Today is the second day of a Mentor training session in South Lanarkshire that I am taking part on. As this is my first Mentor training session in person (I took part of the Dundee pilot by Marratech), I’m really here to ‘up-skill’ so that I become a fully fledged member of the team. There are around 12 participants on this session, but the room seems busier with other members of staff dropping in to see how certain sessions are run. It’s a great opportunity for the Local Authority staff to see how sessions are run by the Glow team prior to their having to deliver them in schools.

Yesterday, we had a look at e-Mentoring, navigating the portal, Glow groups, advanced settings for the glow groups and how to customise them, and then a session dealing with Intellectual Property Rights. A busy day, and the content, tasks, workshops and discussion were well received.

It’s great to see training in action – I was part of the SICTDG CPD team that helped draw up plans for the training, but it’s brilliant to see this taking place for the live portal, with staff that will be are actually using!

Today we’ll be looking at Glow Meet, Glow Chat, Glow Messenger, how Glow can support the delivery of Curriculum for Excellence and then finally how Mentoring will be taken further in South Lanarkshire - fun times!

Tweet This Post Delicious

 - no problem – it turns out Aspyr are releasing a version of Guitar Hero III that runs on a Mac or a MS Windows PC! With the game you get one controller, so it actually is the ‘real deal’.

So, other than finding £70, you’ve really no excuse?

(And if you can’t find £70, you could always check out Frets on Fire?)  

Tweet This Post Delicious

I’ve had my hands on an EeePC before, but only in short bursts – last Thursday and Friday gave me hand on for almost a day and a half. Have I changed my mind about this little wonder?

If you look really closely, the picture shows me live in a ‘Glow Meet’ Marratech meeting room – I was really keen to try out the potential of this device in relation to Glow. One small glitch (which I’m reliably informed the best minds at RM are working on) is that the web cam isn’t being recognised by Marratech at the moment, but this is something that the folks at RM aim to sort as soon as possible. Other than that, Glow displayed really well on the EeePC. That’s worth remembering.

Any other thoughts? Battery life is going to be an issue. It doesn’t last long – a couple of hours at most. With this in mind, you’re going to need a lot of chargers, and the health and safety issues in a classroom with lots of cables are considerable. Unless you’re in a lab with power points at each workbench station, then you’re going to have to think seriously about how you can equip a classroom.

I worried about the size of the keyboard before, but I’m not concerned at all now – having used it for a while, you get used to it really quickly. The keys are small, but small hands will prefer this, and even the size of my hands adjusted quickly. It’s great not having to use your thumbs like many other small devices. One niggle I had, was the machine I used seemed to have a sticky trackpad button, but that may have just been that particular machine, rather than a design issue.

I worried previously about screen resolution also – sure, it is a bit frustrating not having a larger resolution, but to be honest, it wasn’t really that big an issue – scrolling is easy when you need to, but the feeling you’re left with is that you don’t feel cheated by this size of screen. When you compare this to other small devices (smart phone or PDA) you are pleased that things display properly, and are big enough to read easily.

With such a small storage space in the Flash disk, I worried about storing things you create. Worry over though, as it seemed to recognise any USB sotrage device that I could find to plug into it. If you were networked, you’d be storing things online anyway, so this really isn’t much of an issue.

So, if I was in the market for a computer, would I get one? My answer is probably an unreserved ‘yes’ – but you cut your cloth accordingly. Bear in mind the EeePC is only £200, but for double that you could have a different device that could cure the resolution/battery life issues that you may have with the EeePC. For triple the price, you could have a device that cures the resolution/battery life and adds in a touch screen.

But if you’re in school though, ask yourself whether the extra money spent was worth it  – if the choice is buying 3 EeePC’s that work with Glow, or one other small form factor machine – is it worth it? What are you actually wanting to do with the device anyway?

Tweet This Post Delicious

In the Sunday Times Ecosse section today, Jessica Jonzen asked ’some of our brightest Britons for their one idea which, if put into practice, would radically change our country for the better’. I was most taken with the comment from Frank Furedi, as I think his remark highlights many of the over-legislated ills in our present education system:

We should get rid of rules that prevent teachers touching children in schools. Such rules just foster an atmosphere of mistrust. We’ve lost the idea that we are all responsible for each other’s children.

Curious that so many of our rules set out to tell us what we can’t do, instead of what we can?

Tweet This Post Delicious

I can’t remember if I blogged about Yugma before, but in case you haven’t heard about this offer, Yugma are offering 12 months of their Premium service to anyone that blogs about it and sends them an email asking for it before the 31st January. From the horses mouth (as it were) -

Running until January 31, 2008, we’ll be donating sponsored Yugma Premium accounts to bloggers who ask. Each sponsored account will be good for 12 months ! All a blogger has to do is request an account by sending us an email at renee[at]yugma.com. You must include your email address and blog website address. (Limit one sponsored Yugma account per blog site.)

Not quite Glow, but it could give some of you in local authorities some other tools until you are up and running with Glow

Tweet This Post Delicious

Day two of the SICTDG Future Technologies Seminar is about to begin here in the Stirling Management Centre.

Today, we’ll be looking at geotagging, second life and moodle, and then some games based learning.

For more info, or to join in the discussion, head over to the Future Technologies blog.

Tweet This Post Delicious

Tomorrow is day 1 of the Scottish ICT Development Group (SICTDG) Future Technologies Seminar in Stirling Management Centre.

For those of you that may not know, SICTDG is the development group comprised of individuals from each Local Authority in Scotland, and representatives from TEIs and Learning & Teaching Scotland. Around 40 people from this group will be spending the next 2 days thinking about some possible future directions of ICT in Scotland – we’ll be looking at some social media, some games based learning, some 1:1 devices and some MMORPG.

Frustrating isn’t it – when you hear of an event that sounds like it’s dealing with just the kind of thing you’d like to talk about, but you either a) weren’t invited (sorry!), or b) can’t be there. Well, help is at hand!

Over the next two days, everything that the group looks at is going to be discussed on a blog – you can find it here at:

http://ltsblogs.org.uk/futuretechnologies/

Please feel free to drop by, and give us your thoughts on anything we discuss! Better still, if we are talking about something that you’ve tried in class with students, why not give us the benefit of your experience?

If you live in the world of twitter, then over the next couple of days, both Ewan and I will be carrying on the conversation there too – so feel free to tell us what you think. At around 17:00 we’ll have a live twitter session with all the delegates, so please tweet either Ewan or me and say ‘hello’.

So after almost a month of near silence on this blog, I’m about to spend the next couple of days attached to another one! Please do join in the conversation over there.

http://ltsblogs.org.uk/futuretechnologies/

photocredit: mrhayata

Tweet This Post Delicious

I feel I ought to start this post with an apology! Sorry I haven’t been here for a while, and sorry for those of you that actually visit the site (instead of viewing through a reader!) – since changing job I haven’t had the time to alter the look of the site to something more aesthetically pleasing!

So, for the record – no, I haven’t given up.

I’ve been spending a huge amount of time getting my head around my new role in the Glow team at LTS. To say “this project is huge” is a colossal understatement. What with finding out what everyone’s role is on the team, and then familiarising myself with the portal itself, the administration of the portal, the procedures for assisting Local Authorities in their deployment and development of Glow and the areas of specific responsibility that I have for Glow – my time has been, well…, easily filled!

I must say though that this whole project is hugely exciting. Having been involved in the discussions about Glow for some time, it’s great to now be involved in the project and get people moving on the issues of sharing and collaborating that are close to my heart.

There are 5 Local Authorities that I will be working with directly – Clackmannanshire, Dumfries & Galloway, Falkirk, Fife and Orkney. These are the LAs that I will be ‘Key Educationalist’ at LTS for – although, as you would expect, when it comes time for training in other Local Authorities, then other staff get involved. For example, next week sees me join my colleagues in Mentor training in South Lanarkshire.

In February, I’m going to be involved in Mentor training with West Dumbartonshire and East Lothian councils, so it’ll be great to get out and about and meet the people that will be driving Glow forward in those Local Authorities.

What else?

I’ve begun discussions with each of my appointed LAs – as you would understand, each is at a different stage of the process – Monday of this week saw me at a meeting in Dumfries as D&G plan their roll-out.

I’m taking a much higher interest in the glowscotland.org.uk site – I’ve already had discussions with many people in the organisation about how we can share much more information, and have more people involved in the discussion process on that site.

I’ve also been involved in the developments of the national site within Glow. This is an area I’m really keen to see develop and grow – I’m excited about discussions that we can have at LTS with national bodies and interested parties to make the best use of the national site that we can – I can’t wait to see the national site containing discussions and resources that staff around the country would find difficult to access for a host of reasons – that’s the benefit of a national site, after all. Big changes there in the near future, which I’ll come back and elaborate on.

And finally… along with all of this, I’ve been assisting in a two day event Thursday and Friday of this week in Stirling Management Centre for SICTDG (the Scottish ICT Development Group) looking at Future Technologies – I’ll post a link to the blog we’ll be using for this tomorrow, and feel free to follow the discussions throughout the day on twitter!

Phew! I shoud post more often – there’d be less to write! Questions, comments, observations are, as ever, most welcome.

Tweet This Post Delicious

Dr. Scott McLeod has opened the survey of the educational blogosphere for 2008 - last year he had 160 take part, so it would be great if more people could spend 5 minutes and fill out a short survey for him? The deadline is the 26th of January.

Tweet This Post Delicious

I’ve long been a follower of the TED talks, but having now had a look at the 2008 programme, I wish I was back in the RMPS classroom with this kind of resource!

If you haven’t already, you need to check out the TED site. This years questions are:

Who are we?
What is our place in the universe?
What is life?
Is beauty truth?
Will evil prevail?
How can we change the world?
How do we create?
What’s out there?
What will tomorrow bring?
What stirs us?
How dare we be optimistic?
And the point?

If you teach RMPS, these talks would be a great starter for discussion. Don’t teach RMPS? The how about telling your colleague in the school that does about this resource!

Tweet This Post Delicious