If you tried emailing me earlier and received a bounced email message for your trouble, it’s all OK now. Here’s what happened…
Audio slides
One of the things I like about the ICT in Education site (he says modestly) is that you can listen to the articles as well as read them. It means that the articles are accessible to sight-impaired people. But when I upload presentations, that is no longer true. At least, not until now.
7 reasons to incorporate digital photography into your course
If I were running an educational technology/ICT course now, I’d make taking and sharing at least one photo a week a requirement for remaining on the course. If booting someone off the course was not an option, I’d tie in a significant proportion of the marks to those activities. All this is impractical, of course. Even if I were allowed to get away with such draconian actions, I wouldn’t want to penalise a brilliant student for not taking a few snaps now and again. But think of the benefits to everyone if digital photography were a key component of a course – any course.
Choose your own assessment
In the changing room where I go swimming, there’s a machine that does everything. It measures your height, weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), and about half a dozen other things. I’m surprised it doesn’t measure my waist and shoe size as well. Yet, after using it twice, I have given up on it.
Report of Learning without frontiers 2012
I had forgotten just how unforgiving pure BASIC was on the old BBC computer. Make a mistake, and you had to delete all of the characters until you arrived at the offending one. I had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with such pleasures at the Learning Without Frontiers conference.
Tweet-up in Oxford
I had the pleasure of meeting up with Shelly Terrell and Clive Elsmore (Clivesir on Twitter) recently in Oxford. But look at the text messages we exchanged in order to finalise the arrangements….
ICT and poor journalism
I attended a Westminster Legal Forum event about libel reform today, and someone asked whether bloggers were “real” journalists (or something like that). That sort of question implies that bloggers are somehow inferior to genuine journalists. I have to say, however, that when it comes to reporting on education policy, “proper” journalists do not always acquit themselves well in terms of accurate reporting. This was especially true in January 2012 in response to Michael Gove’s speech at BETT.
Don’t blame the technology
Technology can help a good teacher do wondrous and wonderful things – but bad use of technology is worse than no use of technology, in my opinion. There is, possibly, one exception to this general rule, which I will get to in a moment. What has brought on this sudden dazzling insight (well, it isn’t really instant, and it probably isn’t dazzling, but this is my blog so I can say what I like). An anti-ICT dogma diatribe by the behaviour guru, aka Tom Bennett.
Read MoreBring your own technology
If ever there was an idea whose time has come, it is surely Bring Your Own Device or, to be less restrictive, Bring Your Own Technology. There are at least two comp0elling reasons for this.
Computers in Classrooms update
The latest issue of Computers in Classrooms will go out on 8 March at 01:00 GMT. There are two additional features that were not included in my previous article about this, including a prize draw!
Read MoreComputers in Classrooms, new issue
Today I have been working on the new issue of Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT. Here’s a summary of what it contains. It will be published later today.
What does a good ICT school look like?
I was asked yesterday what a good ICT school looks like. The question threw me momentarily, and the fact that it threw me threw me as well: a sort of meta-throwing. Then I realised why: I don't think you can tell whether a school is good at ICT just by looking. All that looking does is help you make some working assumptions which you can then, one hopes, test out.
Read MoreAutomated report writing
I have never met a teacher who enjoys writing reports. If you have one or two small groups, it’s not too bad, but if you have ten different groups of thirty kids, crunching out 300 reports is a bind. And, often, a pressured bind at that, shoehorned between exam results and end of term. But with any luck, a new breed of software could spell the end of such drudgery.