Head in the Cloud

Just read an article on the BBC website entitled "Facebook: Parents 'help children break age limits' ". It's not that surprising. During esafety sessions that I've carried out with parents of primary school children, some have said they have done this very thing. What is equally concerning in the article is the issue with young people and 'sexting' - the sending of explicit images to their boyfriends or girlfriends. An urgent need to talk with young people about dangers associated with these behaviours? How do you and your school approach these issues?

I read a very interesting blog today from Ray Fleming titled "Do You Really Need A Learning Management System?" What interested me most was the chart showing the use of different components of a Learning Management System (LMS). It's the first time I've seen some evidence of something I've believed has been happening. The chart on Ray's blog shows that components most used in a LMS are: Documents posted 60% Announcements 52.5% Grade centre 47.3% Then quite a drop off in components used such as: Discussion board 12% Assignments 4.9% Blogs 3.8% Wikis 1% Sadly it looks like the powerful e-learning tools such as wikis, blogs and discussion boards are being under utilised by teachers. I'm not particularly blaming teachers here, I'm guessing it could be more of a problem with a lack of training put in place to support them in the effective and appropriate use of these systems.  Image from Flickr (Vickel_N ) So, not really much ...

Headteacher John Putt from Holywell High School, speaking at the launch of the Digital classroom report.

Should have posted this up earlier, better late than never :-) Here is the chair of the group Janet Hayward speaking at the launch of the report in the Senedd.

We currently have working with the foundation phase team a teacher who is on secondment with us until the end of the summer term. During his visits to schools he’s been quite surprised by the lack of basic ICT skills and confidence in some teachers and especially with LSAs across the foundation phase. Perhaps this has something to do with the lack of explicit ICT in the foundation phase documents or maybe it’s because Estyn rarely seem to refer to ICT in their inspection reports - I’ll leave those contentious points for another post, but maybe it's just that some schools have underestimated the part ICT can play in the foundation phase. He has very good ICT skills himself and is extremely confident in applying these skills in the foundation phase setting, demonstrating how to create videos, animation, recording audio, and the benefits in using various pieces of educational software and equipment. The schools he has worked with have really appreciated the training and advice he’...

Very much liked this infographic. Amazing the amount of data being transferred and this will only grow. Found on this website . Showed my 17 year old son and interestingly he wasn't that amazed by it, "3000 photos a minute to Flickr...is that all??"