And just like that, world order is restored. I felt a little uncomfortable praising Mr Gove for his radical move to remove the ICT Programme of Study. But all is back in balance now. As MSN reports: “The Education Secretary has called for longer school days and suggested that teachers should also be happy with…
Could some of last weeks looting in England be put down to the pirate culture that the majority of 10-30 year olds have grown up with in the UK? This continues my thoughts from my previous post about the riots. Much has been written about the volume of online piracy over the past 14 years…
Like most of the UK (and beyond), I’ve spent the last 5 days watching with dismay as England has descended into widespread looting, arson & violence. It’s been a shocking example of just how thin the bubble of civilised society is and just how close we live to something akin to Lord Of The Flies….
The SSAT National Conference took place last week at the ICC in Birmingham (a venue rightly compared to Escher’s Relativity!). I was fortunate to be able to attend as a punter on the Wednesday and as a presenter on the Thursday as we launched the SSAT National Digital Leaders programme! The theme of the conference was ‘Excellence for All’,…
Inspired by Simon Job, this is a post about how I surf the torrential tidal wave of information that is out there on the Internet, how I filter it down into a manageable stream to consume and how I save the best bits for later. I have been using Google Reader for the last 3 years or so…
Last week I began hearing some twittering about ads appearing on Edublogs blogs. A little investigation on the Edublogs forums showed a post which, to be fair, dates back some months detailing the fact that ads will be added at random to free accounts. They can quickly be removed for $40 a year as part…
Ed Balls has, well, sorry, had the balls to ditch SATs for 14 year olds in England. I can’t quite describe how elated I am! Ignoring last years fiasco, these tests have narrowed the curriculum, the teaching opportunities and pupils enthusiasm for the subject for years. The league tables that accompanied them often narrowed a…
The £60m 2-year DCSF project has kicked off at our school. For the uninitiated this is a government funded scheme to put laptops into some of the most disadvantaged homes in the country. To quote: Computers for Pupils Computers for Pupils is a £60 million, two-year programme (2006–2008) aimed at helping some of the most…
The Beeb have an amusing news story about a school in Kent who are going to give pupils detention if their parents park in the bus lane outside school. I can just imagine the arguments if we tried to enforce this at our school! 🙂
The Guardian has an article today discussing the rapid adoption of eeePCs in schools, apparently with Ministerial support. I’m still impatiently waiting for my 6 to arrive, they won’t be ordered until the school’s trial of Wi-Fi is underway and as with all things in school that is taking longer than expected 🙁 Jonesieboy’s trials…