Woo hoo! I have now finished preparing my presentation, "20 must-have tools in 45 minutes". Except that it's now 31 tools in 60 minutes, with one "tool" that I'll mention in passing, plus a further 7 tools if there is time to go into them.
Like I said before (see link above), my presentation is for leaders and managers or would-be leaders and managers of educational ICT.
Hope to see you there.
The title comprises the theme I’ll be following in my seminar at the BETT show. It’s called “20 must-have tools in 45 minutes”, and is firmly targetted at leaders and managers of ICT or educational technology – or people who aspire to such a position. What that means in practice is that I’ve followed these principles:
I recently wrote about Collaborate for Change. Here’s a very brief video about it, and an interview with Lord Jim Knight, the Schools Minister in the previous government in Britain, and Dave Smith, organiser-in-chief. The interviewer in each case is Russell Prue, of Anderton Tiger Radio.
It’s coming up to that time of year, when companies unveil their new ed tech goodies, old friends and colleagues meet up, people give and attend talks and demonstrations, and we all go away either inspired or cynical, and completely shattered, in equal measure. Yes, it’s the BETT show, a 4 day conference-stroke-exhibition-stroke-meet-fest which attracts people from all over the world. This year it starts on the 12th January, ie next week, and I thought it might be useful to make my own suggestions about what you might like to see. These suggestions are all based on my knowledge of the people involved or past personal experience, so I don’t pretend to cover all possibilities: check out the BETT website for the full programme, and register for free in advance. Today, I’m looking at Day 1, Wednesday 12th January.
Here’s an interesting conundrum: why is it that, given the trend towards distributed leadership and collaborative change, a lot of conferences targetted at leaders seem to consist of a succession of people lecturing to the audience?
I’d just like to wish readers of this blog and the Computers in Classrooms newsletter a happy and peaceful break over the next couple of weeks.
This is not (hopefully) the last post this side of the new year, but I wanted to make sure I caught people before they all disappeared! I still intend to write for this blog, as well as Writers’ Know-how and Technology & Learning. In fact, the weather is such (worst winter since 1962 apparently) that I may have no other choice: it’s hard to get out and do shopping and stuff in this weather. (I’m heartbroken).
But my most pressing piece of writing right now is my e-Christmas cards!
Here’s a thought. I like to think of myself as a glass half full type of person. So why all the doom and gloom about the apparent lack of Governmental support, in the UK, for technology in the classroom?
A short while ago I expressed the view that paper.li, the Twitter-based newspaper, was no longer for me. I don’t like the lack of control over what is published, and it started to look a lot like spam. I experimented with a couple of other similar services, and they did nothing much for me.
But Microsoft's Montage looks promising. Although you still don’t have control over what appears in particular streams, you do have a say in what types of stream are featured, and (to an extent), the layout.
I’ve been using the http://paper.li/ service for several months, but a few days ago I decided to cancel it. What is it, and why did I cancel?
In case you haven’t heard of it, or just to remind you if you have, The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book contains:
What a wonderful connected world we live in! Thus it was that a group of us were able to listen to, and chat with, Chris Smith about, appropriately enough, learning networks.
(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved