I’m up in London, just been to The BETT educational technology show. I forgot to take my iRiver to do some podcasting. Sorry, I’m not really in that mindset anymore what with the PGCE. Anyway here is a little write up:
A boardless interactive whiteboard. Project onto anything, and write or click with a special pen that sends an infrared signal back to a unit that you strap (or glue) onto your projector. The unit works out how far off centre your pen is and hey your ink appears on the wall. The cost is around £400, so its cheap but the other advantages are that its portable, you don’t need to install anything on the wall; and the image can be of any size. You can us it in a large hall on a 150 inch projection.
Compubits: ONfinity CM2
There was a flip chart ink board from 3M that could be projected for £800.
I went to see the UK Moodle guys, just to say hello. I spoke with Miles Berry who I had heard interviewed on Leon Cych’s Learn for Life. Miles has just won the Becta Primary Ed Award for 2005 for his work with Moodle. We chatted about it’s use in a Primary context and about blogging. He didn’t seem to share my concerns that the interface design was geared towards tertiary education. I should have stuck around to See Drew Buddie who is one of the pioneers of Moodle in secondary ed. (Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth). But I met the guys from my course and they dragged me away. A bit stupid really because I aslo wanted to talk with Andrew Field who seems to be the author of half the free learning resources on the web. Its just I’m just a little zonked out at the moment from lack of sleep.
I found an interesting online learning community goldstarcafe.net based in Litton, Derbyshire. Rob Hart, a director knows my friend Maeve who also lives in the village, that was a nice coincidence. The kids can log on and learn with other children. Seems like a nice idea but I haven’t test driven. There’s quite a digital cottage industry establishing itself in the Peak district now.
If you can have Moodle for free, there were plenty of companies selling VLE’s and peddling content, often content that had been created for a particular LEA, I wonder about the copyright of some of these resources.
Continuing in the Sheffield vein, South Yorkshire eLeaning programme were there peddling their wares because they have spent the millions of pounds of European funding and now have to try and make money. Only thing is that they couldn’t clearly tell me what they were selling they were selling nor who too. They were just left one worried tax payer.
[...] Interestingly Stephen Downes shares the same reserve about Moodle for younger children that I mentioned here when I talked to Miles Berry (a primary asst. headteacher). There’s too much small text and module boxes. The book Moodle E-Learning Course Development, by William H. Rice IV, has been posted as a PDF link to Schoolforge. The 73 page book is a free download. David M. Bucknell writes, “I think schoolforge.net and others of you might want to consider putting the e-book on your sites for download. Personally, I see a downside to moodle for primary/elementary schoolers (mainly that it’s too complicated visually vs. say, Manhattan, which hasn’t taken off the same way), but I can’t nay-say what Steve points out about the positive force the software has been for getting people interested in OSS. So, you can download the pdf form Open Source Schools and put it on yours. If you want.” [...]