What does the Government really think about ICT?

I am by no means an apologist for the Government, but it seems to me that colleagues who have seized on the absence of ICT in the recent White Paper on the future of teaching as indicative of the Government's lack of interest in, or commitment to, ICT may have been premature. As an ex-Ofsted inspector I would say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The White Paper failed to mention electricity as well, but I'm sure the Government would be surprised if anyone took that mean the Government thought schools should be run on gas!
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Two-tier email system

Teachers looking for material with which to furnish their lessons on how technology affects society need look no further than email. This form of communication has affected in at least three ways what might be called “disposable time” – the time one has left after the essentials like eating and sleeping have been taken care of.

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Prize draw: 4 Xobni licenses to be won

Tomorrow, Wednesday 30th March, at 9 pm British Summer Time, I’ll be running a prize draw for subscribers to Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for educational technology professionals. I will be picking 4 names out of the virtual hat, and those people will receive (if they want it), a free licence for the premium version of Xobni, which is an email manager which works with your email client, which in my case is Outlook.

I wrote about the application in an article called, appropriately enough, Xobni. The company has very kindly made these licences available for this prize draw. All you have to do to be eligible is subscribe to the newsletter!

What does a broken clock signify?

This sounds like an odd kind of question to pose on an educational technology website, but bear with me. A couple of days ago I went to my local swimming pool and the clock on the wall was tilted at an angle, and stuck at ten to six (it was three in the afternoon).

So that got me thinking: does a broken clock indicate that the management really doesn't care that much about such details because they are regarded as unimportant in comparison to customer service issues?

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25 ways to make yourself unpopular: #18 Don’t ask questions

You’d think that giving people in your team the freedom to teach ICT how they like would be met, by them a least, with unbridled enthusiasm. You’d think that the best way to get on with your boss would be to offer no resistance to his latest idea, even if you secretly believe it is completely nuts. You’d think that not challenging your students when they proudly show you the results of their programming or desktop publishing efforts would be much better than the opposite, lest their (supposedly) fragile self-esteem be damaged.

You’d be wrong.

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Is More Too Much?

Terry’s article ’25 Ways to make yourself Unpopular – Too Much Information ‘starts by reminding us the phrase is often heard in a social setting when stories are being retold and get a little too near the knuckle for comfort. In terms of getting things done however, surely it is not possible to have ‘too much information’? The more you have, the easier the job will be – yes?
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My bookshelf

Here are thumbnail sketches of a few books which I've come by recently. Taken as a whole they cover:

  • The future of cities: should we build cities around airports instead of away from them?
  • Schooling in the digital age: is it as much to do with politics as technology?
  • Useful educational resources for the iPad.
  • Learning and innovation in ICT: a European perspective.

Hope you find these useful.

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An Open Source Schools conference

In “austerity Britain” schools are faced with a rather large challenge: how do they continue to provide a good ICT service, for teachers, administrators and, above all, pupils? One possible solution is open source software, and whilst I do not subscribe to the Shangri La-like vision of some of its exponents, I do think it’s an option that demands to be explored and considered carefully.
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Come back, computer lab, all is forgiven

Why is it that all innovators seem to have an “either-or” mentality, an all-or-nothing approach? “Out with the old, in with the new!” seems to be their call to action, yet sometimes – I would say often – the new is not as good as the old. At least, not so much better that the old should be dispensed with altogether.

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In ICT, the past is not what it was

From 1997 there was an almost palpable – some would say relentless – commitment to educational technology in the UK. Although not always strategic, it was both consistent and persistent. It was a qualitative as well as quantitative break with the past. Yet, whilst I would never disparage these efforts, I don’t believe they were necessarily as wonderful as people remember them to be.
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The Transparency Initiative

I recently attended a Westminster eForum seminar about PR and journalism, where I met Dr Martin Moore, of the Media Standards Trust. In his 4 minute talk, Martin mentioned the Trust’s involvement in something called The Transparency Initiative. The Trust has teamed up with the Web Science Research Initiative for this grant-funded work. I caught up with Martin a few days ago and we discussed it. Here’s the situation which, as either a citizen, a teacher or a blogger you will understand only too well. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between commercial and, for want of a better word, factual, content in the news.
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Finding stuff on the ICT in Education website

previewOne of the main criticisms levelled at the original ICT in Education website was that it was hard to find things. Come to think of it, that was the only criticism for a long time, before the site became more and more unwieldy through my attempts to make articles easier to locate. I’m trying to not repeat the mistakes on this  website, so every so often I take another long, hard look at it and ask: how might searching/finding be made even easier? And so it was that over the weekend I did some revamping and moving things about, and this article describes the results.

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The power of blogs and the perils of email

I originally wrote this article on 13th April 2009. Although the story that inspired it is no longer news (although the problem it relates to, about losing data, hasn’t gone away), I think that the interplay and rivalry between “mainstream media” and blogging is still interesting. This has been brought into sharp focus by the withdrawing from blogging by two political bloggers.I think when investigative journalism is done well, such as Watergate, the Expenses Scandal, it is second to none. But increasingly I find myself frustrated by “flimsy” reporting in the press.

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