That’s the title of a great-looking conference on 3rd October – which is only next Wednesday. Russell Prue, one of the organisers and speakers, told me about it, so I had a look…
What I like about it is that there are only 4 sessions, and each looks worthwhile attending. The four speakers are at the top of their game. You can see the details on the conference website. There’s a link to the full programme there too.
We’ve probably all heard the statistic that 80% of people use only 20% of a program’s features – but that doesn’t mean to say that the unused features are no good. It could be that people haven’t discovered them, or could not find an obvious use for them, or that they have simply forgotten about them.
I was invited to give a talk recently, and one of the questions I was asked to address was: what are the characteristics of a good ICT activity? This is one of the questions which, at first glance, seems really easy to answer – until you get down to thinking about it. Because what the question is really asking, I think, is what makes a good ICT activity good in a unique way: that is, unique to ICT.
Here’s a novel idea. Teachers are always focused on what (more) they can do for their kids, but sometimes they would be better off doing something for themselves instead. It may be counterintuitive, but sometimes that can often mean doing better or more things for the kids anyway. Here are some ideas you might like to consider.
I misspelt "innovation", so the new URL for the Introduce a New Project article is:
Will this school year be the same old, same old as far as ICT is concerned? If you’re in England, you may be introducing a new scheme of work, but that doesn't necessarily mean very much – it could just be another case of old wine in new bottles.
One of the things that it is all too easy to forget is that if a child is ‘playing up’ in class, it could be a disability issue rather than a behavioural one. I have known that for a long time, but attending a Technology for Print Disabilities Training Day served as a useful reminder. That training day, just to put this article in context, was run by Load2Learn, a partnership venture between Dyslexia Action and the RNIB.
A short while ago I looked at the value of setting competitions and of celebration (see Lessons from the world of sports: #8 The rule of celebration). In this, the fourth part of the mini-series about returning to work and starting the new school year, I’d like to explore this theme from a different angle or two.
The articles referenced here cover:
When I was studying for my first degree at university, the hardest essay I was ever set in the whole three years was “Explain the competing theories about capital in no more than 500 words.” To give you an idea of what that means, 500 words is approximately a side of A4 – not exactly loads of space to summarise what has taken scores of economists and thousands of trees. In this, the third part of this mini-series, I explore how you might use this “less is more” approach in school.
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