March 30, 2009
There’s been a fair bit published/blogged/tweeted about Sir Jim Rose’s Blueprint for a new primary curriculum. This report is due out in April 2009 but as been ‘leaked’ and reported widely. The recent press storm and associated knicker wetting is summed up by some great headlines: Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up by the Guardian Exit Winston ...
November 27, 2008
Seeing Steve Wheeler’s Emporer’s New clothes blog post reminded me of a little something we produced many years ago - now rebadged as The Vice Chancellor’s new VLE. Thanks to the wonder of Google Desktop I was able to find the original from about 8 years ago based on the experiences we had in about 1996 when I was working with ...
October 30, 2008
Having been involved in a number of projects using open source software (such as UsPaCe using Elgg, UPlace using DSpace and the BJHEinFE using Open Journal System) I got the thinking that it could be possible to move over to a totally OS lifestyle. Discussion with JISC’s Lawrie Phipps and my own experience working with partner colleges delivering HEinFE found that ...
June 13, 2008
There’s much around about Edupunk. Ok, I’m a late comer to the debate (though as this blog is very much in a backwater I’ll use debate as a very loose term) and links to it all. And there’s the obligatory youtube vid. It’s been interesting following the blog posts on Edupunk and as a backlash to Blackboard it’s ...
March 18, 2008
Roll up, roll up, roll up - get your IPR toolkit hereHopefully as Emerge projects you are aware of the Web2Rights project and that there is a focus group on the IPR toolkit in Leeds on the 7th April.The skeleton of the Toolkit has been produced and the content is on the Web2rights site. We are currently developing an IPR ...
February 25, 2008
When it comes to micro blogging I have to admit it’s not really held my attention. I was too late for Jaiku and I never really spent the time to fully exploit Twitter. We have, though, been spending a lot of time working with Elgg as part of the community area for the UsPaCe project. The community working with Elgg is ...
February 12, 2008
I seem to be spending a lot of time on Elgg at the moment with the UsPaCe project - which isn't an EMERGE project as we wrote the bid and sumitted it to the JISC Circular 1/07 capital programme call to see what feedback we would get so we could tweak it for the U & I call. However, ...
January 31, 2008
I’ve been looking recently at the terms of use Blackboard Scholar to see whether it really is a good thing or not. Its all a bit worrying really because its all a bit restrictive and to put it mildly, the use of BB Scholar means that projects are restricted in: 1) Their ability to change, adapt or alter the software in any way. This ...
January 26, 2008
We just come back from the EMERGE and U&I project Start Up Meeting in York. We’ve been amazed by the variety of projects funded - a massive range of the great and good. So what did we get up to? We launched phase one of our project website www.web2rights.org.uk Charlotte and Naomi ran a couple of back to back copyright workshops and ...
May 24, 2007
After the London event I thought I'd better try and confront my scepticism and see what was so engaging about Second Life. So after a quick installation I got about 15 minutes before my (new and expensive) laptop flicks to a very retro 640 * 480 16 colour display, coughs and dies. So what did I get from my ...