7 Outlandish ideas for ICT

Yesterday I was faced with a grim journey into central London. Now, we Brits like nothing better than to complain about the weather, but this time our moaning was justified. The dreadful heat made it difficult not only for us to work, but also the signals on a part of the rail service into London. The part that I use. Rather than face delays of up to 40 minutes (nearly 50% of the normal journey time), I “asked” Transport for London to find an alternative route for me, one which didn’t involve going by rail.

I'm glad I did.

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Four hours to go…

In just four hours’ time, Professor Margaret Cox will be giving a short talk on haptics, ie touch technology. This will be followed by a discussion. Do join us!

28th June at 7pm UK time, join by clicking here. If you’re not in the UK, find out what time it is in your neck of the woods by using this timezone converter.

There is more information on this topic in this article: ICT gets all touchy-feely

Data Protection 101

A ShackData protection is actually pretty easy. True, there are all the legal niceties, and for some courses students have to learn all the principles in the sort of detail that nobody except a lawyer can remember. (A pretty pointless exercise too, given that you can always look them up.) Even so, in my experience students find it easier to learn stuff if they understand the underlying principles. Here are what I believe the underlying principles of data protection to be

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Review of The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers

The aim of this book, written by Darren Rowse and Glenn Murray, is to help you write better blog posts. However, “better” in this context refers to generating more visitors to your blog rather than “just” improving your writing skills. The idea is a simple one: why not identify the key elements of successful blogging, and then provide a tool by which to measure how a particular blog post has done? That’s exactly what the book aims to do.
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EDUsummIT 2011 Report: The Digital Divide

Did you know that there are now more mobile subscriptions in the developing countries than in the (so-called) developed countries? I didn’t either. That was  a fact pointed out to us by Dr Paul Resta, of the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Yet our appreciation of how such technologies can be used to support learning (both formal and informal) is still in its infancy.
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The school where students MUST have a mobile device

#edusum11 Mike Searson is the President of The School for Global Education & Innovation at Kean University in the USA. I met him in Paris the day before the EDUsummit 2011 conference which took place there. He headed up our small, intrepid band of social media folk.

Something Mike related really made me think.

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Authentic Learning and ICT

To the casual listener, stride piano, boogie woogie piano and rock-n-roll piano all sound pretty much the same. Yet Fats Waller, perhaps the most famous stride pianist, detested boogie woogie. And nobody could deny the hint of menace in Long John Baldry’s voice as he sings his song:

Don’t try to lay no boogie woogie on the king of rock-n-roll!

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Discussion about the role of the ICT Co-ordinator

I recently posted a couple of articles that questioned whether the role of the ICT Co-ordinator was necessary. (See the links below if you missed those masterpieces.) Well, we had an online discussion (I’m not daft enough to make an appearance in real life on that sort of platform!), escaped relatively unscathed, and here is the result...
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The role of ICT Co-ordinator is unnecessary: discuss

OK, I admit it: I was being a bit of a devil’s advocate when I suggested that the role of ICT Co-ordinator is redundant, but consider this. In these hard times, how will you respond if your Headteacher calls you into her office one morning and says:

I need to make some serious budget cuts. What exactly do you do, why does it need to be done anyway, and why can’t I get an admin person on half your salary to do it instead?

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Didactic teaching or discovery learning?

According to a study reported on by The Economist, 4 and 5 year-olds not told what could be done with an unfamiliar object explored it for longer and came up with more ideas than control groups who were shown, to varying degrees. The Economist states:

The researchers’ conclusion was that, in the context of strange toys of unknown function, prior explanation does, indeed, inhibit exploration and discovery. Generalising from that would be ambitious. But it suggests that further research might be quite a good idea.

Does this imply that the advocates of discovery learning (and their associated preference for “guide on the side” to “sage on the stage”) are right?

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A conference, summer CPD and a UNESCO report

Here are three options for you to consider in order to give a boost to your professional development:

  • The forthcoming ISTE conference in Philadelphia.
  • A cornucopia of ideas for professional development over the summer break, in case all that relaxing gets you down.
  • A report from UNESCO on Learning, Innovation and ICT.

All this was published last week in Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for educational ICT professionals. Subscribe now (literally: right now) and you’ll stand a chance of winning a premium version of Xobni, a pretty good email management tool. I’m running the draw for that at 10 pm UK time today.

Read on for the details of those three resources.

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UNESCO EDUSummIT2011: Brief update

#edusum11 The conference is now in its final hour or so, with brief addresses from an international panel followed by "Next steps".

I started to write a blog post earlier, but realised very quickly that I need to do more reflecting. It's been a very rich experience in some respects, and I need to assimilate what I think I may have learnt. I've had the opportunity to meet with some of the organisers, representatives of Ministries of Education and researchers.

You can follow the conference on Twitter, using the hashtag given above. There will be video podcasts later (I'm told Monday).

More soon.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

EduSummIT Conference (UNESCO) News

#edusum11 Should anyone invite you to contribute to a handbook, don't turn it down. A few years ago, a handbok was put together (http://edusummit.nl/handbook), which led to several working group-type events, which led to an "EduSummIT" in 2009, which led to EduSummIT 2011.

With over 120 delegates from 40 countries, this promises to be a very interesting -- and useful -- event. Delegates have been allocated to working groups -- mine is 21st century skills. I hope to be reporting on this over the next few days, as long as the wi-fi, my iPad keyboard and my level of wakefulness hold out (the hotel fire alarm went off at around 1 am, which is no joke!)

Look for #edusum11 on Twitter, and edusummit2011 on the web and in Flickr. The conference website is http://edusummit.nl/, where you can find further information. You might also like to check out the latest edition of my newsletter (go to www.ictineducation.org/newsletter and scroll down), as it has a link to a very interesting recent report from UNESCO.

OK, that's it from me for now: I love blogging and writing in general, but sleep also has its attractions!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad