Jonesieblog

K12 Online is an online conference “for educators around the world interested in the use of web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice”.

The conference consists of a series of presentations - videos, slideshows, audio etc, and the call for proposals for this year’s event has just been posted.

It would be great to have a strong Scottish representation, so go ahead and send in a proposal - I’m full of good intentions but only time will tell whether or not I actually put something together.

More details can be found on Darren Kuropatwa’s Blog

Stumble it!

This season I’m crewing for John Hookway in his RS400 dinghy. This is what we might look like on a good day:

I only started sailing last year, so I have a lot to learn! I’ll try to share some of the thing I pick up along the way.

The first thing that has become painfully apparent to me is that you need to be fit - in particular to have good core strength, as you spend a lot of time hiking:

Photo by dinghyman

So far, it seems that my main tasks are:

• Acting as ballast - moving around to keep the boat level in the water.
• Tacking and jibing
• Keeping the jib trimmed correctly
• Hoisting and dropping the spinnaker, and flying it when it’s up
• Adjusting the outhaul - tight for upwind travel and slack for reaches.
• Keeping an eye open for stuff that the helm might have missed.

I’m not particularly good at any of these yet, but at least I’ve got some things to work on!  John is a patient teacher, and we will be winning by the time the Summer Series gets going

Stumble it!

Two things brought this post into being - a conversation with my son, and a mandolin lesson.

The conversation with my son began with his declaration that he really likes art. I expressed my delight, especially since he had been much less enthusiastic at the start of the year. Through talking to him it became apparent to me that the change of heart is largely attributable to his teacher, Sheila Calder. My son used to be very anxious about getting art work “right”, but she has really helped him to relax and enjoy the process. My son said “You know how some teachers say ‘this is the way you have to do it’? Mrs Calder says that one of the things she likes about art is that it can be any way you want it to be.”

Thank you Sheila

My mandolin teacher is Andrew Brown. Tonight’s lesson was the first for over a month, as we have been away and prior to that my son had been pinching my lessons to do guitar with Andrew.

Andrew is hugely enthusiastic about music, and his enthusiasm is highly infectious. Before the lesson began I was considering letting my son take the lesson again, because I was feeling rather flat about my progress on the mandolin. By the end of the lesson I was feeling both positive about how much I have learned and fired up about the next steps.

Thank you Andrew

Stumble it!

I make no apologies for the self-congratulatory tone of this post - the ScotEduBlogs service has a new home, thanks to some funding from Learning and Teaching Scotland  and the Scottish Qualifications Authority, and I’m chuffed to bits.

John did all the leg-work that lead to this funding, so big thanks to him.

Externally, nothing looks different, apart from the appearance of LTS and SQA logos on the front page, but the site is now running on its own dedicated server.  This provides us with much greater confidence in the stability of the service, and some room to expand the facilities on offer.

This funding and the kind comments from  Joe at SQA mean a lot to me personally.  John, Peter and I have put a lot of our own time into this project, and I’m proud of what we have produced together - we delivered all the functionality we promised and more, in a very short timespan.  This is pretty rare for an IT project!

In the early days there was a somewhat mixed response to our plans, with questions about our motivations, and a vibe that maybe we should leave this stuff to the professionals at LTS,  so it has been very gratifying to see the big institutions in Scottish education now officially recognising the worth of scotedublogs.org.uk.

If you’re wondering what exactly scotedublogs.org.uk is, read John’s post, which explains it all superbly.

Stumble it!

A first glance at this image (click on it to view it full size) might lead you to conclude that I’ve installed yet another operating system on the EeePC.

Look more closely though and you’ll see the Firefox bar along the top. What you are seeing is EyeOS - an operating system that runs inside your browser.

It isn’t perfect yet, and someone is going to have to figure out a way to make money out of such services if they are going to be sustainable, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Surely the time is coming when all the “computer” most users will need is a browser.

Stumble it!