Educational Technology - ICT in Education

love this!

An interesting-looking blog, which I came across courtesy of Julie Lindsay's blog at htp://123elearning.blogspot.com. It's about the use of computer games, but specifically in the contexty of English as a Foreign/Second Language. Looks potentially useful, and I will be xploring it for possible inclusion the Games issue of the Computers in Classrooms newsletter.

A good article by Sheyne Lucock on the drawbacks of using IWBs from a pedagogical point of view. I have known Sheyne for many years, and his views are not unknown to me. It's good to see them in print, however, and it will be interesting to see other people's reactions to them.

I quite like the questions suggested in this post about being critically literate by Lisa Durff. I agree with her when she says that critical literacy should be extended to all media, not just books. Like her, I have always encouraged my students to question everything (which took a humorous -- and welcome -- turn when they started to question ME!).\n\nRead and bookmark and share this post.

At first glane, this wiki-based video repository seems quite comprehensive. Given that it can be edited by anyone, I'm slightly concerned that 'rogue' videos may find their place on to the site. Also, will stuff be moved about making it hard to find again? Still, there is a search facility. I will be exploring this and reporting on it in due course. Thanks to coolcatteacher.blogspot.com for blogging about it, which is how I heard about it.

Not the most hilarious comic strip I've read, but I really like Kevin's comment about it!

Interesting embeddable widget I discovered on Wesley Fryer's blog, http://www.speedofcreativity.org/. It shows how many blog posts etc there have been since you loaded the widget, in real time. I'm not actually sure how valuable or even valid such information is. There is no doubt, however, that using it in a presentation, as Fryer intended to do, would be a good way of grabbing people's attention right from the start. Perhaps it would work well in a classroom setting too, as a starting point for a discussion about what such statistics mean, in a 'real' sense.

Interesting article about the benefits that can accrue from DESIGNING games as opposed to only playing them.

robot receptionist

Looks like a great competition for youngsters to get involved in. "Write a news story or a script between 250 and 400 words or make a video or audio recording (between 90 seconds and 120 seconds) that tells us how you think "technology is changing the way we learn"."

Video life in a day project: looks like a nice idea

I wonder if (a) this is also true of the UK and (b) if so, what would Baroness Greenfield make of it? The summary suggests that the increase in the use of the internet and mobile phones does NOT lead to social isolation, but instead: "is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people's full personal network - their strong and weak ties - internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks."

A lot of good stuff comes out of Denmark as far as education is concerned, and I think this raises the stakes a bit. In a nutshell, this exam allows students to use the internet to help them answer the questions. The questions are not about finding facts, but validation of search engine results and such like. As Stephen Heppell says, students use computers in their education, and then as soon as they walk through the examination room door they have to leave all that behind and write their answers. I'd go further: research has shown that setting tests which involve a different mode of answering from the mode of learning leads to poorer performance. In other words, if students have covered a course mainly through using technology, they should be required to use the technology for the examination. Similarly with paper-based learning.

Very interesting page, brought to my attention by Catherine Andy. The subject matter is interesting in itself, and if you like it you might wish to vote for it: it has been shortlisted in the Japan Webpage Contest run by the Japan Foundation. This is the link: www.japanwebpagecontest.org.uk/vote What interests me in particular, though, is the use of the different applications to present the information, such as Tagxedo (which I reviewed in Computers in Classrooms) and stickies provided by Crazy Profile (which I hadn'd heard of before). Well worth exploring, and don't forget to vote for it!

Summary of timetable towards implementation, what this is all about, 'guarantees' and videos. I haven't read any of this, but am posting this in order to let people know it's available.

Another one of those awful videos, in which people hold up handwritten cards to a background of some horrible dirge. Nevertheless, the ideas on the cards are pretty good, and perfectly complement the ideas in the forthcoming Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book! This video is definitely one to watch, bookmark and share.

The latest edition of IFIP, the ICT newsletter based in India, includes a range of interesting-looking articles, including social entrepreneurship and ICT in Nigeria. Also, the work Miles Berry and I did to find out how youngsters use technology when not at school. Available free of charge.

Excellent post which basically asks the question: is it wise to chuck out all the rules we know to be sensible when it comes to elearning and consultants?

The reference to the collaboration with Berners-Lee was mentioned at the recent Online Information Conference. If it comes off as planned and on schedule (a cause for celebration in itself?), this could be a very good illustration of the power of the so-called 'semantic web'.