dougbelshaw.com/blog

Welcome back!
Feel free to suggest topics for me to write about using the Suggestions? tab to the right or use Formspring to ask me random stuff. Check Doug's FAQ first!

(click to play video)

When Hannah was pregnant with Ben, we used to refer to him as ‘the bean’. For some reason, we now call him ‘the sausage’. It’s not that we’re especially fond of breakfast items, it kind of just… happened. Hence, now he can roll over from back to front and front to back, it’s a ‘sausage roll’…

(you’ll need Quicktime – or an alternative – installed to watch the video) (more…)

Posted: June 30th, 2007
Categories: Everything Else
Tags: Benjamin Belshaw, rolling, video
Comments: View Comments.

I’ve been allowed to stay at home the past couple of days due to the flooding in South Yorkshire. Bentley, in north Doncaster has flooded after the River Don burst its banks. People affected have been taking refuge in our school’s Sports Hall. All staff will be required to be in school, but the only students will be Year 11s, in for the morning for their Leavers Day. So there’ll be a lot of staff with tired thumbs tomorrow evening from all that twiddling… (more…)

Posted: June 28th, 2007
Categories: Everything Else
Tags: flooding, rivers, school, South Yorkshire
Comments: View Comments.

If your school has been forward-thinking enough and sensible to go with Macs for at least of its provision, you may have blown the budget on hardware. Never fear, however, as a fantastic site by the name of The Free Mac Classroom can point you towards some free and some Open Source software which should satisfy.

There’s a number of programs that I use fairly regularly on there for which I can vouch, including (in no particular order):

• NeoOffice (an OS X port of OpenOffice)
• Image Well (a lightweight and easy-to-use image editor)
• NVU (web page editor)
• FreeMind (mind-mapping software)
• GIMPshop (a Photoshop replacement)
• Audacity (sound editor)
• VLC (multi-purpose, flexible media player)

If you use a Mac, even at home rather than at school, I strongly suggest you check it out!

Posted: June 27th, 2007
Categories: Education
Tags:
Comments: View Comments.

The potentially revolutionary Google Docs, which I’ve been using with my Coursework 2.0 students with varying degrees of success, has just had an update. It makes organizing documents a whole lot easier and clearer and will be a boon to educators. (via TechCrunch)

Posted: June 27th, 2007
Categories: Education
Tags:
Comments: View Comments.

I love my iPod. I love my Macbook. I will probably purchase an iPhone. But at the moment, I’ve got a Nokia N95, an amazing bit of kit. With all of the hype surrounding the iPhone, I can’t help but think that people aren’t comparing the specs of these two phones. So here’s a brief overview: (more…)

Posted: June 26th, 2007
Categories: Technology
Tags: comparison, iPhone, Nokia N95, overview, review, specs
Comments: View Comments.

I was delighted to read that, come late 2007, OpenSUSE – the completely Open-Source project from Novell – is to have an add-on ‘EDU-CD’. This CD will have features similar to the excellent Edubuntu, a derivative of the amazingly successful Linux distribution Ubuntu. In addition, it will have features suggested by the wider community.

A couple of years ago I had some (limited) experience of using Linux in the classroom. I have to say that I think it’s a great solution which schools should be embracing more readily. It can be customised to very specific circumstances and, with the majority of the software being free, constitutes a very cost-effective way of getting computers into institutions with tight budgets.

(via Slashdot)

Posted: June 26th, 2007
Categories: Education
Tags:
Comments: View Comments.

BBC News reports on an interesting study showing class divides on two of the most popular social networking sites. Teenagers on Facebook are more likely to go to university than their MySpace counterparts. This is probably due to the origin of the sites: Facebook was originally solely for university students, whereas MySpace has grown up around music. I’m on Facebook and it’s pretty much solely those who I know who have been to university who are on there…

Posted: June 25th, 2007
Categories: Education
Tags:
Comments: View Comments.

Powerpoint is, or at least can be, a wonderful tool. I use it all the time in my teaching. However, it seems to bring out the worst in people. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have physically cringed when those-who-should-know-better have thrown up a slide and then proceeded to just read from the screen. I can read, thank you very much. Erm, yeah… I learned to read when I was about 3, thanks… (more…)

Posted: June 25th, 2007
Categories: Everything Else
Tags: cartoon, funny, humour, Powerpoint
Comments: View Comments.

Read/Write Web has a useful article on web apps for students. If you’re a student yourself and want to use (mostly free) web applications to help your studies, this is likely to be a useful resource. I’d also recommend educators have a quick scan through it to make sure nothing potentially useful has slipped under your radar.

Posted: June 24th, 2007
Categories: Education
Tags:
Comments: View Comments.

Further to my post How NOT to upgrade your Xbox, I’m pleased to say I’ve got it working again. It’s taken a long time, a great deal of trial-and-error, and some head-scratching. To save at least one other person some hassle, here’s my ‘journey’ from a useless Xbox to one that runs Xbox Media Center, etc.

(more…)

Posted: June 20th, 2007
Categories: Technology
Tags: AppleTV, EEPROM, Evox, Linux, media centre, modchip, T3CH, XBMC, Xbox, xTV
Comments: View Comments.