Apr
29
Learning topology and Mirandanet
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Another inspiring meeting of the Mirandanet Inspirationalists at the IoE today.
We’re working towards a set of journal articles, including one collaborative paper, for next February, so this was largely a progress meeting. It was good to meet up with folk, and particularly to see Dale Jones again, one of the HUGToB team.
Apr
27
Coming of Age – an introduction to the new world wide web
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Last December, Terry Freedman (who’s on the BCS e-learning working party with me) asked me to write an article on what we’ve been doing with Elgg at St Ives for a book he was putting together on all things Web 2.0. Well the book and the article are finally out in electronic form, and ready for anyone interested to download.
Apr
26
Gliffy
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Fellow Mirandanet Fellow Wilma Clark posted about Gliffy a couple of months back. I received my invitation to the beta programme yesterday, just in time for the next Mirandanet session on visual communication.
Gliffy is a flash powered, browser based application for authoring diagrams such as flowcharts – it’s not hugely powerful at the moment, but there’s support for saving, printing and export, and more importantly there’s also a collaboration tool built in, so groups of people (eg pupils…) can work together on a shared diagram, albeit asynchronously.
Apr
22
Seb Bacon and Teresa Dillon have written an interesting paper on “The potential of open source approaches for education” for Futurelab’s new Opening Education series. Their brief is not so much about using open source software in education, as taking some of the ideas behind open source development and seeing how they would support wider educational agendas, an area which I’ve long been interested in, as I think there are clear parallels between open-source development and social constructivist/constructionist pedagogies. Similarly, the FLOSS model of a “bottom-up organisation, where distributed self-motivated individuals creatively collaborate and work together on shared-problems” seems one way of effecting personalised learning in a productive way which continues to recognise a social dimension.
Apr
19
Pupils' home use of computers
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There’s an important and interesting piece of research by Valentine, Marsh and Pattie over on the DfES site into home use of ICT for educational purposes, that seems relevant to those using Moodle or other VLEs to support home-school links, as well as to the UK learning platform rollout.
They studied home use of about 1200 pupils across 12 primary and secondary schools during the summer term 2004, so the sample size isn’t vast and things have perhaps moved on a bit since then, but some of their observations are still quite illuminating.
Apr
14
The Royal Maundy
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Along with Clare’s parents, we were fortunate enough to get tickets for yesterday’s Royal Maundy service in Guildford Cathedral.
Apr
14
Florence
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Clare and I are now back from our short break in Florence. We had a wonderful time, and whilst we did far too much to be able to describe this as a relaxing holiday, it was certainly a refreshing one. As we look back on our all too brief stay in the city, it’s hard to believe that we’ve seen so many beautiful things over the last few days. There was an element of cultural overload at one or two points perhaps, and it was far too easy to get blasé about yet another Fra Angelico fresco – much like eating a whole box of chocolates, every day. Rather than giving a ‘what we did on our holidays’ type post, just a few of the highlights and travellers tips. Read more
Apr
8
Primary VLEs
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As part of the NAACE transformed education project, Mike Partridge and I have started to put together a spec. for a CPD toolkit on Learning Platforms in primary (style) education.
This, and Ian Usher’s recent post has had me thinking about the differences between primary VLEs and secondary (or indeed FE/HE) ones, and more importantly between the ways they might be used. Read more
Apr
3
Top 10 Moodle Myths
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Back in October, as part of the HUGToB campaign, Josie Fraser compiled a list of the ‘Top 10 Moodle Myths‘. I’ve had a go at putting together some responses, as my first contribution to the Moodle docs project.
Apr
3
Whilst up in London on Friday last, I went to hear the Philharmonia at Cadogan Hall. This was the first time I’d been to this new concert hall, converted from a church, and I was impressed by how well the conversion had been done. They’ve managed to retain much of the Arts & Crafts features of the place; nod in the direction of the building’s former use, by for example, retaining pews in the gallery, and the bar; and produce one of the most comfortable concert halls in town, with a great acoustic to boot. Read more
Recently played- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto No. 5 in A, K. 219: III. Rondeau. Tempo di Menuetto
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto No. 5 in A, K. 219: II. Adagio
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto No. 5 in A, K. 219: I. Allegro aperto - Adagio - Allegro aperto
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat, K. 207: III. Presto
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat, K. 207: II. Adagio
- News from elsewhere
- But Where Are The Kids? Terry Freedman
- FITS For The Purpose Terry Freedman
- Guiding the E-Researcher drupal
- Also on the web: 03/10/2010 (p.m.) Terry Freedman
- Why do people ask questions at public events? Tyler Cowen
- Conceptual fraction test (inverting standards and understandings) Jason Dyer
- Open Source, Why or Why Not? ckeller
- General Impressions of ICT in Singapore Terry Freedman
- Multiple equilibria Potemkin village economic stimulus of the day Tyler Cowen
- Building a Better Teacher by Design (author unknown)
