Open Thinkering

Menu

Month: June 2010

Things I Learned This Week – #23

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I’ve learned this week that there’s a sweet spot between gut instinct and meticulous research when it comes to most things, especially gadget-buying. I’ve also learned that cous cous is a viable lunch option. :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW23

Tech.

  • Lifehacker reports that scientists have confirmed that your anxiety levels are raised when someone’s phone goes off who has the same ringtone as you. So don’t be the loser who still has the CTU ringtone from 24. Get something individual. I’ve now got the music from Super Mario when Mario got the star of invincibility. No copying! 😉
  • I doubt ‘data life’ in the future will actually look like this. But the concept’s cool.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be9ArGBUTco&w=640&h=385]

Productivity & Inspiration

  • Mashable has a great post entitled 10 Free Android Apps to Boost Your Productivity. Having just invested in a Dell Streak, I’m excited to see some on there of which I’m already aware but also some I’m not! (they’ve also got 60+ Awesome Android Apps whilst you’re there…)
  • Seth Godin reckons there’s different voices inside your head trying to get you to do various things. Which is one way of thinking about it, I suppose, from a getting-more-stuff done point of view. I’d like to think that my ‘artist’ and ‘evangelist’ voices shout loudest, but I fear it’s often the ‘lizard’ and the ‘zombie’!
  • Over at alternaview they’re proposing the ’30 day challenge’ to get stuff done. Which is kind of like my ‘calling myself into the office’ idea, except it sounds better. :-p
  • I don’t get people who are addicted to email. How difficult can it be to not do something? Anyway, if that applies to you, then check out Why you’re hooked on email – and how to stop.
  • After reading another wonderful guest blog post on productivity by Scott Belsky I’m definitely going to buy his book!

Education & Academic

  • If you don’t already subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers, then you should! And this post on using a combination of Viddler and drop.io for cover/substitute teacher lessons is exactly why.
  • The Rapid E-Learning Blog featured 10 Free Audio Programs to Use for E-Learning. Which was handy.
  • The excellent timelines.tv site has been relaunched with some new content. If you’re a History teacher, or just interested in history, check it out!
  • To continue with the History theme, Historypin is an awesome augmented reality mashup of old pictures and Google Streetview. Makes me wish I was back in the classroom…
  • There’s now a Google Docs demo site up, which should help you influence the influencers in your school/organization! (implementing Google Apps was one of the best things I did in my previous position as Director of E-Learning)

Data, Design & Infographics

  • This visualization of supercomputers across the world by the BBC is worth playing with (it’s interactive on their site). Click on ‘OS’… :-p

  • In the UK we call them motorways, in Germany they call them autobahns, and in the USA they call them freeways. Whatever you call them, it’s annoying when the traffic on them slows down for seemingly no reason. This well-designed graphic explains how that happens:

Misc.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R3BYCT5oWw&w=640&h=505]

Quotations

Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper. (Francis Bacon)

You have to choose where you look, and in making that choice you eliminate entire worlds. (Barbara Bloom)

It’s Human Nature to Find Patterns where there are None & to Find Skill where Luck is a More Likely Explanation. (W. Bernstein)

You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event, it is a habit. (Aristotle)

Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. (John Wooden)

Image CC BY-NC-SA j-ster

Weeknote #4

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

This week I have been mostly…

Gaining clarification

I’m part of the team putting the finishing touches to the Open Educational Resources infoKit. It’s going to be launched in a couple of weeks’ time at the Higher Education Academy conference so I needed to ensure I was doing thing properly at my end. I approached David Kernohan, JISC Programme Manager and all-round OER guru after a wider e-learning team meeting down in Bristol this week. When I asked if there was anything he wanted me to do with the OER infoKit before launch, he told me to “make it shiny”. 🙂

Re-considering my workwear

Up until a couple of months ago I worked in schools. Which have 6-week holidays. So it’s pretty easy to wear long-sleeved shirts and trousers all-year round. OK, so you might swelter for a couple of weeks, but it’s not worth buying whole new work outfits for such a short period of time.

It’s only really just hit me that I’ll be working all through the summer. Which is fine, but kind of means I should invest in some more workwear. And then there’s the whole roasting hot outside/air conditioning inside problem – but I’ll stop before I sound too metrosexual…

Buying (and almost buying) a new phone

I’d decided on the Nokia N900 as the replacement to my ageing iPhone 3G; I wanted something open and different. The trouble is, a crafty eBayer scammed me on Monday (I’ve since got my money back through Paypal) and then I managed to input my details incorrectly in my excitement at seeing that Carphone Warehouse had some reconditioned SIM-free N900s in stock for half their normal retail price. So I ended up N900-less.

In the end, I’m pleased I did have those problems, because the phone/tablet/slate/hybrid thing I bought yesterday really does seem to kick some ass. It’s a Dell Streak which sports a 5″ screen and runs Google’s Android operating system. I’m going to review it on Tuesday but suffice to say I feel very futuristic using it compared to my iPhone! :-p

Pulling out of the SHP Conference

I was due to speak with Nick Dennis at the annual Schools History Project Conference again this year, for the fourth year in a row. However, I’ve decided for a number of reasons, not least that I’m not currently in the classroom, to let Nick speak by himself at the conference this year. I’ll be helping out with the first-ever TeachMeet at the event virtually.

Getting excited about Google Teacher AcademyI’ve had a couple of conversations with the legendary Tom Barrett recently about the upcoming Google Teacher Academy on Thursday 29th July 2010. I’ll be running at least one of the sessions and am really looking forward to meeting innovative educators at the event!

I really would encourage you to apply to be one of the 50 at GTA UK. Everything you need to know is on this page and you need to apply by Thursday 17th June 2010. It involves both an online application and a 1-minute video. I know it’s a busy time of year and being held during the summer holidays, but you’ll definitely not be there if you don’t apply! 😀

The post-Becta, QCDA and GTCE future.

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

These thoughts are my own and don’t represent my employer’s, my wife’s or the those of Father Christmas. 😉

On the one hand, the Conservatives’ education policies heavily (and negatively) influenced my vote in the recent General Election. On the other hand, now that we’ve got Mr Gove, at least he’s had the courage of his convictions to get rid of three bodies:

Becta

Probably the most useful of the three to go, Becta was the government’s advisory service for educational technology. I was part of their Open Source Schools project and attended events such as BectaX. Unfortunately, they became less relevant, increasingly unwieldy and seemingly more subject to internal politics as time went on.

QCDA

The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency advised the government on the National Curriculum, assessment and qualifications. The new coalition government believe that its functions can be discharged more effectively in other ways (e.g. Ofqual). I didn’t have much dealings with them, but never really knew why they were there.

The QCDA’s sample National Curriculum schemes of work were unfortunately taken as gospel by some Heads of Departments and Senior Leaders – rather than as a basis upon which to innovate. Sometimes it is your fault if the tools and resources you produce are used as instruments of repression…

GTCE

I have never hidden my utter contempt for the General Teaching Council for England, noting how ridiculous their ‘code of conduct’ for teachers was. The fact that they took money off you and then gave it back if you were employed as a teacher seemed utterly pointless. Their only purposes seemed to be to send out glossy magazines and discipline teachers who take drugs. I found their lack of proper consultation, their arbitrary stance and their waste of public money shocking.

The future?

I’m really pleased that these three organizations have gone together rather than in a piecemeal fashion. I think it signals a bright future for schools in England – so long as the Academies programme isn’t used just to shuffle the money from quangos to consultants. I hope that getting rid of these organizations means that money can be channeled more effectively to schools, partnerships, federations and authorities who in a position closer to the ground to gauge its impact.

Grassroots innovation and sharing of practice through online networks should now take centre stage. Instead of people being able to hide behind (their readings of) recommendations made by quangos, they’ll have to actually engage and think about their particular context. That can only be a good thing.

A note of caution, however. Just because a tool such as Twitter is open and decentralized does not make the networks it facilitates open and decentralized. We need to be careful not to fall prey to the age-old “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and gatekeeper-ism. 🙂

I’d really like to hear YOUR views on this. Are you a teacher in the UK? What do you think? If you’re not, what’s your take from the outside?

css.php