A former primary school teacher is behind the launch of Oddizzi, a new online learning tool which will allow classrooms around the world to connect with each other.
Billed as ‘Pen Pal for the 21st Century’ Oddizzi’s ‘ClassPals’ feature will help children to share knowledge and experience of the world around them.
ClassPals helps classrooms to link with each other nationally and internationally and offers a unique opportunity for subscriber schools to forge links with classes around the world in a safe and monitored environment.
With its quick and easy to use online postcard format, classes using ClassPals are able to communicate directly with each other and get first-hand knowledge of the world around them. From now on, communicating with other schools can be a daily rather than once in a while experience.
Oddizzi, the online learning tool, is aimed at primary school children and includes over 500 interactive pages of content, games that test global knowledge, interactive maps, live news feeds and a bank of creative lesson ideas and activities for teachers that take geography across the curriculum.
Oddizzi is funded by a subscription model costing from £155 per year or £2.98 per week.
Jenny Cooke added: “As a schoolteacher for over 10 years I saw how interested children were in the world but was frustrated by the lack of inspiring primary geography resources available. Giving young children the chance to communicate with children of their own age throughout the world means they can now learn from their own peers rather than from traditional textbooks. Oddizzi is really practical and affordable and it is our aim that it provides a breakthrough for primary school children studying geography.”
Earlier this year, an Ofsted report concluded that the teaching of geography was not good enough in more than half of English state schools; and how many teachers lacked specialist geographical knowledge.
A report by Oddizzi called ‘Geography Resources for Primary Teachers: the next step’ surveyed UK primary school teachers and found:
• 45% feel that the quality and relevance of resources currently available to them are impacting the teaching of geography
• 68% said that geography materials are significantly worse or not quite as good as materials available for other subjects
• 67% said that they are not or only somewhat satisfied with the level of interactivity of current materials
• 81% said that child friendly interactive maps would be a very interesting or essential feature of any new teaching resource (28% say it is essential)
• 70% say that the inclusion of cross curricular project ideas would be very interesting or essential as a feature of a new teaching resource (27% say it is essential)
Jacqueline Harding, child expert, former Head Teacher & Government Advisor said:
“Oddizzi is a new experience in teaching geography and it recognises that it is the teacher’s knowledge and passion which stimulates the imagination of children and allows them to flourish and succeed. Whilst the recent Ofsted paper places teachers in the driving seat of school improvement, this timely resource will equip them to achieve the vision for a transformed school curriculum. From seeing first-hand the positive reaction from educators at BETT 2011 to Oddizzi, I predict that this new resource will make a considerable contribution to children’s learning on the global stage.”
www.Oddizzi.com
