Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

My iPhone arrived on Friday and I’ve been playing with it all weekend. Having previously not bought into upgrading my phone every few months this was a big physiological step for me. Sure I thought I wanted lightweight, anywhere, anytime mobility but viewed it as rather a luxury than a necessity. I thought, I’d get [...]

Yesterday was certainly an interesting day, and illustrates how a viral story can become disruptive to one’s work pattern. The Guardian story (see last blog entry) certainly caught my and others’ attention. Watching the story spread was much like any other until I got a tweet at around mid-day from Teacher’s TV News “Will you [...]

As the Rose review of the Primary Curriculum becomes imminent, the media, as usual tries to steal a march by emphasis on what it regards as sensationalist. On this morning’s Today programme it was reported that teaching how to use Twitter and Wikipedia was replacing the Victorians and the Second World War in the primary [...]

I’ve been watching The Mobile Learning Institution’s latest film series “A 21st Century Education” which are being added to over the next few months. Their concept is to provide some short films around school reform, and to “nudge the conversation about how to make change in education happen”. The first five films include both practical [...]

Last week Becta published its Harnessing Technology for Next Generation Learning: Children, schools and families implementation plan 2009-2012. This is the first tangible output from the Implementation Board I sit on representing Naace, the professional association. Among the key challenges it outlines on pages 9 and 10, is the one of improved teaching. Here it [...]

South by Southwest is presently taking place in Austin, Texas, and the top prize has been awarded to Six to Start a small British company who where commissioned by Penguin to take classic stories and retell them in a way that you could only be done by using technology. I’ve blogged on one of them [...]

Last night I tuned in and was following and contributing tweets simultaneously along with others in the Good Radio Club. The idea is an experiment in ’social listening’. Using Twitter a group of radio listeners listen to a broadcast and tweet in real time using a hashtag to communicate with each other. Last night’s programme [...]

The Backchannel is becoming increasing important and although a feature of many technology conferences, few that I have attended in the last few years have used or developed it effectively. In this post a year ago, I remember speculating on why this might be, and the work that it entailed. But that was BT (Before [...]

Doing two conferences can be hard work either as part organiser or delegate, so this week I have refined my views on the development of ‘conference out-reach’ from the delegate’s point of view. The opportunity to dip into conferences, via Twitter, Ustream and other media services appeals somewhat if only to select from the information [...]