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Mobile, Personalised Learning – The Essa Academy

These are my notes from a fascinating day at the Essa Academy, courtesy of Apple. We were treated to a tour and talks by a number of staff including the Principal – Showk Badat, Abdul Chohan & Jeff Ellis. I was fascinated by not just the integration of mobile technologies (they are famous for giving every…

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IT Provision in Secondary Schools in 2011

Another what’s the best way forward? blog post where I try and dissect my own thinking on what IT provision should look like in a Secondary School in 2011.  Continue the current mix of laptop trolleys and IT suites or move towards a 1 to 1 environment of tablets or laptops? Financial Planning This year so far…

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#LWF11 – Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia – Evolving The Dream & Final Questions

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Another presenter who is challenged by presenting ‘in the round’! Seeing a massive change in the quality and quantity of informal learning.  Talk about the dream of free knowledge for everyone.  Free access to the sum of all human knowledge. What is free access?  Free as in speech, not as in…

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#LWF11 – Lord David Puttnam of Queensgate

Lord David Puttnam, man of many hats, but perhaps pertinently Chairman of Futurelab: Joked that Stephen Heppel and he had have achieved so little in the last 20 years!  Not yet a state where what’s best for the child is also what’s best for the child. Left film industry as it had ceased to be inspirational…

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LWF11 Prof Andrew Blake – MD: Microsoft Research Cambridge – NUI

Talk about NUI – Natural User Interfaces (no touch). Obvious plug for Kinect.  Showed Anybot robot that allows you to attend a meeting without actually being there. Talked through other examples of such tech. Challenges of creating Kinect: Have to be able to capture body pose.  Come in many shapes, sizes and flexibilities! Depth camera made all this…

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#LWF11 David Braben – Frontier Developments & Legendary Games Designer

David is one of our greatest games designers, I was excited to hear him talk as I’ve been playing his games since the 80s! What motivates kids today?  Fame, money, instant gratification.  Not hard work and days of graft.  So are today’s kids doomed? Games are a great weapon for education, as Dawn greatly pre-empted.  Games…

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#LWF11 Dawn Hallybone – Games Based Learning in Primary

Disclaimer: I would consider Dawn a friend, thanks to many interactions via Twitter & Teachmeets etc even though we’ve only met a handful of times..  I won’t go into great detail about the work she has done as her blog has details of it all. LWF Bio. Dawn discussed using Nintendo DS & Wii with the pupils are so engaged…

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#LWF11 David Samuelson, Pearson – Game Based Learning

David Samuelson is the grandly titled Director of Games & Augmented Reality Type! A third of Pearson’s revenues now through digital content.  Showed wonder, focus and engagement of playing games through Philip Toledano’s photography . Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s state of flow covered again. Learning in games:  Discussed the phenomenon of Farmville and the wealth of stats that are crunched by…

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#LWF11 Ray Mcguire – Sony Vice President Sony UK

Inspired by Ewan McIntosh & David Muir to blog while I watch at Learning Without Frontiers 2011, instead of making notes and probably never getting round to blogging them! Ray started by talking through the position of Sony within the industry and then talking through his daughters life mapping key tech developments such as the birth of Facebook…