Head in the Cloud

I’ve recently watched a couple of videos made by primary schools, demonstrating how they used iPads across their schools. I was particularly interested in seeing how the children were using them during a lesson. After watching for a little while, I noticed that many of the apps that were being used were basically digital versions of resources that the teacher would have traditionally used without the iPad or other technologies. For example, a 'whiteboard' that allowed the children to write down a sum and the answer and then to show to others; foundation phase children drawing letters on the screen; children playing matching games; drawing on the screen or reading books. This is not necessarily a criticism, just an observation. After watching, I started to reflect on how I've often seen technology being used by teachers. It reminded me of the experience of working on the 'interactive whiteboard initiative' some 10 years ago across our authority and the relatively rap...

Yesterday I blogged about the European internet safety report, and in particular how children might safely use mobile phones and games consoles to access the internet. So I made a trawl of the mobile phone and gaming console websites to see what each of the companies say about filtering internet access for young people and parental controls. I've listed below links to the relevant parts of their websites. A very useful task, for instance, perhaps naively I didn't realise that the various mobile phone networks have been unable to filter Blackberry handsets. Quite a potential problem considering the numbers of young people who use a Blackberry. However, the Orange website does say that by July 2012 something will be in place to filter these devices if needed. Photo from Flickr user Pauly This could be a useful list to share with parents? Mobile phones: O2 - Mobile phone and age verification   / Block or unblock 18+ content T Mobile - Content Lock Vodafone - Content...

Internet safety report - Articles - Educational Technology - ICT in Education  A quick summary by Terry Freedman of a new report entitled " European Strategy for a Better Internet for Children ". Interesting that Terry picks up on part of the report that has started to concern me. That is the issue of how children safely access the web through mobile devices and through gaming consoles. What filters or controls are available for parents on these devices? If they are there are many parents aware they're there? Definitely something for me to look more closely at.

I'm currently spending some time finding articles, publications and research on how ICT 'raises standards' and it's turning into quite a fascinating activity. This has sprung very much out of one of my last blogs about embedding ICT. In it I wrote about the need for a school to remember to ‘look back’ to evaluate what has been done in a school, what was successful or not, to learn from this before moving the whole school forward. Well I’m now doing the same thing. I’m looking for some clarity, reminding myself what benefits ICT does bring to the learner, the teacher and for the school. I’ve been doing this job for 10 years and I guess what I’m trying to do is de-construct what I believe I know about ICT and rebuild it on firmer foundations. It really has been fascinating. The same benefits keep appearing and also the challenges, the main challenge being that it seems to be very difficult to prove that the use of ICT has a direct correlation to the raising of standards. ...