Look, I don’t wish to overstate the case, but yesterday I really understood, on a deep level, where Albert King was coming from when he wrote that great blues line, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” Because yesterday was the day that my beloved Kodak Zi8 pocket camcorder suddenly died. Admittedly, that was the only bad thing that has happened for a while, not everything like the lyric I just quoted suggests, but even so….
Digital literacy and Computer Science
Computer studies and its main component, programming, could be an exciting new addition to the curriculum. However, we must not repeat the mistakes of the 1980s, when the subject was, at least in my experience and in my opinion, insular, highly technical, and rightly perceived by some (especially girls) as “geeky”.Education Technology and ICT at BETT: Big changes for 2013
Er, excuse me. Um, I just wondered…, er could I just squeeze past…, oops, sorry…
How many times have you found yourself stuck behind a couple of people walking at such a snail-like pace that one suspects they started out the day before? That’s just one of the problems experienced at BETT at Olympia: so much squeezed into a space which has long been too small, resulting in aisles that are far too narrow for the volume of traffic and a stand numbering systems which seems to owe more to random number generation than logic. Well, hopefully this is all now a thing of the past, a soon-to-be distant memory of a venue we can reminisce about but not miss.
New collaborative learning project
ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education, is collaborating with NASA to select 25 middle and high school teachers who are creative, inspired, and share an enthusiasm for space. These teachers will work collaboratively to create learning and educational artifacts that teachers or students can use to gain a deeper understanding of the Earth's magnetosphere. Each group of teachers will choose projects to create and design. Final projects may be selected for publication on the NASA website and/or featured at the ISTE 2012 annual conference and exposition. But you’ll have to act fast because the deadline is today, 15th January 2012.
Read MoreEducational Technology: Unofficial BETT Guide, a reminder
Developments in Education Technology: Reflections on the first day of BETT
For me, the day can best be characterised as one of mixed feelings and divided loyalties. To be sure, there was all the excitement and adrelain-inducing "buzz" for which BETT is noted, and why it ought to be prescribed on the National Health Service as a cure for "the blues", but the experience was not one of unadulterated pleasure.
Read MoreDevelopments in Eduucation Technology: Reflections on the first day of BETT
For me, the day can best be characterised as one of mixed feelings and divided loyalties. To be sure, there was all the excitement and adrelain-inducing "buzz" for which BETT is noted, and why it ought to be prescribed on the National Health Service as a cure for "the blues", but the experience was not one of unadulterated pleasure.
Read MoreUnofficial BETT-Related publications now available
17 Ways to get the best out of BETT
BETT and Computers in Classrooms
Bits and pieces of news
I am hoping (fingers crossed) that I can complete the latest issue of Computers in Classrooms today. I’m in one of those situations where you can’t do X until you’ve done Y and Z. Sorry if this is all meaningless, but here’s the key:
News update: BETT, Collabor8 4 Change and Computers in Classrooms Newsletter
I’m currently working on the next edition of Computers in Classrooms. With any luck I’ll get that out some time today. It will contain, amongst other things:
- More details of the Collabor8 4 Change event. There are now 114 people attending, 62 round table discussions to choose from, and only 36 tickets left. Ticket availability is open only until Saturday 5pm GMT.
- Access to an extensive unofficial guide to BETT, which will be useful for other conferences as well.
- Access to a review of the trends seen at last year’s BETT, and the reflections of a number of well-respected people in the educational ICT community in the UK.
All this, and it’s free to subscribe! Wow!
Update on Collabor8 4 Change
Here is a quick news flash:
Read Moree-Safety and cyberbullying news
What’s happening in the world of e-safety, especially in the UK? Here are some interesting items from the November 2010 issue of Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT. The items include:
- Research into types of bullying;
- Research into technology and behaviour;
- The Beat Bullying website; and
- Safer Internet Day and a competition from Childnet.
Even MORE reasons to attend Collabor8 4 Change!
Collabor8 4 Change is one of the fringe events at the forthcoming BETT show, and comprises up to around 50 round table discussions, each lasting 20 minutes. You can attend up to 5 of these over the three hours of this stupendous event. In a daily series of posts this week I hope to highlight some of the table discussions that are planned.
Here are the third five on my list
BETT Radio Broadcast today!
Ed tech evangelist Russell Prue (@russellprue) will be broadcasting live today about next week’s BETT show. Should be good, as it features a wide range of people from the ICT world. Russell very kindly invited me to take part too. We’ll be chatting about how to get the best out of BETT, and I hope to follow this up shortly with an even longer list of suggestions, which I will send out to subscribers to Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for educational ICT professionals! Anyway, here’s the information from the man himself:
Another 5 compelling reasons to attend Collabor8 4 Change
Collabor8 4 Change is one of the fringe events at the forthcoming BETT show, and comprises up to around 50 round table discussions, each lasting 20 minutes. You can attend up to 5 of these over the three hours of this stupendous event. In a daily series of posts this week I hope to highlight some of the table discussions that are planned.
5 Compelling reasons to attend Collabor8 4 Change
Collabor8 4 Change is one of the fringe events at the forthcoming BETT show, and comprises up to around 50 round table discussions, each lasting 20 minutes. You can attend up to 5 of these over the three hours of this stupendous event. In a daily series of posts this week I hope to highlight some of the table discussions that are planned.
Here are the first five on my list:
Blog posts mentioned recently
Here are three blog posts I mentioned in a recent article:
Read MoreWhy you don’t have to miss the ICT in Education articles even if you’re too busy to read them
If you’re too busy to read the articles on the ICT in Education website, you can listen to them instead.
Thanks to a neat little widget from Odiogo, each article has a “Listen Now” button at the top of it. Click that, and you will be able to listen to the article read out to you. Warning: there’s a bit of delay between my posting an article and the Listen Now button working, so if you try it straight away and it doesn’t work, try again a few minutes later.