I like a challenge so I thought I’d try to create a self-marking spreadsheet in Excel. (Look, some men like fast cars, some like sport, and some like womanising. Me? I like spreadsheets. OK?)
I was inspired to have a go at this by someone called Lee Rymill, who uploaded a self-marking spreadsheet to the CAS resources area. However, I wanted to take it a few steps further…
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Who’s afraid of life without Levels? Quite a few people if the number of schemes of work and assessment grids being developed that incorporate levels are anything to go by. Working without levels is clearly very hard: it is almost impossible to think, much less talk, about pupils’ progress without mentioning levels at some stage.
Yet this is precisely what the government expects.
It is almost a year since I suggested 7 Reasons educators should blog. I’ve recently discovered another one.
A number of people have told me they enjoyed the cartoon I linked to in the post entitled An unintended use of “Smart glasses”?. Well, here are a few more. Enjoy!
It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.
That well-known expression applies as much to running an ed tech project successfully as to anything else. In other words, for an ed tech project to succeed, you need to think about more than just the technology, or even the pedagogy. You have to think about management as well.
I’ve long been an advocate of project-based learning, or PBL. Done properly, it can be much richer in terms of learning opportunities, and more fun. I believe it is entirely applicable to the teaching of the new Computing Programme of Study, for the following reasons.A short while ago I published 8 articles under the heading “7 ways to make IT real”. (OK, so it looks as if I am numerically-challenged, but I'm not, as you will see!).
Well, here are the links to them, all in one place. Who says I don’t think of you!
I quite like this cartoon, which appeared in today’s paper.
A nice way to end the week!
Please note: the Westminster Forum Conference on Preparing for the new Computing Curriculum
listed in the post entitled Some useful-looking conferences takes place on the 26th February, and not the 14th as originally stated. Apologies!
The agenda and other details of the conference may be found here.
Here are a few conferences coming up which you might find useful. The first one is next week! A couple of them will attract a 15% discount for some subscribers to our newsletter. Look out for announcements soon-ish!
Here are the conferences in chronological order:
My beloved netbook is in a sorry state. It has been languishing for quite a while, becoming more and more depressed as it realised it could not compete with my iPad in terms of cool-ness. In the end, it was too lethargic to fire up at all, and attempts to run it direct from the mains were met with a cold snub.
Well, I bought it a new battery, and a new mains charger. I thought it would be pleased, and to an extent, it was. It actually works now, which is a novelty. However, depression or resentment runs deep, and it refuses to work for any longer than two hours on a full charge, instead of its original seven or eight.
What to do?
I suffer from an unfortunate form of doublethink. In my personal life, I tend not to be an early early adopter. That’s because I rarely have an urgent need for whatever it is the new technology has to offer. However, when I was head of department in a school, and then when I ran a team of advisors and technical support staff in a local authority, I was very keen to spend money on brand new stuff.
Why?
I have two blog posts already started, and another two waiting to be transferred from my head to the computer and thence to the web. I have had to interrupt myself so many times because of work commitments that I have become impatient – with myself! Hence the title of this post which should read, in full:
As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…
Anyway, while I am in the process of completing the aforementioned articles, I thought I would mention the Propaganda exhibition that is currently on at the British Library.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic recently, and even more so since Simon Finch sent me a link to his excellent article, Privacy is gone, live with it. In the article, Simon talks about managing his digital identity, not so much for self-promotion, but for self-preservation. His view is that if you don’t take charge of your digital identity, it will become defined by what others are saying about you.
New words are always interesting, I think, and not just the ones that have been inspired by technology. But before I say any more about that, I feel the need to get something off my chest. Don’t worry, I won’t make this a long post: the last thing I want is people tweeting me to say TL;DR (too long; didn’t read).(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved