Prize draw: 4 Xobni licenses to be won

Tomorrow, Wednesday 30th March, at 9 pm British Summer Time, I’ll be running a prize draw for subscribers to Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for educational technology professionals. I will be picking 4 names out of the virtual hat, and those people will receive (if they want it), a free licence for the premium version of Xobni, which is an email manager which works with your email client, which in my case is Outlook.

I wrote about the application in an article called, appropriately enough, Xobni. The company has very kindly made these licences available for this prize draw. All you have to do to be eligible is subscribe to the newsletter!

An Open Source Schools conference

In “austerity Britain” schools are faced with a rather large challenge: how do they continue to provide a good ICT service, for teachers, administrators and, above all, pupils? One possible solution is open source software, and whilst I do not subscribe to the Shangri La-like vision of some of its exponents, I do think it’s an option that demands to be explored and considered carefully.
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Come back, computer lab, all is forgiven

Why is it that all innovators seem to have an “either-or” mentality, an all-or-nothing approach? “Out with the old, in with the new!” seems to be their call to action, yet sometimes – I would say often – the new is not as good as the old. At least, not so much better that the old should be dispensed with altogether.

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In ICT, the past is not what it was

From 1997 there was an almost palpable – some would say relentless – commitment to educational technology in the UK. Although not always strategic, it was both consistent and persistent. It was a qualitative as well as quantitative break with the past. Yet, whilst I would never disparage these efforts, I don’t believe they were necessarily as wonderful as people remember them to be.
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The Transparency Initiative

I recently attended a Westminster eForum seminar about PR and journalism, where I met Dr Martin Moore, of the Media Standards Trust. In his 4 minute talk, Martin mentioned the Trust’s involvement in something called The Transparency Initiative. The Trust has teamed up with the Web Science Research Initiative for this grant-funded work. I caught up with Martin a few days ago and we discussed it. Here’s the situation which, as either a citizen, a teacher or a blogger you will understand only too well. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between commercial and, for want of a better word, factual, content in the news.
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Finding stuff on the ICT in Education website

previewOne of the main criticisms levelled at the original ICT in Education website was that it was hard to find things. Come to think of it, that was the only criticism for a long time, before the site became more and more unwieldy through my attempts to make articles easier to locate. I’m trying to not repeat the mistakes on this  website, so every so often I take another long, hard look at it and ask: how might searching/finding be made even easier? And so it was that over the weekend I did some revamping and moving things about, and this article describes the results.

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The power of blogs and the perils of email

I originally wrote this article on 13th April 2009. Although the story that inspired it is no longer news (although the problem it relates to, about losing data, hasn’t gone away), I think that the interplay and rivalry between “mainstream media” and blogging is still interesting. This has been brought into sharp focus by the withdrawing from blogging by two political bloggers.I think when investigative journalism is done well, such as Watergate, the Expenses Scandal, it is second to none. But increasingly I find myself frustrated by “flimsy” reporting in the press.

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The Blank Paper

When I read Terry’s article ’25 Ways to make yourself unpopular – Be Flexible’ I have to admit to feeling embarrassed! I was that person who had been invited to contribute an article and I was that person who asked lots of ‘what about...’ questions!

I have reflected on why that was the case and this is my defence!

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Technology and society

For an interesting discussion with your students on the effects of technology on society, consider the impending solar flares.

As the article states:

The so-called "X-flare" could also cause radio signals to jam, satnavs to fail and electrical power grids to falter. Electromagnetic storms are already reported to have stopped shortwave radio communications in southern China.

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Found on the web: 02/17/2011 (a.m.)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Managing the Leading

Julia Skinner disagrees with Terry's analysis of people who manage but don't lead.

As consumers ( in the real world) when things go wrong we call for the Manager. That role holds power. Power to sort out difficulties. Power to have answers to customers questions and queries. In retail particularly it is the aim of those career minded youths to work their way up to management and the exulted places they are considered to be.

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Three downsides of the idea of the guide on the side

So much is written these days about the role of the teacher being to “facilitate”, to be the “guide on the side”. This is justified on many grounds, not least that of the children knowing more than their teachers about educational technology. They are, after all, “digital natives”, or so we are told. It seems to me that we have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
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