapting the software further to help teachers assess the abilities of children who use it. Sign language multi-media experts Eyegaze have also been involved.  

The primary objective was for researchers at DCAL to analyse how children with hearing impairments divided their attention between on-screen tasks and signed instructions while playing the games, and consequently adapting the software using a combination of sign language video clips and other visual information. 
Director of DCAL Professor Bencie Woll: "We hope that by making this software more accessible to children whose first language is BSL the abilities of deaf children will be more accurately assessed as they start their education.  This is an important step to ensuring that deaf children get an equal start as they begin their school life."

Four (out of the 13) games have thus far been further adapted, and feedback from the signing community is invaluable (a quick online form is available): http://www.screenlearning.com/projects/index.php?id=26&type=latest%20news
Thank you for your interest.  

Tel: 0845 0341144 (local rate) / www.screenlearning.com