Head in the Cloud

This post from Maryland caught my attention this morning. It is a report on a council who are wanting to increase the property tax in their area to fund education improvements. It appears that the majority of the local residents are against the 15% tax increase. One of the County Councilmen commenting that: “My district was number one in terms of housing foreclosures for Prince George’s County,” Patterson said, referring to the 2008 housing market crash. “Residents are saying, ‘We are just barely getting our heads above water and now you want to hit us with a tax increase?’” Among those improvements that would be brought by the 15% tax increase would be more competitive teacher pay, pre-kindergarten expansion, and digital literacy . Now, the report doesn't elaborate on what it means by digital literacy, it seems to be a 'catch all' term at the moment, but another Councilwoman does say this: "(T)he school system has not provided information as to how the money wil

Had a very busy couple of days arranging and having meetings with head teachers and ICT co-ordinators, and it's going to continue in this way almost until the end of term and beyond. Our team is currently working with a group of schools, providing each with a review of how ICT is currently being used across the whole school. It's been a fantastic opportunity for us to visit schools and colleagues across SE Wales that we haven't yet had a chance to meet and to discuss the current postion of ICT in their schools and to get an understanding for their future needs.We really are looking forward to working with them and eventually getting around all 266 of them! On Wednesday and Thursday we also ran ICT co-ordinator's meetings at two venues. One in Nant Celyn Primary School in Torfaen and the other in Mount Pleasant Primary School, Newport. Presentations came from Chris Price, Leader of Technology in Nant Celyn who showed colleagues how he used various ICT tools to support

iPads in the classroom improved T4L - ICT - TES Quite an interesting discussion on the use of iPads in the classroom in the TES ICT forum. Suggestions given on apps that schools are using. Also comments along the lines of "you can add all the bells and whistles but makes very little difference unless the teaching and learning is good and to make a change you need to change the style of teaching not the equipment!"