philwaud

Typical press coverage, the actual story is that Gove announced that he is starting a consultation that will not take effect until September 2014. I wish the press had been a bit more savvy, the big story is that Gove is trying to control the curriculum even though more and more schools are now academies and dont have to listen...

Yes, cant help you with the unlocking, but rooting is very straightforward, use odin+new kernel then superoneclick - very easy. Once rooted, there are bucketloads of tutorials about unlocking but you may find that you just bung in a new sim and it will work. Despite all the scare stories, they are very hard to "brick", you may get stuck but a bit of perseverence gets you out of things. It took me 3 minutes first time, then ten minutes to add a new ROM. Phil

Yes, rooting is adding a superuser that can basically do anything on the phone. Do you just want to tweak a few things, or make it so you can use another SIM? Phil

Its pretty straight forward as Samsung dont seem to actively stop you rooting (which is what I assume you mean by "unlocking" - technically thats making your phone work with any carrier) I used odin to copy an "unsafe" kernel to the phone, then superoneclick to root the phone. Once you have done that, its only a matter of time before you replace the whole ROM with something like cyanogenmod - makes the phone run a LOT faster and removes all the samsung bloatware. Phil

We are in the same boat, but I may be a little further down the road re a switchover than you are. The latest version of Moodle (2.2?) will take allow you to restore a course that was created in 1.9.7. Ive tried several of our courses and they all switch over without a problem. I have to say Im impressed with 2.2, it offers many new features and improvements and is definitely a step forward. You may find issues with any additional blocks, modules, themes or customisations. The code behind how Moodle works has changed quite a lot and they basically need re-writing. Im taking this as an oppurtunity to completely re think how we deliver our VLE and obviously the June 2012 deadline forces our hand. Whilst the world isnt going to end on that date, its always a good idea to at least try to stay secure! Phil

Amazing, not sure I could have done that!

...like he said lol!

Introduce yourself, give them some background. Tell them what you want, and why. Sell the benefits to them, and clearly state what you hope to gain from it. (oh, and that's one massive sentence, teachers more than any other employer will be quick to criticise poor spelling and grammar) Good luck! Phil

Can I ask, what are the options? I dont mean what languages, I mean, what GCSEs give the oppurtunity to teach any kind of programing? Phil

Thats because most schools teach little more than office skills. On the occasion when teachers try to be adventurous, its usually a mundane control or web design unit - but if they were to engage students at 10% of the level that most of them work at when playing xbox games then we might get somewhere. Students find it boring, dont really get what we are trying to teach them and forget as soon as they walk out of the door. They love Google Sketchup as it triggers their neural zones, and they progress rapidly to some quite complex stuff. We need to start teaching the actual computer science stuff, in an engaging and interesting way. When I think of what I was doing at secondary student age, and how excited I was and how much I learnt 30 years ago, we should have moved on so much further. Instead we have regressed into teaching what whichever education minister of the time thinks students should know (and Gov didnt even include it in what students should know until he was heavily prompted) For me the rot set in when it started to be called ICT, and even IT - we need to reclaim the digital curriculum!

When you get to more complex Maths, its much easier to deal with complex formulae as fractions. Knowing how to multiply, cancel out etc can massively simplify a problem without ever having to work out an answer. I would say its an essential part of calculus! If you are asking why we teach calculus when we have computers and calculators to work out the answers, you are missing the point of Maths! Phil

Yes, couldnt get on this am, didnt have time to investigate!

Right with you on that one, although writing programs (they werent called apps then :-) was a nightmare! Ive still got my programmers reference manual somewhere, four volumes each 40mm thick! Loved assembler on the beeb, but preferred to program z80 assembler - it had so many more commands!

Did exactly the same thing myself, had the same argument (with myself!), and then spotted the IMAGE bit! Phil

I did this yesterday and got the film one wrong! Today, some of the questions have different answers so there must be a randomiser built in. The correct tag for an image is To be XML compliant, any tags that dont have a closing tag should be closed with a /> at the end, but thats irrelevant as its the IMG and IMAGE that are the key points.

Can I just check - does it need to be an educational account? Where exactly should we specify our edugeek handle? Will you be publishing a list of prize winners?

Yeah, the statute of limitation thingy rings a bell - and is why statemented pupils stuff has to be kept longer as they would potentially have a claim when they were much older. Unrelated but similar are some of the crazy retention rules re asbestos (100 years?) and nuclear incidents.

Even if a school is breaking the strike, or some staff are, then they are not allowed to ask staff to do someone elses job because they have withdrawn their labour. There might be a possible exception with cover supervisors because that is their actual job - its a grey area, whereas the rest is actual law whether you are independent or not.

The one I bought was absolutely identical, you couldnt tell them apart. The original iphones came with normal philips screws but if you are worried, just put the funny apple ones back in. Before I sold mine, my friend and I spent an hour examining our two iphones and the backs were absolutely the same. Up to you, but it saves cash!

Dont think thats correct, in the case of teachers we cant be asked to cover another class as cover isnt one of our duties - we have cover supervisors who do that. Basically you cant ask anyone to cover for a colleague who isnt working because of strike action - thats in any profession. In the NUT strike last year, our SLT team took the students into the hall and let them watch a DVD - thats OK because they arent replacing the person who was teaching - they are doing a different activity.

Jobs talks about this in the Isaacson book. Apparently, the glass is hardened in a special "ionic" process that they could never find a use for until the iPhone. Jobs was a bit of a glass nut, which is why his stores have glass stairs and huge glass windows. The cupertino headquarters has a 20 foot high floor to ceiling glass window that runs right round the building. Gorilla glass is certainly tough, but obviously it still shatters! Phil

Cant help Im afraid, like I said, I used a non Apple one (but it was absolutely identical gorilla glass etc) Mine worked fine afterwards and it did get quite a knock - I fell off my bike onto my back and it was in my back pocket! Phil

OK, I think we are both right! DPA says the data shouldn't be kept longer than necessary but the FOI says it must be kept for a period when a request may reasonably be made. As I said, this is until 21 (when a majority od students could reasonably be expected to finish their education), or life in the case of certain statemented pupils. Im referring to data in the form of school records rather than data in the students user area. Phil

Its the Freedom of Information act that applies here and your school should have a schedule of publication which lists how long each kind of data is retained for. It could be until the students are twenty one, but in the case of students with a statement, it may be much longer (might even be for their lifetime!) Phil

Who said anything about pay? Its about paying an even greater amount of our wage to get a lower pension at an older age. Pure mismanagement on the gov's behalf. At what point did they suddenly decide that this was a problem, surely it was plain to see that we are living older years ago? If action had been taken twenty years ago, it wouldnt need such a radical fix now (although there is enough money in the teachers kitty to pay for the next twenty years without changing anything) One of the reasons I became a teacher was the pension and it isnt right for them to backtrack on an existing agreement! Just my pennies worth, and I arent striking so I should probably shut up!