Phone friend in exams

Now you will either get outraged at this or says its part of an evolution in assesment. Thanks to Elizabeth Hartnell Young for the link
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/phone-a-friend-in-exams/2008/08/19/1218911717490.html

read the article and reflect on it !! interesting piece of work .  Thanks Elizabeth !

In the company of giants but ever so modest ones !!

a Post written 24 hours ago but only had chance to post a day later


The ninth teachmeet

has been and gone and what a night too many great educator stand ups (because that's what it is !) to comment on now but I will over the coming weeks .


Reflecting while on my surprise road trip back to work . A journey consisting of the last train from Glasgow connecting with Edinburgh Sleeper arriving in in Crewe at 5.15 (in seat class rather than sleeper). The final leg of this morning travels 5.45 to Birmingham International(arrive 7.15) from Crewe .

Reflection speakers were stunning as ever but the conversation on table the back channel stuff the twitter the flash meeting and the texting in questions was just stunning .

John Dabro powerful video presentation
Chance conversation with Stephen Heppell and the first ever teachmeet presentation by John Davitt http://newtools.org/
.Ewan Mcintoshs departure from the teachmeet halfway through (but surely not forever). Forgets the names but just thing about collective creativity of the learners that people show cased .

I felt the whole room was a company of giants but ever so modest ones!!

Teachmeet 10 in the borders looking for a sponsor anybody got any spare cash to sponsor what Ollie Bray described previously as best staff development ever.

Prestonlodge website made of multiple blogs

the idea of using mutiple blogs instead of static website http://prestonlodge.net/ great presentation !!

Andy Brown gave me a glow

Andy Brown gave me great demo of glow this morning but this evening he gigged at teachmeet awesome blog of hs own  !!!!http://www.whereisab.co.uk/blog/

geography ghost ship mystery

Great url to do with teaching using multimedia http://www.geographyalltheway.com/ib_geography/ib_population/ghost_ship/ghost_ship.htm

teachmeet08

wont blog this till friday but at teachmeet 08 at scottish learning festival  just google teachmeet 08 not just awesome but completely humbling for example John Dabro work with bsed learners a becta project (nothing to do with me but great )

Open source Tosh go into the market place with a high spec low cost UMPC

Now I ihnted ad showed photo's of this a while but now the new is out .

XP and Ubuntu a the latter a first for Tosh

Powered by the 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU,
web cam
3 usb ports
ethernet
neat sleep and charge feature for USB devices
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/17730/18754/toshiba-nb100-netbook-uk.phtml

120gb kinetic hard drive and a 3 hours 47 minutes battery life .

This read like a compact high spec laptop not just a low cost machine for travelling occasional use !!!

not a bad machine

What's elephant in the room stopping uptake of m learning.

What's elephant in the room stopping uptake of m learning.

Dave whyley assesment

Geoff need to deconstuct teaching

Elizabeth Hartnell Young teacher attitude

Mike Short making it easier and valid used example of iPhone

Sent from my iPod
My blog http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com

best quote from molenet

Chris ex learner at of Wandsworth clc Gave best quote of Molenet dissemination event about lifewise project
http://www.wandsworthclc.org/gunandknife/

you just cant give people mobiles you've got to have people behind them !! quote from learners at Lifewise project.

Molenet Dissemination conference

At the event today in London disseminating work from the MoLeNET projects.

 http://www.molenet.org.uk/events/facetofaceeven/conf/index.aspx

looking forward to seeing the projects placed centre stage.

Future school desk in the news

Well done to the Durham University Cetl for getting there work on innovative design and spaces for learning in the news including this great story that made newsround !!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7620000/newsid_7621200/7621237.stm

OLPC the old and the new

The world having gone mad for umpc after the asus crashed the consumer market almost a year ago ? TheOLPC or as it was trailled wrongly $100 laptop has gone a bit quiet. I have managed to borrow one from Seb who sourced one via the US under the give one get one programme . I am looking at it over next few days and will give my impressions.



two together rare sight



one at altc on its own.

the whole concept is one to get your head round . I am interested in the mesh capability. I will report soon.

Interesting work based learning project

Interesting project http://surfwblway.blogspot.com/ if your interested in work based learning Main project website can be found at http://www.staffs.ac.uk/COSE/WBLWAY/

Large scale study of South African Students

 Laura czerniewicz presented interesting paper on a large scale study with interesting this to say about how students use technology especially mobile technology in South African Universities .

worth a look
https://alt.conference-services.net/reports/template/onetextabstract.xml?xsl=template/onetextabstract.xsl&conferenceID=1272&abstractID=229636

photo's of tosh umpc

Ok this isnt probably final but here are some poor photos of this device launched soon !!



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BBC you and yours catches up with Andy !!

You and yours is talking of using wool insulation . Well mates our under floor insulation in our new extension is wool .


http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/

Tosh to enter the lower cost UMPC area ?

Technology innovator Toshiba have been notably absent from the current rush of umpc,ulcpc the asus,elonex,rm to name a few. Well my spies tell me its coming.
its rumoured to have

• robust build I expect large storage remember they made the kinetic hard drives for Ipod 80- 120 gb has been talked of.
• USB ports 3
  
• battery life longer than existing offers
  
• SD card and maybe memory stick
• web cam
  
• Great display
• Choice of operating system linux ? or Windows ?
• a price point just over £200 mark

The thought is that its a fully functioning rich media laptop not the cut down version. Interesting entry to the market. Its all getting interesting !

ALTC this week brdging digtal divide

ALTC conference this week and reading the conference materials looks like a good one .

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2008/


Crowdvine http://www.crowdvine.com/home is being used and already it has helped inform me of whoses attending and sessions. Going to twitter using my andyb tag and blog going to be busy week .

Using phones in education

Big round of applause for Facebook friend Elizabeth Hartnell Young Becta research grant funded work on mobile phone use in secondary education .

The daily mail picked up on http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1052279/Children-allowed-use-mobiles-class-help-learn-study-says.html

Read the actual work at http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=15482

picasa upgrade contains facial recognition software

How amazing is this latest version of picasa scans your photos for faces and recognises faces and tags them automatically.

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Picasa_Upgrade_Gives_Photo_Sharing_a_Facelift

Chrome polishes up nicely ?

Hi all

you cant of missed the launch of Google foray into the browser market place .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7593106.stm

Now Ive only used it for an hour it is BETA !! But it seems interesting nice clean interface. It hasn't got many plug ins yet but they wont be far behind. The rumours that it isn't a forerunner to an operating system have been rubbished by many. 

But to be honest with Google apps etc and my longed mentioned strapline "The answer is the browser "and the fact many even offline applications will work through the browser watch this space . Read the storyboard at 

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/#

Digital Communications Knowledge Transfer Network host a framework 7 an introduction event

Digital Communications Knowledge Transfer Network http://www.dcktn.org.uk/are promoting a introduction to Framework 7 on September 11th in London details in pdf can be fund here

If you don't know about framework 7 are are serious about developing large ICT projects well worth attending.