Dick Sblog

I’ve just spent most of the day in the company of Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge and my head’s spinning a bit… Cognitive Edge is a really interesting company, not the least because they take an open-source approach to the development of consultancy methods: in itself, that’s pretty unusual and highly refreshing. Even more [...]

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Back in the days when my SBLN colleagues and I were involved with the Web for Schools Project (the dark days before Dreamweaver or Frontpage, when the Internet looked like a true frontier of opportunity and the big software houses hadn’t started aggressively marketing clever web products to education) it was blindingly obvious that we [...]

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Well, here’s the answer for schools – break free of a paid dependence on Microsoft and start creating a free dependency on Google. Their range of applications now provides access-from-anywhere resources for schools and their pupils that covers email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, text & voice, calendar, webpages… No hosting charges, no software to [...]

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One of the schools attended by my kids has a problem engaging a diversity of parents and an eternal problem providing good communications between parents and school (my son isn’t the only one who loses 90% of correspondence) and between different parents. So, I have a question – is anyone using social networking as a [...]

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A nice piece of work has come out of the DfES highlighting issues around ‘invisible children’ and outlining some classroom strategies to deal with them. It looks at the experience of pupils pupils aged between 7 and 11 who fall behind in Key Stage 2.  ffi see the egovmonitor

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Seb Schmoller’s excellent newsletter has drawn my attention to a piece by Jacob Nielson which points out the obvious:“Teaching life-long computer skills in our schools offers further benefit in that it gives students insights that they’re unlikely to pick up on their own. In contrast, as software gets steadily easier to use, anyone will be [...]

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The European Schoolnet’s Insafe team (www.saferinternet.org) has launched a new tool for children to evaluate their online behaviour and receive appropriate safety advice based on their choices. The data gathered from this tool will be compiled into a report on children’s internet habits.

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(With thanks to the Marchmont Observatory) In 2004, the Norwegian e-learning provider Fronter provided the UK’s Crossways Academy with an open source, web-based Virtual Learning Environment that comprises a pool of online content for students and teachers containing schemes of work, homework assignments, lesson plans, and resources divided into different subject areas. With 295 desktops, [...]

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John Pugh MP has put down an early day motion (EDM 179) supporting the use of open source software within educational institutions and arguing against the adoption of large framework software supply contracts that will restrict choice through standardising provision onto the obvious players.
I support this motion strongly since I believe that o/s often [...]

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I’ve just picked up this message from iEARN – “Rashid Peters of iEARN Sierra Leone, has made it to the final 20 in the BBC’s search for “The Best New Group in the World“:
Rashid has been working for several years on the incredible Child Soldiers project – see the link below [...]

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