This morning I woke up to find an interesting juxtaposition of stories relating to the Apple iPad. Notwithstanding rumours of a 7-inch iPad in the works (hastily dismissed by John Gruber) the following couple of stories would make it seem like now is the time to get yourself an iPad:

• VLC for iPad Available
• Google Bringing Document Editing to Android, iPad

What does this mean in practice? The ability to play almost any kind of media on the iPad, along with the long-awaited (potentially ‘killer app’) fully-fledged Google Docs.

Awesome.

But wait! What about the iPad naysayers? Those who say that it’s not neutral and that it’s only good for two things? My reply: no technology is neutral, nor is the language we use to describe things. There is no purely objective view/standpoint from which to judge anything. And as for the iPad only being good for two things? See above.

A more salient point might be that this is v1 of the iPad. Although it marks almost a paradigm shift in computing, think of the original iPhone in comparison with what came after. Getting an iPad now, only for v2 with a ‘retina display’ and a front-facing camera to be launched after Christmas would be frustrating to say the least…

1. Snow

There’s been snow on the ground here in Northumberland since before my birthday (December 22nd). It’s several inches deep now and it’s snowing more as I type this. Suffice to say, the whole world around here has ground to a halt. BBC News have a wonderful video of a helicopter ride over Yorkshire (where I used to live) and Northumberland. Unfortunately I can’t embed it, so you’ll have to click through:

2. Everything I have

Via swissmiss (a great design-focused blog to subscribe to, if you don’t already) comes one man’s visual record of everything he has:

It reminds me of the 100 things page Leo Babauta (he of Zen Habits fame) keeps updated on his other blog, mnmlist.com. He took up Dave Bruno’s challengeto limit himself to 100 personal items. Noble.

3.  Man sleeps in suburban igloo.

CC BY Steven Roberge (not the actual igloo!)

The aforementioned snow situation in England at the moment necessitates people to actually talk to their neighbours. Amazing, but true. David Munt, 28, from Hertfordshire went one step further and played in the snow with some of the children on his street without accusations of being a paedophile. Also amazing (given the current climate).

They built an igloo together and he promised he would sleep in it. He did. The world marvelled. (via Telegraph.co.uk)

First of all, it’s my fundamental belief that schools should be learning communities. And not just in a trite sense, but in a real sense. Within a community one usually knows or at least knows of pretty much everyone. That’s (just) possible in a school of around 1,000; it’s certainly not possible in a school of 2,000! I would say that an 11-16 school with around 150 students per year (750 in total) would be ideal.

Second, in my experience, bureaucracy increases almost exponentially with the size of the organization. When you get up to 2,000 students there need to be between 100 and 150 members of teaching staff, plus learning support assistants, plus administrative staff, etc. I would submit that this can sometimes lead to the focus being upon data and ‘outputs’ rather than actual learning experiences for each individual student.

Finally, schools need to be part of and feed back into the local community. They should not dominate the local community as monolithic schools tend to do. Schools should reflect the needs and aspirations of society whilst preserving a link to fundamental truths, ideas and values. They should not, however, dictate these. Smaller schools have more of a symbiotic relationship with the local community, I would say.

What do you think? Should ‘super’ schools be created? Do the ‘improved facilities’ make up for their faceless nature?