A wider perspective

Friday found me standing near the top of Hilton's newest hotel in Manchester. The views from Floor 23 give a really wide perspective of the City and were a fitting climax to a morning where we had been pushing the boundaries of Web 2.0 with and invited group of guests who had come along to hear about Softease's latest venture, Honeycomb, an integrated set of online creativity and collaboration tools that work through the Internet.

The group assembled in the Podium Lounge for bacon rolls and coffee. An inspired venue choice by Danielle Markland,account manager at Softease. Inspired for the food and welcome but more so as the flagship podcasting software produced by Softease is called ... Podium.

This excellent beginning was followed by an inspiring Keynote by Dr Baldev Singh seen here pondering the meaning of life and times with Peter Sadler, Sales and Marketing Manager of Softease.


Dr Singh took us on an impressive tour of the world in which Web 2.0 fits into educational contexts. Below I pick out just some of the nuggets of his presentation.

These aren't quoted verbatim but are taken from my notes of the event:

We need to get into the 'Q' stuff ... high Q ... Quality

Input less ... process more ... output less - but of greater quality

The best way to predict the future is to build it ( I think that is what Softease are doing with Honeycomb)

In a world of infinite content, the only way to cope with it is to focus on the context.

Did you ask a question today?

Content is important, connectivity is king but context is the emporer.

Kids act as amplifiers for learning.Using powerful technology allows children to make choices.

Access is important ... look to your firewalls!

From elearning to clearning .... connected learning!

I feel sure that there were more but when I read these they start to ask me questions about my thoughts and ideas ... good prompts for the future!

Baldev also flicked through a good number of interesting Web 2.0 site he uses:

Voki - for making and managing your own virtual characters
FlickrStorm - for searching for picture sets
bubbl.us - for online, collaborative mind mapping
walkit - mapper/router extraordinary
voicethread create, comment & share

On his blog John Sutton ably describes the part I played in the proceedings under the 'Honeycomb' heading. I reproduce his comments here ... Thanks John!

Also on the agenda was an introduction to Softease's brand new, soon to be launched, Honeycomb project presented by Doug Dickinson

Honeycomb is Softease's answer to the challenge that Web 2.0 presents to schools. In an article John Naughton wrote for the Observer newspaper in January he bemoaned the over emphasis on skills teaching in ICT and, in particular the heavy concentration on Microsoft Office. This, he argues, is turning children away from ICT in school in order to focus on all the simple and engaging stuff they can do with their mobile phone, Youtube, Facebook and Myspace etc. Honeycomb is an attempt to provide a set of cool tools that will engage children in a way that asking them to produce yet another PowerPoint simply won't. The launch at BETT in January is only the first step along the road for what is clearly a major development project. So far, they have developed a web portal which allows each student to have a website and a blog. These can also act as wikis with group access. The famous Softease "click anywhere and type" philosophy is seen throughout and makes it very simple for anyone to create a multi-media homepage and blog.

They have also included a couple of widgets to start things off (with clearly a long list of potential others to add) and a load of teacher review tools to ensure that staff can keep simple tabs on what children are doing. There are also a host of tiered security features to allow schools to manage access. Getting this right from the start is a major challenge as the two key inhibitors to uptake of Web 2.0 tools in school in my experience are perceived workload issues (not true if you embed it it in your teaching) and perceived security issues (cyberbullying and inappropriate stuff being published). If Softease can build teacher confidence with this aspect of the product straightaway, then they could be on to a winner (as long as the price is right - ever the issue for school!).

It's a fascinating project and I hope to bring you some screen shots when I've been given trial access to the development portal. One to follow for sure.