BETT Award winning Oddizzi provides teachers with inspiring primary content to teach pupils more than just geography
To celebrate winning the Primary Digital Category at this year’s BETT Awards, Little Travel Bug is offering a limited number of "buy one get one free subscriptions" to UK schools that register for Oddizzi, a captivating and engaging new cross curricular teaching resource designed to bring the world to life for Early Years Foundation stage, KS 1 and KS 2 pupils. Any school which signs up on stand K62 at the Education Show can choose an overseas school to receive a free subscription for a year. This might be a partner school, an international school they have worked with in the past, or an Oddizzi nominated school.
Also shortlisted in this year’s ERA Awards, Oddizzi is a vibrant, interactive multimedia website for Early Years Foundation stage, KS 1 and KS 2 pupils. Created by primary teacher and winner of a Mumpreneur Gold Award, Jenny Cooke, it features two endearing characters Odd and Izzi who take children on a fascinating tour of the world, introducing them to different people and places, climates and cultures.
Teachers and travel writers have put together 500 pages of fresh, lively content linked to the geography national curriculum. This means that material is current and child-friendly. There is also an interactive map, a live news feed, thousands of images and videos, a wide range of games and a tool that enables pupils to communicate with other children in classrooms around the world.
Oddizzi is a great time saver for teachers as they source relevant classroom materials which their pupils can use for research and discussion. They will find that Oddizzi provides a superb resource for Literacy and Art and links into areas such as Languages and Global Awareness.
Central to the resource is the OddPod, an interactive map designed to make navigating around the world really fun and engaging. Pupils can change how they view the maps and zoom in and out. They can check out hundreds of Oddizzi pins that have been organised in different categories. As they click, pages of information and extra resources open up.
Navigation is simple; pupils and teachers can jump from page to page and create their own journey through topics by using the resource’s highlighted links and bookmarked pages for quick access. Within more detailed topics, such as environmental change, pupils can click on Sneak a Peek, a helpful feature which condenses the topic down to one page of easy to read sentences. Oddizzi also provides teachers with a bank of creative ideas which show how to extend topics across different areas of the curriculum.
Communicating with other children around the world is the best way to learn about another country and ClassPals allows a class to do just that. With supervision from their teacher, they simply click on the list, sort by country and send a 'friends request'. Once they have been accepted, the class can communicate as often as they like by sending virtual postcards to each other. Not only is it a clever and e-safe way for teachers to bring an international dimension to lessons, it also helps children understand more about how other people live.
Commenting on the resource, creator and, Jenny Cooke said, “As a primary teacher it frustrated me that there wasn’t one place that I could send my kids to that featured good quality, well presented material about the world. Invariably they would turn up with information pulled from Wikipedia which they didn’t really understand and which was far too difficult for them to process. Now teachers can point them to one site that communicates facts in a child-friendly manner and in an exciting and engaging way”.
Oddizzi is priced at £199 plus VAT per annum for an average sized school of between 100-500 pupils. This offers 24/7 access for all teachers and pupils. Schools with less than 100 pupils can purchase Oddizzi at the reduced cost of £129 plus VAT per annum.
For further information about Oddizzi, visit http://www.oddizzi.com/ Follow Oddizzi on Twitter @Oddizzi. Visit them on Stand K62 at the Education Show 2012.
Media contacts:
Richenda Wood
Livewire PR
Tel: 0208 339 7440
Mob: 07941 125580
Email: richenda.wood@livewirepr.com
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Caption: Oddizzi from Little Travel Bug is a captivating and engaging new cross curricular teaching resource designed to bring the world to life for Early Years Foundation stage, KS 1 and KS 2 pupils.
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Caption: Communicating with other children around the world is the best way to learn about another country and Oddizzi’s ClassPals allows pupils to do just that.
http://www.livewirepr.com/fileadmin/user_upload/images/high_res/ClassPals_Screen_Shot.jpg
Caption: To top it all, Oddizzi includes learning games about the world for children to play and extend their understanding of the topics covered.
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