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It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.

We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.

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school website yourself. What will you write today's school news to be?

Edu blogging

Inspector evidence
Talking with one of my Heads, who leads a double life as an inspector, he mentioned, upon seeing how easy emailing 30 pictures truly is, that this was a wonderful way of collecting evidence for inspectors. With inspections dropping on schools so quickly, with little notice, schools have boxes of evidence sitting in in their classrooms.

"This would be a much better way of collecting and displaying evidence. It's all dated. You can just say to the inspectors, take a look at the website."

I don't know what he means. I'm not an inspector, teacher nor Head. But I do know databases and web forms. I know any teacher can send an email with pictures attached, and can do this with little fuss, pain, or time. Fastest is 30 seconds, slowest is under an hour, if they change the file names of the images to captions.

Help me!

So, if you know about evidence, if you're collecting it, if you need to see it in your inspections, if you can see the brilliance of emailing in 30 pictures of 'what you did in class today' either whiteboards, pupils' work, shots of the classroom displays, of the class with their heads down or hands up... If you have a box in the corner and think about it late at night...

If I can make this whole process better, easier for you... It's my mission in life, why I'm here on Planet Earth.

What types of evidence do you need to collect?
Performance data
Indicators of pupils’ progress
Self evaluation evidence
Would you ask parents to fill in a web form for their views on the school?

Notes: I've read the New Relationship with Schools and can't see any requirement for 'boxes of evidence.' I do see the Self Evaluation Form several times.

Help you!

Here's a librarian keeping evidence in Australia, "She already has a portfolio stuffed with papers, everything from students' test scores to surveys to checklists, anything that will chart her vital role as a school librarian." Is this what's in your box?

I can add forms to any page. Perhaps you need specific news items for this with a drop box here, a tick selection there...

Perhaps you need me to add a survey for students, or for parents.

Perhaps you need an intranet for all this? And a way of grabbing a bit from the intranet and easily placing it on the public site? (An intranet is just an empty duplicate of your current site, email your evidence to here. Only a selected bunch of editors can see the site. You allow inspectors in, of course.)

Perhaps, you need just a new department to which you email in a selection of children's work? Or, if you need to raise standards in history, email in the areas you've been teaching. (I'm just guessing here.) Or, perhaps you need to do something about bullying. Perhaps, again a news department where you can add photos and stories written by the children from the school yard about the friendship bench. Pupils needing to learn about different types of work—again, another department? What about early reading, equality, working in teams, how you inform parents...

Al this is easy for me, once I know and understand your needs. But, whatever I do, it has to be easy and painless, and hopefully fun—for you. Else, if it's a chore, if it's hard, you're not going to do it, and I'll have done badly in this world.

My research

I've found a course, I bet it's expensive, to 'Master your SEF.'

Here's a quote from an inspection report, "Pupils use databases to produce graphs and pie charts, though there is limited evidence of its use to support investigations in science or surveys in geography or the recording of statistics in physical education. The cross-curricular use of information and communication technology is an area for expansion." Having children add news items themselves, with links to other sites or photos or screen grabs of their work seems like 'good evidence' to me.

A link to writing a good SEF (Word doc). Notes on filling in the form and a dummy SEF for a primary school.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 10/3/08; 1:50:20 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Inspector evidence



Becta smells the coffee
BECTA exec admits mistakes on education IT: "At the BETT trade show earlier this month, Becta director of educational content Dave Hassell conceded that the education IT quango has been guilty of poor deployments. "What we've done in the past is keep throwing IT at people. It's become a burden for some," he said.

The comments came soon after Becta's chairman Andrew Pinder said teachers are unable to keep up with the pace of Westminster-driven IT rollout in schools."

I talk to Heads and teachers who are extremely non-geek. Yet most of the VLE projects BECTA have allowed to be rolled out are for extreme geeks. Silly. When, if they'd have promoted Moodle, many of the courses could have been rolled out nationally, with very little for the non-geeks to need to do. And there's the open education initiative. If a geeky teacher in California could collaborate with a non-geeky teacher in Manchester...

One world, instead BECTA have created islands and confusion.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 24/1/08; 12:45:28 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Becta smells the coffee



Social network junkie
No! No! No! I'm not a social net work junkie. I'm not! I just want tot try out these things. But I don't do much there. My accounts are fairly empty. I don't 'work' at them. From time to time I get a 'friend' request. Certainly, when I first joined MySpace, I received a ton of such requests from 'strange' women. Not wanting to be 'involved' with such, I politely ignored them.

Bebo
MySpace
Linkedin
FaceBook


And I'm not this Steve Hooker, the R&B rockin' trio nor this Steve Hooker, the Australian pole vaulter.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 29/6/07; 9:26:17 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Social network junkie



Where all the people go
VLEs, are mostly dull, mostly there's no uptake from pupils. Why? They'd rather go to Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. Why?

Because there's people there. It's all about people.

VLEs are unappealing, unsexy and unused and thusly, pretty useless, they're ridiculed and ignored. Such a huge investment in time and hopes down the drain. They look so plain, like a cardboard box. But, worse, much, much worse, there are no people there.

Think of your school, a concrete lump with corridors alive with posters, children's work, bright paint, giggling children. This is how a VLE should be. Santa's coming Certainly, it should be bright, it should look fun, it should even be easy to customise, for the colours to change, for there be somewhere the pupil can scrawl their name, and their favourite band, football team or TV programme.

But mostly, there should be people!

We're not a VLE. Not in the proscriptive BECTA way. But our sites are alive with people: children and staff. There's links to other schools which are alive with people too. Photographs of children in face paint, children's own writing, children sucking ice lollies, bought by the Head. And this is just today.

And we're doing customisation (it's still in beta, but here's a sneak peak)... For the school and for the pupil. Take a look at this theme, it's a multi Christmas theme. I'm still working on the Winter one... The school would decide to switch their theme, and we'll have many different ones for different times of the year: Summer, Autumn, Eid, Easter, St. David's day... And the viewer, the child, picks and switches the background, in a CSS Zen Garden kind of way.

Fun :-)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 8/6/07; 2:30:19 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Where all the people go



Sending links home
A pet peeve of mine is when my children come home raving about a web page they were working on at school. Usually it's from the BBC but not always.

I sigh.

I know they can't remember how it's spelled, their pronunciation is usually awkward... I know I'll have difficulty finding it in Google. We usually have an animated discourse with me leaning over the computer trying to spell strange words in different ways in Google. Or browsing fruitlessly in the huge BBC site.

I've suggested several times to their teachers that they write down the URL to take home, but no joy yet.

If only they merely hit the auto blog bookmark. A two second process—painless—for busy teachers! (If they had one of our websites.) The link would merely be a click away for us at home. Not only that, but all the other previous sites they were working on at school would be available, my children could browse over previous links and cherry pick the ones they liked working on. And I could have a bit of piece and quiet while I made their tea :-)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/6/07; 9:36:08 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Sending links home



Different audiences
I was brain storming last night with a teacher about our series of lesson plans for writing for different audiences. One other nice way of integrating with a development plan is to have children in, say, year six write a set of instructions for 'making a cake' for year two, and for year two to reply, in comments which set of instructions was good. Peer review, if you like.

Another idea was to build a whole school resource for book reviews. A structured outline, title, author, story outline and review of each book. Then children wouldn't take so long in the book corner choosing a book [hopefully]. Over time there'd be a searchable database of book reviews, perhaps with star ratings. Other children could add to the reviews, adding if they agreed to the review or not, what they thought was best/funny/etc..

Similarly, school trips could also be reviewed. Over time the annual trip to Chester Zoo would be reviewed several times by different year fives, say. Before the next trip children could browse the previous reviews and comment on them, saying what they were looking forward to, what they would try to see differently and so on. Then, add their own reviews after the trip.

I particularly liked the linking in of ICT to the topics in the syllabus, as demonstrated in this page of news items added by a year six in Craig y Don, last year. The children worked on these items at school and at home over several sessions. The comments under each item were fantastic. Proof that children writing for children has a greater interest level than teachers writing for children.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/6/07; 9:12:56 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Different audiences



Was it good for you?
The benefits of blogs: "This page is a collection of instructors' and students' ideas about how blogs can be beneficial to the first-year classroom. Clearly, [we] have found blogs to be beneficial in our classrooms, as we have implemented them and plan to use them again in the future. From their survey responses (see students' thoughts for details), students indicate that they agree with much of our anecdotal evidence that blogs are useful pedagogical tools. We've noticed that blogs seem to enrich our classrooms in several ways...
  • understanding our students better
  • students engaging with each other
  • connecting to real life
  • writing as conversation
  • practice makes perfect
  • hatching ideas for future papers
  • computer literacy
  • students' thoughts on blogs"

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 5/6/07; 4:14:58 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Was it good for you?



Reluctant readers
I've been thinking about 'reluctant readers/writers.' I know several sites have children doing sports reports, and this is good. Boys are the major constituent of the reluctants—sport being their major interest. So, I'm wondering if more sport can be done on-line. Like signing up for teams. Asking for ideas for strategies. Asking opponents to contribute in comments perhaps for 'man of the match' suggestions, perhaps even voting.

But let's not forget the girls. Sure sport can be 'a puller' here too. But my daughter (8 years) likes Bratz, pets and My Little Pony sites. I don't think linking to such sites is so good. But the pets maybe a goer. Upload a picture of your pet and write some stuff about it? (Though I'm not keen on allowing any old Tom, Dick or Harry to upload, if they were members, or made to contributing editors, then we'd know they and could allow it.) I know I monitor stuff, but I can't be present at all times and one porn picture for a few hours would kill the site's rep and mine. So, knowing a member/editor in advance would be favourable.

Remember, the idea is to promote in school and get them to want to go on-line at home. Pictures of themselves is always a good one, me thinks. I mean who wouldn't want to show a great picture of themselves doing something notable, like scoring a goal, bagging a point at netball, especially if there's a glowing write up too. "Mum, Mum, come quick, look at me!"

Does anybody else have any further ideas that will pull in those reluctant readers/writers?
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 27/5/07; 1:55:33 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Reluctant readers



Video frightens parents
I've been discussing schools including You Tube uploads on their site with Sue, the heroic techie at Moorside and Waterloo in Tameside. She'd added a few to the Moorside site, parents had seen it and she'd been 'requested' to take them down.

Apparently, You Tube has a reputation. Parents are worried that children may click through to You Tube and see some video nasties.

Now, I know that there's no porn on You Tube. They screen it for such. But there is violence and language.

This is an education problem. Parents and children. Back to basics. Children need to be watched on-line. Guided and monitored. And it's parents who need to do this. Here, with my children, I'm close by to their on-line activities. I don't think that they'll actually go looking for xxx and violence in You Tube. I don't even think they'll click through to You Tube.

Still, Moorside's parents are right. Customers are always right.

Question: what to do about it?

I and Sue, and the children she's talked to love videos. The streaming and functionality of You Tube is great. (Sure we could use Google Video, or any one of a plethora of similar companies, but they're essentially the same problem.)

The only thing that would be acceptable is to duplicate the functionality here. Internal videos would, apparently, be acceptable.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 27/2/07; 4:50:35 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Video frightens parents



A Head's weblog
BBC: What does a head do all day?: "0820 Arrive in school, caretaker catches me in carpark to let me know about damage to grounds from unauthorised bonfire..."

It's a one off, pity it wasn't everyday, for ever. Yeah, I know it'd take too much time... Just saying.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 21/11/06; 10:16:52 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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A Head's weblog



Radio Sandaig October 2006
Another find in my aggregator: Radio Sandaig October 2006: "The new podcast is out: Radio Sandaig. A Halloween special, with a mix of our regular features and Halloween fun."

Another from 'the Scottish school blog.' Somebody, yesterday mentioned a radio station for their school. I thought I'd seen one in New York, as it is, it's much closer to home. Simple to do, at least all the support for podcasting is in-built here, just the mechanics of making a good sound file, is time consuming. Unless, you just don't care about the production values, and just go ahead and record something, anything.

Sandaig does a podcast once a month, and has been doing so since 2004.

And via Sandaig's site, I find an educatonal podcast directory! Apparently there's 315 different podcasters (from around the world—for a moment I thought they were all UK based schools and colleges). I'm not sure if each has their own feed, that you could subscribe to, or whether merely producing a sound file regularly is considered enough to be a podcaster.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 31/10/06; 10:17:51 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Radio Sandaig October 2006



English Heritage Kids Zone
This in from my aggregator from The Excellent Primary Resources Blog: English Heritage Kids Zone: " English Heritage's Kids Zone contains some fun online games for students including a game where you have to prepare your castle for a visit of Elizabeth I and several activities looking at the life of a monk.

The rest of the kids zone is slightly disappointing with the 'To print' and 'Visit' links merely taking you to more adult orientated"

Nice little review, worth passing on :-)

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 17/10/06; 11:29:05 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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English Heritage Kids Zone



Moodle training
I received this in the mail from an ICT ion the West Mids. She asked if it was a good idea. A brilliant idea I replied. Moodle is going to be the winner in the VLE space. Every user I've heard from thus far says good things. There's plenty of modules already available, as opposed to SERCOs Teknical, which has AFAIK very, very few and a likelihood of remaining very very few.

If you're interested, I'd hassle the geezer and I'm sure he'll think of running more if he's already over subscribed.
I would like to confirm the dates of the first "Mini Moodle" online course as being 6th November to the 8th December.

The theme is "Developments in e-learning" this will look specifically at the use of blogging, podcasting, MP3 and audio learning. This will take place over 5 weeks and will require between one and two hours commitment per week.

Delegates will be involved in using some of the collaborative and interactive tools in Moodle including chat, forums, quizzes and wikis.

The aims of this course are:
  • for delegates to gain experience of learning via a VLE (Moodle)
  • to develop an understanding of a range of contemporary e-learning tools
  • to share experiences and good practice in the use of e-learning to support teaching & learning
Further details and booking information can be found at the RSC WM website under events and training or by following using this link: http://www.rsc-westmidlands.ac.uk/?4220

Please share this information with any staff who might be interested in taking part.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 9/10/06; 12:11:07 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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The pretty things of Knightsbridge



Commenting on other blogs
Up in Aberdeen, Andy writes up some conclusions of his primary 7 (11-12 years) 'improving writing' blog project...

So what was learned from this project?

  • Blogging software is easy to set up and use.
  • Children really enjoy receiving comments on their work from strangers.
  • Time for blogging can easily be incorporated into the primary classroom.
  • Posts and comments can be easily moderated.
  • Blogging has the potential to motivate and encourage children’s writing.
Brilliant. Andy wrote a thank you to his commentors.
But I worry about the sustainability of all those comments, let alone getting them in the first place. What would be nice and I think much more sustainable, is getting other schools to post comments, rather than grown ups. Perhaps this could be turned around, such that the project isn't making and posting on a blog, but merely posting on other people's or class blogs.

This makes it much for teachers—they don't have to set up a blog. It makes it interesting for kids—they can reply or comment on any topic (probably), and join in a discussion (perhaps). And there's a lot of excitement in posting comments on other people's sites.

[Update:] Andy adds that "too many comments may be ineffectual as they lose their force, like a teacher who is always telling the kids how brilliant they are." And I agree that commenting on other's writing isn't as exciting as receiving comments on one's own writing. He points to a Scottish Comments For Kidz swap site, which is an excellent idea. It's the balance that's the best, posting and commenting, on one's own class blog and on others,' probably distant, blogs. The connections and relationships that could be made are phenomenal—as us grown ups know.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/9/06; 9:53:32 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Commenting on other blogs



Whales have sharp teeth
Grandview Elementary in Monsey, New York: Grandview News: "We are learning about whales in the library. We will read books, watch video clips, create graphic organizers to record what we are learning, and then we will write our own whale books."

This in via Weblogg-ed. As he says, "just think for a second about how differently these teachers consider the work they assign."

Put another way, with the world looking on, teachers and pupils will think differently. There's some pride going on here, in the work they do, and are seen to be doing.

Pity no comments though. It would have been nice for me to have said something. I'm sure parents may have wanted this too. I'd have like some permalinks too.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 13/9/06; 8:43:56 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Whales have sharp teeth



Laptop Campus: Bane or Boone?
There's bee some discussion in the US edublogoshpere re an article in the Wall Street Journal Saying No to School Laptops  which criticises the free handing out of laptops in some US schools. Essentially, parents and some teachers are saying that kids aren't using them properly. Aimless surfing, playing games etc.

Cool Cat Teacher says that aimless anything leads to failure. Structured use leads to higher grades.

I agree. Aimless pencil use leads to lower grades too. Same for paper. Give kid a piece of paper, likely they'll make a paper aeroplane, not write a symphony. 

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 8/9/06; 11:16:17 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Laptop Campus: Bane or Boone?



Too much
Brave teachers Che the Educatr

Maybe I'm going too far :-) That's the trouble with a good joke—you can take it too far.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/9/06; 2:13:27 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Too much



Writing for different audiences
Perfect! Podcasting freedom I've been wondering how to illustrate my Scheme of Work: Writing for Different Audiences. It's so dull and dry to look at, at the moment.

These Paris rip offs will be just the job. They give the right sort of feel for the revolution that happens when teachers and children can use the web to their advantage.

Hand crafted, immediate, non-computery.

And of course, revolutionary.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/9/06; 1:24:21 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Writing for different audiences



Revolution in the classroom
Maybe children wanna be information workers I'm changing history, but I hope it gets the message across.

The revolution is here and is coming, to you. Like it or not.

I love these powerful Paris 1968 posters.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/9/06; 12:23:48 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Revolution in the classroom



Televising the revolution
John up in Sandaig Primary, somewhere in Scotland, is surprised break pencils, teach computers, blog, blog blog by the apathy and disinterest some teachers have in blogging and using computers in teaching. Can't say I blame him. I meet so many Heads and teachers who've only just started to use a computer to buy from eBay, to check the news. Getting kids into the ICT is just too much hassle, it's nerves and too much effort that stops them. Just as Gordon's Ramblings says they leave the screen saver churning at the back of the room. All that power, fun and 21st century laying to waste.

My view is push what you can push. Yourself and yours. Look after your own. Do not stop. Get support off other geeky teachers.

Forget the luddites. They are the enemy:
  • Snap their pencils
  • Stomp on their chalk
  • Spill their ink bottles
The revolution will be live.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/9/06; 12:07:23 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Televising the revolution



YouTube for teachers?

Ideas and Thoughts has added a K12 (primary) group to youTube, as a way of collecting videos for primary teachers. Not a lot there at the moment, just 4 videos, but it's some where to look from time to time.

http://www.youtube.com/group/K12

It's a shame there's no RSS feed for this from youTube. I'd expect this to change soon.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/9/06; 10:39:31 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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YouTube for teachers?



Ideas for u
Primary Resources: First Week Activities: "There's been a couple of discussions on the Primary Resources Forums about activities for the first week back. If you're still trying to come up with something to do then there's some ideas..."

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 2/9/06; 4:22:47 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Ideas for u



One swallow = a Summer
Scottish 16 year old: My progress report: "it's all thanks to Mrs McIntosh and her fantastic blog idea." She moved from a grade three English to a grade one, by writing a paragraph of a story every night. This was 'marked' by a private tutor (Ewan's mum) and commented on by a small crowd. [Via Ewan McIntosh]

OK she could have done this on her own in a note book, taking it to her tutor once a week. But the blog motivated her, those visitors were important.

After the UK's first edu blog conference, I had a debate with a Dr David Davies, about whether blogs would 'change the kids' world.'
Here's two of my wrap up comments:
  • "But ultimately you are right, there isn't evidence. I've evidence on a bunch of other good things, but I haven't 'turned' a school dunce into a techo geek—which is my argument in a nutshell.
  • The other more engaging part of the New Republic, is when the computer answers back. When there's a reply. Another voice, from across the world, or across the street, or across the classroom. This is the bit where Weblogs score highly. Feedback. Comments. It's the part where/when the hairs stand on the back of your neck."
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 10/8/06; 9:41:11 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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One swallow



Blackboard Patents LMS in US
e-Literate: Blackboard Patents the LMS: "Blackboard basically owns the patent on any sort of groupware at all that is used for teaching purposes."

NOSE: IT in HE: Why Blackboard Is Truly Evil: "It plans to use the patent weapon Soprano-style to crush competition and ruthlessly stifle all innovation in the elearning space.

At the Desire2Learn User Conference in Guelph, Canada today, the visibly shaken CEO of D2L John Baker announced that the company had been slapped by a patent infringement lawsuit by Blackboard. Blackboard (with the recent "acquisition" of WebCT) now commands more than 75% of the market share for LMSs in US higher education. D2L was beginning to creep up past 6-7%
."

Moodle too is under threat through FUD primarily. Not us though, we're far too small (currently :-) and as we're more of a weblog for schools than a LMS or VLE... But who's to know what else is up the US Patent Office anus? Besides, in Europe software patents aren't (yet) allowed.

It's apprent that the US Patent Office is vulnerable to aggressive and bogus, all embracing predatory patents. It disregards prior art. A LMS was invented, long, long before the internet.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 2/8/06; 10:21:15 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Blackboard Patents LMS



Blogging better for learning
Silicon.com: Education 2.0 - more than just e-learning: "Lewisham College has developed an 'E-kitchen' which allows students - including the students at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant - to watch broadcasts of lessons and masterclasses. But the use of such technologies doesn't need to remain within the walls of the college.

Bournemouth's Foote predicts that within a couple of years internet users could - for a fee - be downloading snippets of what his catering students learn in the classroom."

Yip this is good, obviously. If pupils can get at videos of teachers in action, they could play and play again till they've 'got it.' But isn't it better when there's comments and discussion group conversations attached to these snippets. There pupils (and staff) can learn where others had difficulty, where there is more information on other sites, and even little mnemonics that have been useful to others.

It's the conversation of learning that helps me learn. I'm sure more people are like this. I speak from experience here. I've picked up programming languages from how tos and from discussion groups, by asking as well as merely being a lurker. It's by far the best way... I'm sure all good teachers know this.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 17/7/06; 11:10:48 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Blogging better for learning



Lesson plans
How do you use weblogs in class? I've been writing up some variations on the official key stage 1 and 2 ICT standard units. So far I'm particularly proud of the unit 4A: writing for different audiences for year 4. Essentially, all I did was to change the word processor tool to an edit in web browser tool, for weblog posts and editable web pages.

I've a lot more to come in KS1 & 2 and then will move on to KS3 and more.

Next will be unit 3E email. Which will encompass the email to weblog and change the communication to weblog feedback, including trackback :-) Explaining trackback to ordinary mortals is something of a stretch, explaining to primary school children should be much, much easier (I hope).
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 7/7/06; 2:04:54 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Lesson plans



What Can RSS Do For ME?
Terry Freedman, an education consultant I met at the UK's First Edu Blog Conference has been using RSS for a year. Here he explains to newbies what they are and how to use feeds in Firefox, amongst other things.
Firefox feed icon
What Can RSS Do For ME?: "I believe that RSS will change the way that you surf the internet in the near future. It is a quick way to get a lot of information from the internet in a simple, easy to read format."

Here, in our sites, which were the technological launch pad for RSS, are inbuilt RSS aggregators, in the 'River of News' stylee. Each of our sites have departments which have their own feeds as do the discussion groups. Can't wait till all schools have a similar service and we can subscribe to a feed of cricket news from all schools :-) Just an example.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 5/7/06; 1:23:48 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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What Can RSS Do For ME?



Streaming a party?
SpacialAudio: Professional internet broadcasting solutions: "SimpleCast is perfect for broadcasting - Sporting events - Concerts and Live shows - Live DJ/Night Club appearances - Private Parties - or audio from any music system that does not support internet streaming."

You know how many listeners are connected at any given time, too. Perfect for one of my schools. They want to stream their radio shows out to the world, cheaply, and easily.

And, for those who need to record interviews over Skype, here's 'apparently' the definitive how to.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 21/6/06; 7:59:27 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Streaming a party?



Personal Learning Environments
Graham Attwell: Personal Learning Environments: "Position Paper on Personal Learning Environments for next weeks PLE meeting in Manchester..."

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 7/6/06; 8:40:05 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Personal Learning Environments



Techo cherry
The great and very good Dr David Davies (the very first moblogger) joins a debate on my revolution idea. He's a governor at his kids' secondary school, where they're one of the 22 primaries, 5 secondaries and 3 colleges (out of 30,000) that are trying BECTA's Test Bed Project.

We argue that there are no good stats on technical literacy, confidence nor geekiness of teachers. Though, after speaking to several hundred schools thus far, I think my position that school teachers and certainly primary school teachers are chalky, not mousy is far more accurate.
cherry.jpg
My position remains, that a school blog (not a teaching blog) is a great way to engage, enthuse and motivate: staff, parents and kids. Again, mainly in primaries where there are more technical virgins than anywhere else. Once the cherry is popped and the love flowing we have wonder and possible addiction that may carry through the other software, which is mainly learnerly and duller or SISy and data collective.

Nothing else will draw in a reluctant community than the narrow gossip on a good school blog.

It's that old chestnut, markets are conversations. (I hear that learning too is conversation. But teaching/learning isn't my area of expertise.)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 5/6/06; 1:23:58 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Techo cherry