• BBC NEWS | Technology | ‘$100 laptop’ platform moves on
  An independent effort to develop the Sugar software originally designed for the XO $100 laptop
  (tags: interface Learning olpc sugar XO)
• How Apple is changing DRM | Technology | The Guardian
  (tags: Apple business copyright economics DRM)
• Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices - New York Times
  The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.

  The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are correct.

  (tags: maths teaching research)
• Web 2.0 and new learning paradigms. By Antonio Bartolomé, Audiovisual Communication Professor , Universitat de Barcelona
  (tags: elearning web2.0)
• Clueless in America - New York Times
  A pessimistic picture of education and schooling in this article from the New York Times
  (tags: USA education teaching)
• The Inside-Out Web - Forbes.com
  What will replace the Internet? Something safer, more personal, more manageable. What will the web look like in the future? According to one Yale professor, it will be very different than what we use today.
  (tags: internet trends future)

• BBC NEWS | dot.life | A blog about technology from BBC News | One Laptop - hello Windows, goodbye Linux
  (tags: ox eee asus)

• Encyclopedia Britannica offered free to “web publishers”
  The scheme is called Britannica WebShare and is described as “A special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters, and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online
  (tags: Encyclopaedia_Britannica)

• Technology News: Handheld Devices: Think Before You Ban: A Handheld Is a Powerful Learning Tool
  (tags: mobile handheld)

My daughter is heading off to Japan for a year to teach as part of the British Council’s JET programme. So over the last few weeks she has offloading most of her possessions from her flat in Glasgow for storage back home in the Highlands.

The question in the title of this post is prompted as a result of a book I picked from one of her many book bundles. The book Scottish Education edited by professor Tom Bryce and and professor Walter Humes is something she had to read while completing her post graduate teaching diploma at Strathclyde Faculty of Education three years ago. The book outlines the history, culture, organisation and the structure curriculum of the Scottish Educational system. Written in 2003 there is very little reference to the use of ICT in Scottish education. The now defunct Scottish Virtual Teachers Centre and the National Grid for Learning get one line between them. Its a pretty dry tome. However the very last chapter in the book raises some interesting questions about the future direction education might take in Scotland and in other industrialised countries. It is based on the six scenarios produced by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) within the OECD.

To paraphrase and summarise the final chapter with regard these scenarios.

Scenario 1. Sees the continuation of a “robust, bureaucratic school system” These will resist change as a result of vested interests of powerful stakeholders. This system will be subject to high political expectations but this will not be matched by adequate resources. There will be a tendency to have more and more examinations for learners but the market value of qualifications as passports to economic success will diminish.

Scenario 2. Sees an an extension of the market model. This assumes increasing dissatisfaction with state schools and a growing involvement of the private sector in providing education. The private sector is already prominent in terms of PFI involvement in school buildings. Assessment would be demand driven and would lead to an emphasis on skills and competencies rather than knowledge and understanding. There would be a decline in the role of central government in education policy and provision.

Scenario 3. This envisages a “re-schooling” model . Here schools are seen as core social centres building social cohesion. They will be well funded and have high esteem within their communities. Schools will become centres for community development. Professional barriers will break down as a result of shared roles and inter agency co operation. There will be a more flexible approach to the way learning will take place and they would centres that generate”social capital”.

Scenario 4. Sees schools as “focused learning organisations” with a strong “knowledge agenda” promoting life long learning for all. There will be innovation in pedagogy and assessment. Curriculum specialism will flourish. Teachers would regularly engage in self evaluation with lots of opportunities for continuing professional development. The use of ICT will be widespread. As with the previous scenario there would be high levels of public trust and funding. While scenario 3 concentrates on community scenario 4 concentrates the learning process in all its forms.

Scenario 5. De-schooling. “Learner networks and the network society” . As a result with dissatisfaction with conventional schools the middle classes along with special interest groups and religious groups with move away from state schools to form various communities of interest in tune with the network society. The traditional role of teachers will change. Knowledge and skills would be shared via different network clusters. A combination of web based learning, self-help groups, home visits would replace many conventional schools. Some state schools will continue to exist but this system will create a range of inequalities.

Scenario 6. “teacher exodus:the meltdown scenario”. As a result of major problems in recruiting teachers because potential candidates can earn more money elsewhere in a rapidly changing jobs market, coupled with a highly skewed age profile of existing teachers. Here policy initiatives would fail as they would take to long to be effective and standards of achievement will fall. Innovation will not happen in learning. There will be a move towards narrowing the curriculum to only concentrate on “core skills”

What is interesting looking at all six scenarios again in 2008 in the context of recent past and present educational initiatives. And coupled with the present political and economic climate there are definite links to all of them though not in equal measure of course.

• Tips for Online Safety
  (tags: InternetSafety)
• Web 2.0: boon or bane for universities? | E-learning | EducationGuardian.co.uk
  Web 2.0: boon or bane for universities?
  (tags: education web2 ELearning2.0)

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Staying safe and taking risks
  Staying safe and taking risks online. Do we need two internets?
  (tags: internet_safety)
• SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy!
  Survey Monkey is a free (up to a point) on-line tool that allows anyone to create professional looking web based surveys. You can also print out your surveys as .pdfs if you need to. There is also a subscription service that allows you analysis you data i
  (tags: Survey Tools web2.0 online research surveys)
• How to Geotag Your Photos | Gadget Lab from Wired.com
  (tags: data Flickr howto metadata geotagging maps)

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Google helps the web to go social
  Google has joined the drive to make the web more social by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends
  (tags: google socialnetworking)
• Mobile social networking entices 5 million | Media | guardian.co.uk
  More than 10% of UK mobile phone users accessed social networking websites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace via their handsets
  (tags: mobile socialnetworks bebo myspace)

• Digital Mavericks: Cyberbullying & Internet Safety
  (tags: cyberbullying internetsafety safety digital_literacy internet eSafety)

• Second Life doctors tackle embarrassing ailments | Technology | The Guardian
  Spanish health authorities launch a virtual portal through Second Life for health and sexual issues
  (tags: health Internet secondlife socialnetworking technology teens virtual)

• Open source CMS
  (tags: cms opensource plone software python web webdesign)

• How Web 3.0 Will Work”
  (tags: web3.0 internet technology web semantic_web)

• Powerset
  Get answers to your natural language questions from Wikipedia! Quit searching, and start asking.
  (tags: semanticweb wikipedia searchengine)

Clever. There is hope.

This video was created by Metroamv for the AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, asking Where Will You Be @ 50? Challenge. It came second

Another type of networking this time. Nothing to do with category 5 cables or routers this time around.

Thought provoking article by John Harris in the Education Guardian on the role of private education and Oxford and Cambridge on politics and the media in the UK. Are the Conservatives are just reflecting modern Britain? A nation that is now less meritocratic than in a generation. Thank goodness for devolution in Scotland.

And so it came to pass that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was elected Mayor Of London. Last Friday, at the formal announcement of his victory at City Hall, the proceedings were watched by his children, Cassia Peaches, Milo Arthur, Lara Lettice and Theodore Apollo. News of his win was presumably also cheered by his five siblings, all of whom went to either Oxford or Cambridge, including his Paris-based financier brother Leo, Sunday Times columnist sister Rachel, and half-brother Max - who, according to the London Evening Standard, is currently “studying for an MBA in Beijing”. Meanwhile, media observers have inevitably been drawing attention to the new mayor’s alma mater, and the fact that the election of one old Etonian may well have laid the ground for the arrival of another in Downing Street - who, if David Cameron makes it, will be the first Eton-educated prime minister since Harold Macmillan in 1957.
On the Tuesday before polling last week, the Today programme’s John Humphrys testily asked Cameron about his and Johnson’s past history, their now-infamous membership of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club, and the photograph of the two of them in the club’s signature £1,200 tailcoats that last year mysteriously disappeared from public circulation. In that week’s Sunday Times, there was a typically scabrous cartoon by Gerald Scarfe: Cameron and Johnson in “Buller” attire, locked in a triumphal embrace, simply captioned “Toffs rule OK”. The Guardian’s Steve Bell, meanwhile, carried on portraying Johnson as a nightmarish amalgam of Joseph Goebbels, Attila the Hun and Bertie Wooster.

Louise and I are working on a range of e-safety issues right now. One of the things we have produced is a set of draft guidelines for new and probationer teachers in our authority. This little video Youtube clip encapsulates a lot of what we have been discussing. Its a BBC 3 sketch that asks whether folk really want to be in a place where they can be found and poked by virtual strangers - and have embarrassing moments from their past plastered all over the internet.