beeswax

Oh, must just be IE7 then. It's a collection of original books from the British Library, Da Vinci's codex Arundel, William Blake's Notebook, Lindisfarne Gospels, all beautifully reproduced, some with commentary, or in the case of Alice in Wonderland, the actual story is being read out as you turn the pages. The quality of reproduction is stunning. You can turn the pages, get really close up to the pages to see the detail.

I'm afraid this only works in IE as far as I know, but it's worth a good look. Incredible.

...so here it is, Sloodle

There's a year 9 pupil at school who is very bright, likes programming etc, but who's in danger of going over to the dark side (as well as having his account disabled). You no doubt know, or have heard of these archetypes who find the pace and tenor of ICT tooooo slow, and so spend a lot of time devising scripts. As this is not my strong suit, can anyone suggest online resources I can throw at him which will not only help him develop his undoubted skills, but hopefully rein him in during ICT? Thanks

Shergar

Now why didn't I think of that?

Couple of sites I've come across, Sharepoint University and Sharepoint User Group *EDIT* and I should have added this one Sharepoint VHD

I've read it Russ, but it just doesn't seem to be sinking in. Will give it another go later.

Just done a Google for Nelson Thornes software. Edugeek doesn't appear until the eigth page.

I bit my lip. My NM wasn't as controlled though.

The only problem is that the various companies providing managed services are tied in with other providers. For example, Northgate tends to favour Fronter as a VLE. Move to a different LEA, and their managed service provider will be in league with someone else. There may be an argument that this sort of diversity will encourage competition, and that this competition will result in improved products. However, as we've seen with the case of Nelson Thornes, this evolutionary theory doesn't seem to apply. My worry is that schools will be locked into "software ghettos" because of contracts higher up the food chain, and innovation will fall by the wayside. There doesn't seem to be any standard in educational software, there's no one to say, "these are the criteria you have to reach before you release it on the market", the equivalent of an MOT. The purchase of much of this software is in the hands of teachers, and this is not meant as a criticism, but I wouldn't be the only techie who has had to tell a member of staff that they can't install a certain peice of software on the network because it only has a single user licence. As for catchment areas, this can add £10,000 or more to the value of your house, and so you are going to get these differences, and generally speaking, the better off who can afford these prices are going to get involved in school life, to pester the head etc. The one thing that stood out for me about the National Curriculum is that it tried to ensure that pupils from Newquay to Newcastle were receiving the same level of literacy and numeracy training, and that they were being tested to a national standard.

No, it definately isn't. If you produce a faulty widget you can scrap it/recycle it. There's a different ethos in operation in a school, and while all good managers in the business world will try to instill that ethos into their workforce, I feel it's something that comes naturally, for want of a better phrase, to those of us employed in schools. We all of us put in that extra 10% as and when needed. I'll hold my hand up and say that IT in education baffles me at times. There are so many specialised subjects you're expected to be a master of, and that's doing the job full time, so I don't expect teachers to get their heads round it. We're around to make sure the tools work, and that the teacher can deliver lessons as planned. There are some teachers who will never grasp IT, no matter how intelligent or young, and to be perfectly honest, I don't care. Identify them and give them more time and patience. A class of unruly 16 year olds on a non uniform day is hard enough to deal with, why should they have to attempt the more complicated manoeuvres involved in IT? Let them master keyboards and IWB's, the "clasroom furniture" if you will, the stuff which delivers the lesson, but the smooth running of the gubbings in order that they can do this is down to us. In a some cases technology designed for business is being shoehorned into an educational environment, and technicians and teachers alike suffer the consequences. Then their is the downright badly designed educational software (see all the posts regarding Nelson Thornes for example) which disrupts education more than assisting it. I feel that this government (I don't want to get into a left/right argument here) has recognized we can't compete with the likes of China in the manufacturing stakes, we have to move to becoming a knowledge economy and with it there has to be a seismic shift in what we learn, and to a large extent, how we learn. Just as we're breaking down the work patterns our fathers (ok, and some of us oldies) knew, so the "barriers" between different subjects in school also become blurred. Teachers will have a lot on their plate. Studies have shown that teenagers do, in fact, perform/learn poorly early in the day, so there's already talk of moving the school day for them to start at 10:30am, and finish later in the day. The one constant in this is money. Is any government, of any colour, willing to fund this change fully, or will it be so much hot air? I went on a visit to an Academy last week, along with my NM. Our head had asked us to go along and assess IT provision, and what we could adapt for our own new build in 2011/12. We were the only technical staff there. The rest comprised (I think) of a couple of companies with BSF contracts, two groups from local government and three schools hoping to learn from the experiences of this particular Academy. One member of a school SLT made the observation that technicians were holding back advances in education, and apart from the two of us, everyone else present murmured agreement. I find that attitude depressing, especially when anyone who's visited these message boards will soon realize just how hard the majority of us are working to get things working.

Cars? Have you forgotten how to fly?

Here's how I see them in FF 2.0.0.4 & IE7. As you cansee, the top one, IE7, doesn't render the page well at all. The bottom one, FF 2.0.0.4 has the problem with the panel on the top right.

the first image which caught my eye was the plan view of the school and the police station. That "association" worried me. The Pupil Work link brings up a 404, but I assume you're still waiting for content. The Announcement section looked a little askew -

You may find Second Lives by Tim Guest interesting. Or this

We have a CLC in our school grounds and they have a laser machine which will etch any design you come up with on a variety of surfaces, glass, plastic etc. I believe they have tried this on a couple of redundant laptop lids. Something for the summer I think.

I'll add my twopennorth. I've just completed the first semester and it's certainly been all those things that people above have mentioned. I found it difficult to fit around all the other things I was doing, and at one point I was worried that I wouldn't complete the second module on time. The Learning Facilitators were very fair and helpful during a stressful period, and I can't thank them enough. I went into this because I want to explore the ways people learn, how they react to various stimulii, and then look at ways of delivering work which appeals to and engages those who learn online. The course costs £1200 a year at present, and there are several methods of paying. Choose the one which suits you. I can only echo what Netman says. It will really open your eyes, and what may seem "loose" to begin with is anything but. Even the first module, designed to "ease" you into the course, makes you see things in a different light. It's too late for me to go further tonight, I should be up at 5:30. If anyone one wants any more info, other than from the website, just pm me and i'll do what i can.

Their rep is currently in the country for a fortnight, enjoying the lovely weather (they're an Australian company). If you pm me I can send you contact details. Of all the products shown to the various schools in our LEA, it's the one all could agree on which came closest to matching their needs. He came up to our school just after BETT this year and came in for a second much longer demo in May (I think it was). It's basically a package that sits on top of Sharepoint and provides a whole host of functionality from parental access right down to the granular level of one-to-one, teacher-pupil ratio. I could go on, but it's probably better to do it in a pm. HTH

^BUMP^

As I see it, a VLE is the Learning Environment, pure and simple. An MLE, Managed Learning Environment, is a single user interface where not only pupils can access the Learning section, but admin and teachers can also access their MIS etc, and parents can see details of their child's progress and examples of their work. So depending which group you belong to, as you log on you bring up a user interface appropriate to you. For myself, it has the advantage of providing a seamless user experience whichever section of the program you're in, e.g. teachers don't have to learn how to manoeuvre round two interfaces. It also provides for a single logon (I know that can be done with two separate programs). I'm all for making the user experience as simple as possible, not everyone works in IT.

I've been asked to look at Fronter. Having scanned the posts here there doesn't seem to be too much detail. Does it sit on Sharepoint, for example, or stand by itself? Does it tend to be hosted off-site, or can it be hosted in house? Is it all web based? Can it be set up as an MLE? Is it SCORM compliant? I'll try and think of more questions to ask as I get into it.

damn! I mentioned ironing.

could I just add that no one seems to be around when the ironing needs doing

The FujitsuSiemens AmilPro V2010 my daughter has now has been very reliable. The only problems of any note was the original hdd being 40Gb. I changed that over one holiday and she's been fine, and you have to remove the keyboard to add extra ram. I spent half an hour giving it a good clean last week, and to be honest it looks like new. She has her programmes on the internal hdd, and saves her work to an external hdd. Having said all that, I don't want her to be left without a laptop should this present one fail. Because she's so far away it's also an important tool for communicating with us. I know the idea is generally to change equipment every three years, but I don't think I could face the meltdown if she was somehow to loose all her work.