BYOD Case Study: Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital

ipod nano vector artThe unique challenge for the Children's Hospital School is balancing the need and desire to enable all long stay students to be able to access their own device with the need for security. Although this challenge is faced by other schools, the uniqueness in this case stems from the fact that 80% of the student population changes very frequently, so the school has little idea what devices students will be bringing.
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7 Ways of Making ICT More attractive

2011/365/95 Harping the BluesYou may not know this, but there is not a lot of difference between a Lee Oskar diatonic harmonica (the type used by blues and folk musicians) and a Hohner Blues Band harmonica. The Lee Oskar is said to have been engineered to give a “sharper” edge to the tone, which suits the blues sound, whereas the Marine Band, being slightly “softer”, works well for folk music too. Unless you’re a purist, there is probably not much in it. As someone once said:

“A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference.”

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Adobe Helps Nurture Young Creative Talent with New Online Courses for UK Students

Adobe has rolled out an exciting series of online courses called Adobe Generation, which are designed to help students between the age of 14 and 19 develop new skills that will put them in a better position when exploring career options in the creative industry.

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BYOD Case Study: St Crispin’s School

cell phone 2St Crispin’s School is a slightly larger-than-average secondary school serving the town of Wokingham, England. An 11-18 school, it has 1102 students. The number of students with special education needs is about average, whilst the proportion of students from ethnic minority backgrounds is below average. Relatively few students are eligible for free school meals.

St Crispin’s was attracted to the idea of BYOD because, as Mike Elward, Assistant Head/Director of e-learning says

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Responsible Use

Girl with a tie, who's the boss now?The general thrust of education these days is on student-centred learning. This is often expressed by depicting on the teacher’s role as being the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Regardless of whether you agree that that’s how things should be (and as it happens I don’t: see Please! No More Mantras!), the often-stated philosophy these days is that students know best.

But does stating that philosophy mean that it is observed in practice?

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BYOD Case Study: George Spencer Academy

Tween Cell Phone TextingGeorge Spencer Academy is a mixed secondary school in Nottingham, England, with 1350 students aged 11-18. Although it is located in a large town, it has only a small proportion of students who are eligible for free school meals.

The school decided to go down the BYOD road in order to be able to explore the potential of personal devices without incurring costs of purchase, training or technical support. The idea also fits very well with the school’s vision, which is concerned with giving a personalised learning experience to all students.

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Pictures as stimulii

girl and trainI always carry a camera around with me – as well as my phone. Why? Because you never know when you might see something interesting enough to use as a stimulus for an article. And why both? Because each one gives better results in different lighting conditions. Interestingly, my camera, which boasts a Leica lens, copes less well than  my phone in the dark – which is why I used my camera for the night street scenes shown here. I like the slightly out-of-focus effect, and the fact that in one of them the darkness is almost overwhelming. I think if you teach you should encourage your students to always carry a camera of some description with them at all times. And if you are a Head of Department, encourage your staff to do the same. Here are my reasons.

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What’s the story?

Story hour.How I hate the word “narrative”! At least, I detest the way it has been usurped by smart-suited political advisers who say things like “We need a new narrative”.

But sometimes, like now, I get what they are talking about, though I prefer to use the word “story”. And my question is: what is the story, what is the whole experience, of ICT in your school?

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Mobile Learning: A Visit to Flitch Green Academy

Flitch Green (4)Although I visited Flitch Green to talk about technology – specifically, iPads and mobile learning – I discovered that as in any good school the technology serves the vision of the school, which is about learning.

Flitch Green Academy is somewhat unprepossessing – at least from the outside. But once you go through the door, it’s a different story.

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You must be joking, right?

fp80108-04I don’t know if many people ever look at the categories that blog posts have been assigned to. I know I do sometimes, especially if I’m looking for a particular article or type of article. But, in the interests of making people’s lives as easy as possible as far as finding articles on the ICT in Education website is concerned, I not only assign articles to categories but sometimes make up new categories in order to be even more specific. Thus it was that I recently created a new category called Really?

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Recommended reading

ReadingHere is a selection of online articles that I think worth reading – some of them are my own (he says modestly), but others are others’! They cover a wide range of topics, including the flipped classroom, Bring Your Own Technology, what happens in an internet minute, up and coming conferences and others.

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BYOD Case Study: Finborough School

student_ipad_school - 143Here is an interesting case study of how a small school has successfully introduced BYOD with a particular group of pupils.

Finborough School is an independent, ie private, all-through school, ie age range 2-18, in a rural English setting. It has 274 pupils.

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