The Might of Rome

If you are looking for a really dramatic start to your project on Ancient Rome then look no further. You can now 'virtually' visit Rome in AD320, at the height of its power, and take a good look around some of the most famous places thanks to a new site from the University of Virginia.

PodcampUK

Picked up from Joe Dale's blog this FREE event for podcasters this coming weekend in Birmingham ... looks as if it could open up some good ideas.

Learning 2.0 Conference Shanghai

The Learning 2.0 Conference in Shaghai is rapidly approaching!

Date: September 14-15-16, 2007
Location: Concordia International School
Doing “school” is changing more rapidly all the time. Technology is certainly one factor in these changes in education, the workplace, and life in general. As a result of innovations that we have all observed, students are more visually orientated and are considered digital natives to a growing degree. Educators see the implications of this and a need to re-define good teaching in response to this more dynamic environment. All agree that we must all expand our teaching/coaching/collaboration skills. Come join the search as we together build the future of schools.

There are some amazing speakers attending ( Alan November, Chris Smith, Will Richardson, Wes Fryer ...) and I feel that it will be a totally inspirational event ... unfortunately I will not be there. Invited to speak but now am advised that 'travel will not be in your best interests at this time.' However, I am going to 'do' my sessions by blog and live Skypecast for those who are interested in what I have to say ... I feel that this is entirely in kepping with the 'Web 2.0' ethos of a Conference that describes itself as 'Communication, Collaboration, Connection'

I have opened a blog to get things started.


As preliminary reading the article by Wes Fryer sets an interesting scene.

Teachers doing science

A really exciting two teacher days with groups in Leicester.

The first session being held at Leicester University for a whole cluster development group of teachers and TAs all coming together away from their schools to gain inspiration and to focus on developing ideas for innovative science - ICT was only part of it - there was a lovely session of sherbert making and how you get it to fizz and if you could use that to make fizzy chocolate !!

The second session in a local primary school, again with teachers and TAs, to look at the use of their new interactive whiteboards with a focus on how the technology can support and enhance science teaching ( and all the spin offs for the many, many other things)



For each of the sessions a specific blog was created to support access to web sites to make things easy during the sessions but with the addition that these could also be used by the schools at any later date.The first being a general set of science sites and the second being tailored to a specific context of term one. The implication here was that schools could easily build their own blogs to support specific projects or subjects and could use these to share with other teachers or could be used by the children to continue work out of school.The blogs were not public and comments were moderated before publication.


This was an entirely new idea to all on both days and leads me to believe that sessions just to develop it will be needed.... all said how useful it was to have quick and simple access to sites which had been preliminarily reviewed. Of course, the usual saftey messages were given out and this gave some food for thought. The message was, however, that the positives should win and the negatives should be a part of an online education process for all users, teahcer, TAs, pupils and parents alike.

One Laptop Per Child Project

Well not quite $100, in fact closer to $200, but still a breakthrough in a technology to make connectivity more universally available worldwide.



"From BBC New at bbc.co.uk/click_online"

'The engineers who designed the energy efficient laptop have thrown out a whole host of conventional ideas in order to produce a computer that will be useful in nations where electricity is in short supply.'

But is technological advance such as this the real answer to education in a world debilitated by drought and famine and ravaged by war and violence? Will it help or could the energy being pored into such projects harvest better fruit being channeled into solving more basic needs? Do projects such as this make us feel better because we are giving what we already have?

Mars 27th August

An email today alerts me to the fact that on 27th August Mars will be as large as the moon (above at about 12.30 am), next time this occurs will be in 60,000 years time, although it will be nearly as close many times before that.

That means that no-one alive today will ever have such a good chance of seeing the 'Red Planet' again in their lifetimes.

Now my check on this ( and my memory) reminds me of a similar message in 2003 and 2005.

So this is a good example of the 'authenticity' of information arriving in your mailbox or found on the Net ... we should be showing these things to our children/students and pointing out that they should check and double check for authentic information before they believe what they read.

What is the most important question education leaders should be asking?

Alan November's blog, post the 2007 Building Learning Communities Conference, asks a key question, 'What is the most important question education leaders should be asking?'
and it is well worth having a close look at some of the answers/comments.

It is heartening to read about 'empowerment' and 'student voice'... there is little about content here rather it is, as Sue puts it, about '... the transfer of ownership of the learning to the students' I do hope the BSF project gets this right.

Literacy Builder

On the NGfL CYMRU is a rather interesting new resource called 'Literacy Builder' . Very well worth taking a look at to see if it 'rows your boat as well as floats it'.

Learning Platforms

'The Government looks like falling short of its target of getting all schools to provide online “eportfolios” for their pupils by spring 2008, according to research carried out by the British Educational Suppliers Association (Besa).'... comments the Merlin John blog.

I suspect that this will not come as a surprise to anyone but we should learn by the mistakes of the past here. Back in the days of the roll out of computers into schools under the banner of NGFL LEAs ( as they were then) managed to allow a stupendous amount of maney to go to waste on systems that did not fit the bill, as far as some schools were concerned.

There is a report reported (!) from Cleveratom where Matthew Eaves, Director of creativity ( now there's a job title I would like) states:
'From our research into VLEs we've discovered that the three most common mistakes schools are making include: not understanding what a VLE actually is: not having the right vision for online learning; not involving the right team.'

Probably time for some people to do some real homework then.

Map of Future Forces Affecting Education

I am again indepted to Ewan McIntosh for this cartography from KnowledgeWorks ( don't know where he finds these nuggets from or how he has the time ?)
It would be interesting to translate it from the 'americanisms' to a the various UK education set ups and see how it supports ( or not) the economic developments in such projects as 'GLOW' or 'BSF'.

Watch what you do with your hands

Picked up from my feeds today, and reproduced here, from Simon Mills is this interesting article from the USA about hand gestures in teaching contexts.
Well worth the read.

RM's Educational podcasts

I confess that I have only just noticed these.

'The RM Education Lectures are 45 minute presentations delivered by individuals who directly or indirectly, influence education or who challenge current thinking and methodologies. Ostensibly, the RM Education Lectures form part of a CPD programme for RM management but they have wider appeal than we can accommodate in the Conference Room at RM HQ. For that reason, we'd like to extend the programme to anyone interested via a podcast. For each new lecture delivered, we will record and add to the RM Education Lecture podcast (where the speaker has granted us permission to do so).'

To date you can listen to Stephen Heppell, John Davitt and Tim Brighouse.

Mashups

Terminology always interests me and so I am currently investigating the confusion of terms and the concepts behind 'mashups' and what they might mean to me and my use of social networking software (most of which I think are mashups). I come to think of mashups as a sort of the remote electronic version of a Swiss Army Knife.

So ... you take a couple of applications you want to combine and mash-them-up together. Ideas such as YouTube and Google Maps work together really well and allow you to patch videos on to a map showing origin or association ... Google Maps is good at mashups! Wikipedia has a good article on it pointing out some of the 'useful' ideas and my mind is working on getting to grips with the potential.

It seems to me that the idea here is to 'adopt, adapt and then innovate' or 'mix, match and mutate' might explain it better.

Are you green, white or black or a combination of these?

Have you discovered 'Blackle.com' yet?

This is a black version of Google and claims to use less power because, it seems, black screens use 59 watts and nearly all white screens like the usual google one use 74 watts. So black is green and white isn't, if you see what I mean.

So if you have a yearning to save the planet ....

While we are on this subject did you know that it is more environmentatlly friendly to drive your car to the shops than it is to walk. It appears that, as food production is now so energy intensive, more carbon is emitted to provide the energy needed to produce the food that you eat to provide the calories for the walk than would be emitted from the car making the journey ! Have a read of Chris Goodall's book ' How to live a low carbon life'.

Worth a thought

669 Saturdays

"... that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."


Patched to me in an email today (and then just editored a little) was this snippet. It might be familiar to some:



"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays." "I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear."

"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.

And so, as one smart bear once said..."If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.

So ... just 669 marbles left in the jar ... think I might switch to jelly beans.

Just you back it up now !!!

A brilliant one from Chris Smith of Shambles.

Just watch: