Red Hat und SUSE, die Platzhirsche im Enterprise-Bereich, verfolgen eine andere Strategie: Red Hat finanziert das Fedora-Projekt, das die Grundlage für das kommerzielle Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) bildet. SUSE verfährt mit OpenSuse und dem Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) ähnlich, auch wenn man sich hier mittlerweile um eine aktivere Community bemüht.

Das Problem bei dieser Taktik: gemeinnütige Organisationen, die auf professionelle Software angewiesen sind, aber mit ihrem Etat haushalten müssen, fallen hier möglicherweise unter den Tisch. Auch Debian ist hier nicht immer eine Alternative, wenn die Software relativ aktuell sein soll.

Die logische Konsequenz für Wikimedia, die Organisation hinter Wikipedia: nach und nach ein Wechsel der verwendeten Software von einem Mix aus verschiedensten Fedora- und Red-Hat-Varianten hin zu einem einheitlichen Ubuntu-Verband, natürlich mit Ubuntu 8.04 Hary Heron. Ein weiterer Vorteil von Ubuntu greift hier ebenfalls: da Ubuntu 8.04 eine Version mit Long Term Support (LTS) ist, besteht keine Gefahr, in einem Jahr veraltete Software einsetzen zu müssen. Die Resourcen für die bisherige Organisation der Server können nun anderweitig eingesetzt werden, eine einheitliche Struktur ist gut und hilfreich.

Das alles bedeutet nicht, dass das Ubuntu-Modell das einzig sinnvolle ist. Ob Canonical mit dieser Strategie wirklich Gewinne erwirtschaften kann, muss erst noch bewiesen werden. Auf alle Fälle ist das Ubuntu-Modell bisher ein gelungener Mix aus Debian und Red Hat: eine kostenlose Version für alle, egal ob Privatanwender oder Firmen, betreut von einer vertrauenswürdigen Firma.

Jika ingin download secara langsung dapat juga melalui link http://www.ubuntu.com/products/GetUbuntu/download. Tetapi bila ingin dikirimkan sebuah CD Ubuntu secara gratis dapat diperoleh melalui link https://shipit.ubuntu.com/. Pilih-pilih terlebih dahulu sebelum download, pilih paket instalasi yang diinginkan dan sesuaikan dengan kebutuhan yang ada.

Selain mendapatkan sebuah CD Ubuntu, para calon pengguna sistem operasi yang satu ini bila mendaftar akan diberikan kenang-kenangan yaitu berupa stiker. Stiker yang diberikan juga memiliki desain yang sangat menarik. Ayo gabung sekarang juga dan dapatkan keuntungan dengan menggunakannya . Selamat mencoba.

Learning and Teaching Scotland - the main organisation for the development of the curriculum - analysed the effect of a "brain training" game. It also found improvements in pupils' concentration and behaviour.

The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scotland using the Brain Training from Dr Kawashima game on the Nintendo DS every day. The project followed a pilot study in Dundee last year.

LTS worked with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education and the University of Dundee to see if the pilot results were replicated on a wider scale.

Improved scores

A group of pupils played the game, which included reading tests, problem-solving exercises and memory puzzles, for 20 minutes at the start of their class for nine weeks. A control group continued their lessons in a more traditional manner. The pupils were tested at the beginning and then the end of the study. Researchers found that while all groups had improved their scores, the group using the game had improved by a further 50%. The time taken to complete the tests also dropped by five minutes, from 18.5 minutes to 13.5 minutes. The improvement in the games group was double that of the control group.

Less able children were found to be more likely to improve than the highest attainers and almost all pupils had an increased perception of their own ability. The study also found that it made no difference if the children had the game at home and noted no difference in ability between girls or boys.

It found improvements in absence and lateness in some classes. Derek Robertson, LTS's national adviser for emerging technologies and learning, said the results offered the first independent, academic evidence that this type of computer game could improve attainment when used in an educational context.

He said: "Computer games help flatten out the hierarchy that exists in schools - they are in the domain of the learner as opposed to the domain of the school. "This intervention encouraged all children to engage and get success in a different contextual framework; one in which they don't know their place."

More on both, below. 'The Winning Game' is a fairly simple game (now suite of games) which use in-game coaching and post-game reviews/debriefs to help students develop skills which can lead to more successful learning. For example, after each game students have four basic questions to answer:

• What did I want to happen?
• What actually happened?
• What caused this gap/success?
• What can I do to improve on this?

And the same approach was also extended for use away from the game - for reviewing performance on English essays, for example. Some of the students spoke at the event, and one noted that she does now use this method to help her in other tasks - including ones outside of school. Having students develop the skills and then applying them outside of school is one of the goals of the project, so that was promising.

A first pilot has completed with Perth High School, and the game developed to address a number of concerns and comments. Apparently the game has helped high and moderate achievers better than low achievers - Jim Scott the head teacher noted that convincing students who already identify with failure that they can learn how to be successful is a challenging task.

The Winning Game was the result of a collaboration between a number of bodies and individuals, including:

The Winning Scotland Foundation, a charity whose goal it is to "encourage more Scots to fulfil their potential and become winners"; Yehuda Shinar, author of 'Think Like a Winner' and past advisor to the England Rugby Squad and the Scottish swimming team (amongst others); Learning Teaching Scotland; and game developers TPLD.

A new pilot is now running with (I think) six schools.

As an aside, I would note that this process seems very similar in principle to 'Personal Development Planning', which is being enthusiastically adopted in the FE and HE education sectors in the UK at the moment.

Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training in schools

As noted, Derek Robertson told me that LTS had revealed the first results from their extended study into the use of Brain Training on the Nintendo DS. 32 schools took part in the study, 16 test and 16 control. The test group students used Brain Training for 30 minutes per day every day for nine weeks. Control group students followed their usual practice.

Both groups improved in their maths accuracy over the nine week period - with the test group having a gain that was statistically significantly higher than that of the control group. The mean improvement was around 50% higher than that of the control group. Gains seemed to be higher for the lower attainment students (preliminary analysis). Both groups also improved in their speed of computations. Again, the test group's improvement was statistically significantly higher than the control group's.

A number of additional side benefits are noted in the report - some of which will require further analysis of the data. One notable observations is a "Slight – but statistically significant – improvement in attitude towards school in the experimental group, but not in controls".

The announcement of the release is on the Consolarium blog, and the summary report can be found here.

Where's the relevance? Where's the context? Do we not know by now that skills like this can't be taught in isolation? If LTS make it clear that these are ideas for adaptation within investigations then fair enough, I suppose.

2nd gripe: lots of mentions of starting this as early as P7 - why the wait? Right! Enough girning for now!

প্রথম কথা, আপনি উইন্ডোজ বাদ দিয়ে লিনাক্স  কেন ব্যবহার করবেন? আন্ডা-বাচ্চা সবাই জানেন আমরা বেশীর ভাগ কম্পিউটার ব্যবহারকারী উইন্ডোজের পাইরেটেড তথা সোজা বাংলায় চোরাই সংস্করণ ব্যবহার করি। কেননা দিয়ে এক্সপি, ভিস্তা বা অন্যান্য সফটওয়্যার কিনতে গেলে এতটাকা লাগবে যা আমাদের সামর্থের বাইরে (এবং আমরা কিনতেও আগ্রহী নই)। আমাদের দেশে কপিরাইট আইন পোলিও রোগের চেয়েও হাজার গুণ দুর্বল। ফলে আপনি চোরাই সফটওয়্যার ব্যবহার করেও আমরা পার পেয়ে যাচ্ছি। কিন্তু আমরা যে চুরি করছি তা নৈতিক দৃষ্টিকোণ থেকে কি ঠিক? নিজের চরিত্র নিয়ে আমরা গর্বিত - কিন্তু আমরা চোর (এটা বিশ্বাস করা কঠিন হচ্ছে?)। শুধু কি উইন্ডোজ? অফিস, গ্রাফিক্ম, ভিডিও সম্পাদনা, ইত্যাদি কাজের তাবদ সফটওয়্যার ও চুরি করে ব্যবহার করছি। যাহোক, উইন্ডোজ (চোরাই) ব্যবহার করায় অনেক ঝক্কি। ক'দিন পরপরই কিছু না কিছু সমস্যা দেখা দেয়। তারপর বোনাস হিসেবে সিস্টেম ক্রাশ, ভাইরাস তো আছেই।

পক্ষান্তরে, লিনাক্স ব্যবহার করলে আপনি কোন চোরাই কপি নয়, আসল কপিটাই ব্যবহার করবেন যার হয়তো কেবল সিডিটাই কিনতে হবে অথবা বন্ধু বা কারো কাছ থেকে জোগাড় করে নিতে হবে। লিনাক্স ওপেনসোর্স তথা মুক্ত উৎস্যের পণ্য। আপনি এগুলো যত খুশী কপি, বিলি করতে পারেন। সফটওয়্যারের কোন দিক পছন্দ না হলে মনের মত করে হেরফের করে নিতে পারেন (এর জন্য অবশ্য ভাল জ্ঞান থাকা লাগে)। জিএনইউ পাবলিক লাইসেন্সে-র আওতায় লিনাক্স পণ্যসমূহ ছাড়া হয়, তাই আপনি এর স্বাধীনতা সম্পর্কে নিশ্চিত থাকতে পারেন।

লিনাক্সে আপনি পান সবচে' ভাল জিনিস টা । উইন্ডোজের চেয়েও লিনাক্সের কর্মীসংখ্যা অনেক অনেক গুণ বেশী। বিশ্বাস হচ্ছে না? নিচে উবুন্টুর যেসব লিংক পাবেন সেগুলো অনুসরণ করলেই দেখবেন লিনাক্স নিয়ে কত জন, প্রতিটা মুহূর্ত, অষ্টপ্রহর গবেষণা চালাচ্ছে, কাজ করছে। উবুন্টু সহ লিনাক্সের অসংখ্য ফোরামে প্রতি মুহূর্তে শতশত সমস্যা, প্রতিকার, পরামর্শ, টিপস, উন্নয়ন তথ্য, আবদার জমা হচ্ছে। আমার মত দিনাজপুর কিম্বা আরো দূর শহরের লিনাক্স ব্যবহারকারী কি সমস্যা, কি করি, এটা কিম্বা ওটা হলে ভাল হয় ইত্যাদি লিখতে জানাতে পারে লিনাক্স সম্প্রদায়কে। ক'জন উইন্ডোজ ব্যবহারকারী তা পারেন? পারেন তারা সরাসরি ডেভেলপারদের সঙ্গে আলাপ করতে, চাহিদার কথা জানাতে? তা কেবল লিনাক্সেই সম্ভব।

এখন অন্যান্য সফটওয়্যারের কথা বলি। অনেকেই বলে থাকেন লিনাক্স সফটওয়্যার পাওয়া যায় না। কথাটা খুব সামান্যই সত্য। লিনাক্স সফটওয়্যার দোকানে তেমন একটা পাওয়া যায় না (ঢাকার খবর জানি না), কিন্তু চাইলেই আপনি তা পেতে পারেন। অবশ্য লিনাক্স অপারেটিং সিস্টেমের সিডিতেই অনেক সফটওয়্যার থাকে ফলে সাধারণ কাজের জন্য আপনার বাইরের সফটওয়্যারের দরকার নাও হতে পারে। হলেও কোন সমস্যা নেই। ইন্টারনেট সংযোগ থাকলে তো কথাই নেই। ডাউনলোড করুন। নতুবা বাংলাদেশের যত লিনাক্স ব্যবহারকারী বা সম্প্রদায় আছে তাদের কারো সাথে কথা বলুন। বলেই দেখুন। (দিনাজপুর ও আশপাশে আপনার অবস্থান হলে আমার সাথে যোগাযোগ করুন; আরো তথ্য  নিচে)।

ধরুন আপনি একটা ক্রিম ব্যবহার করেন। সেটা কি দিয়ে তৈরী আপনি কি তার খোঁজ রাখেন না? ( না রেখে থাকলে আপনি হয়তো পাগলা গারদে থাকেন, নয়তো পরিচিতদের উপর যথেষ্ট আস্থাবান)। উইন্ডোজ কি দিয়ে তৈরী আপনি কি তা জানেন? আপনি যখন ইন্টারনেটে সংযোগ দেন, আপনার একান্ত গোপনীয় তথ্য কি পাচার হয় না? সত্যিই হয় না? কে বলেছে? মাইক্রোসফট? আপনি কারো মুখের কথা এমনি কেন বিশ্বাস করবেন? যে যুগে ভাই ভাইয়ের না সেখানে এত গুরুত্বপূর্ণ একটা বিষয়ে.. লিনাক্স  কি দিয়ে তৈরি সেটা সবাই জানতে, দেখতে পারে এবং জানেও। এর সোর্স কোড উন্মুক্ত। সময় থাকলে আপনি কোডের প্রতিটা লাইন যাচাই করে দেখবেন নতুবা বিশ্বজুড়ে ডেভেলপার, ইউজার, সমালোচক দের উপর ভরসা রাখুন।

উবুন্টু কেন? অন্য লিনাক্স কেন নয়?

আমি কম্পিউটার নিয়ে লেখাপড়া করিনি.. যাহ! কারেন্ট গেল

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16 days til seminary starts!!!  yay the countdown is on!! i can't wait to see everyone!! yaaaaay.

Enough of that. I had three showers today. THREE. That's an extra shower for those who know me best. I hate this hot weather. On the weather forecast i noticed that Cambridge Bay was 7 degrees and raining. I wanted to be instantly teleported there.  Unfortunately, my teleporter is in the shop. 

Matty's mad at me. I'm sorry Matty. And no, i'm not mad at you. You are forgiven.  I love you!

In other news..I am so damn bored. Bored enough to blog about it. I also smell like woodsmoke. mmmm campfire. Too bad its in my back yard. i have done hardly any outdoorsey type stuff this summer.  I wonder if anyone from LTS would be into camping one weekend before it gets really really cold?

Below, a summary of my day, including highlights from the Talent Arcade, the single talk I attended at the conference proper, and other odds and ends. A bit rambling, but that was the day for me...

The day started with an arranged meeting with Rebecca Thompson of 4Talent to hand over some leaflets for the UWS games courses. That was my first surprise as Rebecca turned out to be an old friend from when I was an undergrad - so that was a nice start to the day!

I took a walk around the games and flashing lights on display on the ground floor - a heavy Wii presence, though the biggest queues were undoubtedly for the PS3 title Little Big Planet. I had a chat with an industry recruiter, discussing opportunities for students graduating next year, then played through part of a level of Little Big Planet. And all this before 10am when the conference officially started!

The opening session of the Talent Arcade was titled 'The Knowledge: Get Into Games'. I think few surprises, but the panel emphasised the need for a good CV. Rob from RealTimeWorlds indicated that they were starting a graduate training program and a placement program, both news to me, but both good news. Recruiters in the industry never hesitate to mention how good a placement is on a student's CV - but relatively few companies actually offer placements.

The following session, 'The Knowledge: Show me the Money' looked at how games companies and startups-to-be can look for, and secure funding. The shock revelation for many startups with great ideas looking for investors to fund their game is that investors tend to want to make money too! Recommendation for graduates? Get a job in the industry first (with a small company if you have dreams of starting your own some day), and get some experience and friends in the industry before you try to start your own company.

However, this point has just been completely reversed in the current panel - with the caveat that you have a good team, and are prepared for some very hard graft and some difficult times.

I spent only limited time in the main conference - Graham Brown-Martin spoke a little on the use of commercial games in the classroom, and introduced Derek Robertson of LTS who outlined some of their great work (previously noted here). Derek's larger scale trial with Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training (32 schools, 16 test and 16 control) is complete, and the results should be out soon. Check the Consolarium blog for news.

One highlight was meeting a couple of former students who graduated just last month - but who are already two months into their games careers - and hearing about another student's progress from his new boss.

I then dipped into the screenings room to see David Braben and Steve Burgess of Frontier talking about the genesis and development of Lost Winds, the WiiWare title. The session was full of good ideas for budding game designers, and interesting to see how the game had its genesis in a single page design submitted to a weekly competition within the company. That and being in the same room as David Braben, co-author of Elite - a game which had a BIG impact on me as a youth, and seeing that Elite IV is forthcoming, made it another highly enjoyable session.

Finally, if you are around Edinburgh tomorrow, head over to the conference center for the free Education morning. I'll update tomorrow, and mention Dare Protoplay, 4Talent's "The Brief" - a great opportunity for graduates to get into the industry - as well as tomorrows talks and happenings. Ran out of room and time today...

So the million dollar question I suppose is this…can the concept of simplicity improve the teaching and learning in our schools. Certainly, with the challenges faced by education in this modern world such as globalisation, technological innovation and the rise of the so-called information society might there be a temptation to produce over-complicated solutions to these challenges when instead we could perhaps stand back and consider what we already have. Is the knowledge-based society really advanced through highly technical software engineering, or can its progress be best served by our creative use of existing tools such as GLOW together with the peer-assisted learning it can so easily encourage and facilitate? Much of today's educational software seems to work on the assumption that more is better when it comes to using sophisticated graphics. However, the opposite is often closer to the truth, according to psychologist Richard Mayer who wrote that "One of the biggest problems I see in educational software is that it overloads the learner. We know from studies that humans can focus on only a few things at any one time, so it's important to keep graphics simple and concise".

So does having more choice actually further complicate a system which in places is positively groaning with innovation fatigue? Take science. In physics, for example, one measurement of just how simple a theory is is the number of free parameters involved. A theory with numerous adjustable free parameters is recognised as less desirable than one with fewer free parameters, and an important goal of physics is to posit theories with the minimum number of parameters required to explain the observations. Less complications. Simple, in fact.

Thinkers and scientists starting with the monk William of Ockham in the thirteenth century (hence the title of this post) and including Karl Popper, Elliot Sober, Richard Swinburne and even Einstein have all tried to distill the essence of just what exactly simplicity really means. Indeed, Einstein wrote "Theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." The common message from all these folk comes across as make it simple, not simpler, or rather, simplistic.

Perhaps the desirable concept of simplicity is more effectively advanced by careful evaluation of existing solutions and approaches rather than constantly trying to re-invent the wheel. Let’s perhaps look at what we are under-utilising in the teaching and learning tools we have, rather than trying to devise new ones. Are we all using AiFL effectively for example? Very simple approaches involved with this, but so very effective when it comes to raising attainment. Maybe the question we should be asking in many cases is ‘should we’ instead of ‘can we’ when faced with the challenge of change.

And as a post-script...I've just written this post on Windows live writer which automatically posts into wordpress. Did I really need to download the software and use it when simply typing my post into my wordpress blog would have done the same job?  are the features in 'live writer' really useful  and are they really necessary ?   Discuss.

The purpose of this study visit was to look at embedding ICT into secondary school subject curricula. The background to this was that the Finns have achieved considerable success in this area of education, with much of the academic research on the subject indicating that this might be a contributory factor behind the impressive PISA rankings achieved by Finland in recent years.

There were three distinct aspects making up the visit; firstly, observations of classroom practice and discussions with teachers and school managers. Secondly, a look at school support services underpinning both technology and pedagogy, and thirdly, meetings with university researchers currently working on ICT in education projects, as well as government policy makers and initial teacher education providers to give an overview of national directives and policy making.

The classroom visits were highly informative. Both were to schools on the outskirts of Helsinki. The first school was very advanced in its use of ICT in subject curricula, particularly in science and language education. The school was using Moodle to maintain a virtual learning environment (VLE) to which the students had access both in school and from home. The VLE was used for both class work and assignments, and enabled students to collaborate on projects as well as working independently on their own portfolios. Links to resources, as well as feedback on completed work were available to students who were expected to complete and return work to meet deadlines in electronic format. Deep learning was facilitated by the students constructing ‘glossaries’ hyperlinked to the wiki’s (which of course could be accessed by others, including their teacher for up to the minute feedback) they were building. Topics were introduced using lectures and by constructing mind-maps which the students could use as study guides allowing them to progress to more in-depth study required of them. This mixture of didactic teaching, independent study and collaborative work has been given the term ‘meld’ to describe the mixture of styles. In many ways a pattern of blended learning has emerged which works well in this school, with the use of ICT firmly embedded into practice but in a way which complements rather than replaces existing and more traditional forms of teaching and learning.

The second school had adopted an altogether different approach to ICT with the widespread introduction of interactive whiteboards. They were engaged in debate over the best ways in which to use these to encourage pupil participation in lessons and approaches adopted included using the whiteboards to facilitate multi-media and software use, introducing concepts and topics which were then further developed through group and individual work.

The common themes in both schools were the ‘blended learning’ approach using ICT to complement and enhance, rather than to replace existing practice and particularly the use of ICT to extend the use of formative and peer assessment through feedback, and collaboration. There are interesting and useful parallels with the planned use of GLOW in Scottish schools here where this idea of blended learning certainly having potential in our classrooms. My own practice during the next session will see me developing this approach and in my role as a GLOW mentor in school, encouraging and helping colleagues to use the GLOW applications to develop their own practice in this way. I think there is much to be gained from this measured approach of combining the different teaching and learning strategies into a ‘package’ which provides both variety and structure for pupils. All too often, the literature and experience suggests, we adopt almost stop-start tactics ditching the previous initiative for the newest idea without proper evaluation and measurement of outcomes. The PISA rankings for Finnish schools indicate that this blended learning approach could be instrumental in helping with raising attainment. This should be perhaps one of the underlying philosophies in the lesson planning process.

The other aspects of this visit were to do with national planning and support for schools, and research into ICT use in education. The Finns had successfully adopted a national strategy for equipping schools with hardware and funding staff training, and then leaving the cities and regions to develop teaching and learning approaches using the ICT, although national learning objects (off the shelf resources which could be adapted for different stages and subjects) had been initially produced. Schools appeared to have a large amount of autonomy in how they developed this use in some areas whilst the larger cities adopted a more centralised approach. Helsinkicity has developed their own VLE (similar to GLOW) using the ‘Fronter’ platform in use in some English education authorities. This is backed up with a support centre for teachers, the Helsinki Media Centre, which provides training and support in all aspects of technological education (including media and music). The training and support is provided by experienced classroom teachers who are identified by the media centre as having particular skills for each individual training need. Certainly this approach is ‘user-friendly’ for teachers needing support and a model which I am intending to use in school during the next session with the continued GLOW training focusing on teaching and learning applications. This will take the form of individual projects with school departments and weekly ‘drop-in’ sessions.

My discussions with researchers at the University of Helsinki addressed the area of raising attainment using ICT and the problems encountered in undertaking quantitative research projects. Whilst there is a plethora of research which addresses qualitative aspects of ICT use, data which measures actual gains in attainment from using ICT is harder to find. Our discussions focused on the methodological problems of such studies. Following this meeting I was able to re-align my own research methodology to follow a more design-based process enabling the project to adapt to evolving issues which arose as the research proceeded, and the interaction with the Finnish researchers and teachers has informed the rationale for the next phase of my classroom-based research into embedding ICT into secondary school subject teaching and learning.

I also had interesting and informative meetings at the national board of education and with one of the academics involved with initial teacher education. Both these meetings provided a useful insight into national policy and practice informing and directing educational development in Finland, particularly concerning ICT introduction and ongoing support in schools. Although the main impact of my study visit upon my own professional practice will be primarily concerned with classroom practice within my own school and authority as well as on my research projects, these last meetings helped me to see Finnish classroom teaching and learning within a more national context.

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En el siguiente grafico podemos darnos una mejor idea:

Como podemos ver estas subversiones solo son para las versiones LTS las cuales tienes mayor soporte, siendo 4 subversiones con 6 meses entre ellas. Las versiones normales no tienen subversiones. Gracias al blog del tuxpepino por la noticia.

Aqui algunos links de descarga (pulsar la imagen):

Learning Teaching Scotland's Connected Magazine is now available online. This edition carries a series of articles on Literacy and Journey to Excellence

El gráfico de arriba da a conocer el proceso de las cuatro subversiones de Ubuntu 8.04 y la forma de cómo van a ir evolucionando las próximas versiones de nuestro querido Ubuntu. Finalmente, les dejo los link de descarga:

Para descargar Ubuntu 8.04.1 hagan un clic por acá

Para probar Kubuntu 8.04.1 dirigirse aquí

Xubuntu igual tiene su nueva subversión, la que puedes descargar acá.

I had decided to have the filming with me teaching done with primary 6 as they will still be at the school next year, they are more enthusiastic and better behaved and I got more parental permissions in!  When I had finished my explanation and the children got down to using glow I actually had to tell them that they were allowed to talk as they were trying so hard to be extra good that they were totally silent!

The lesson (I had got a bit of a fright when asked to do this, being the 3rd last day of term) I decided to do involved having a lesson plan on the noticeboard page of my Malawi glow group that the pupils had to follow involving documents and surveys.  I had them skim reading the first few pages of an information book I had saved on the documents page and then aswering questions on it on a survey.  They were then to go onto the discussions page and chat to talk about games that did not need any resources that I could do in Malawi.

Some of the pupils also got interviewed and I think they did quite well although I was not able to see as I had to stay in the class.

Afterwards I went to the advisory service to meet the other people coming out on secondment and to hear a bit more about what I will be doing next year.  I will be doing 2/3 days (I am hoping 3) a week on glow and the others on a curricular aspect of curriculum for excellence although there will be a lot of doing other bits and pieces.  As far as I could gather the glow and CforE aspects will also tie in together as a focus of the glow work is to be how to use it in learning and teaching. 

The only thing worrying me is the amount of food sitting in the office I will be in - apparently it is always like that.  I will need to work on my willpower!

I guess what this is leading to is this - pupils think learning should be fun. Mine tell me that when learning is fun, they are thinking about what they are doing. When a lesson isn't fun, they are thinking about when it's going to end. Certainly today, the bell crept up on us unnoticed, whereas quite often in classes the lack of concentration and fidgeting kicks in at least 10-15 minutes before the end !

But do teachers think lessons should be fun? I still hear a lot of the 'you're here to learn' and 'school's hard work - it's not meant to be fun'  type comments. Brian Boyd certainly thinks learning should be fun. Of course he wanted it to a part of ACfE...but was apparently told that to have done this would have been 'sending out the wrong message' so there's not the 5th capacity that he perhaps had in mind. Maybe using games is a way forward here. Kids prefer learning tasks which are fast, active, enquiry-based and which use multiple sources of information in parallel on which they can concentrate for short intensive bursts. Now, traditional school lessons may not meet these demands from today's digital learners and surely we have to adapt teaching to suit the learners? young people today are not the same as they were ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. It never ceases to amaze me how adaptable kids are, so should us teachers not also try to be adaptable and flexible in our approach to lesson planning?

Research shows that learning and recall improve when the learner is performing motor activities, when developing skills is set in familiar contexts and when it engages, motivates and inspires pupils. I have certainly found this to be the case when working with my classes on GLOW and we are developing the use of games to reinforce existing learning as well as to introduce new concepts, and they love working this way. It's a natural extension of our use of GLOW this year.

Derek Robertson at LTS is doing some really exciting and groundbreaking work in the area of gaming for education.. look out for him if you are going to the SFL in September.

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/ictineducation/gamesbasedlearning/aboutgbl/index.asp

So....should learning be fun ? my pupils certainly think so - and the customer is usually right !!

.

However just as I was trying to persuade myself to sorting everything out we found out that Catherine from LINK had somehow, I really don't know how she did it, managed to get the airline to up our weight limit to 45kg each.  Of course as delighted as I was at this I did also have a niggle in the back of my mind about whether the planes would actually be alright with that much extra weight!  (I don't like flying that much!)

I do not want to fill up to that weight but at least it means I can take all of my clothes!

My only other worry about going away is that my wind up phone and ipod charger never arrived.  I then ordered another one yesterday, asking for next day delivery knowing that someone would be in the house today.  It has not arrived either and this is the item I most need so hope it comes tomorrow.

The whole thing feels a little unreal and I am not sure when it is going to hit me what I am doing.  Ironically I am so busy getting ready to go that I do not have the time to think about what it will actually be like out there.   I still have silly things to do like clear the camera and video camera, make up a photo album and update my ipod.  And get some money out!

Primary 7 have been busy clearing out the classroom and getting ready for their assembly.  I have been busy getting next years p.4-7 set up with their glow passwords, changing them and logging on and having a look around what has already been set up.  This has taken some time, most of which is to do with the initial passwords that the pupils have to change - I should not have done this with p.3 (!?) but the thought of doing them all myself seemed less preferable.

I have really got going with p.6 using glow, their teacher and I are used to working together and we have been swapping over classes so I can work with them.  Tomorrow LTS are coming to video us for a DVD for SLF and interview myself and the children.  So after telling them all to be in school uniform I need to go and decide what to wear myself and do my nails etc!  I have set up a lesson on my Malawi glow group so they have to follow instructions to read a document and then answer questions on it through a survey.  If they are still filming after that we can use the discussions and/or chat pages on that glow group.

I had a lovely time in p.4 on Friday setting them up with glow.  One boy, who can be difficult but whom I have a real soft spot for, was really interested and did everything asked of him.  When I passed by him he just came out with 'I love glow'.  Now he had only been on about 5-10 mins at this point and had not done very much on it but it was just one of those lovely moments and so I then spent 10-15 mins showing him how to put on web links and contacts onto his my glow page and then how to change the size of pictures and load them on his my glow page.  Something I have put on the web links page for the classes is the link to the LTS copyright free images so that they know where to find images they are allowed to use.  By spending time with this boy and showing him how to do things the rest could not do yet I hope he stays interested and maybe it will be something that will help keep him interested in other things at school too.  Far fetched maybe but nice to think of!

After my presentation I attended a couple of sessions led by Neil Melville which were excellent the first was about sharing analyser projects and the second was about using the measurement and data tools. You can learn more about using the measurement tools and data tables in this online tutorial. There are some more online tutorials on some of the other Dartfish features available here.

My second presentation was all about extending learning beyond the classroom through the use of online spaces and tools. I promised the delegates that they would not have to take any notes (other than the address of this blog) as I would write about my presentation and post links to everything I made reference to through the blog. I deliberately set out not to use a PowerPoint presentation as I wanted to demonstrate that you can deliver your content through other vehicles. I also wanted the delegates to return to my blog to experience for themselves what I was trying to get across i.e. you can extend the learning and the engagement with your learners beyond the restrictions of the actual lesson/presentation. By coming back to the blog the delegates have the opportunity to: read this post and reflect, click on the links to learn more and do further research or post comments to me thus extending the impact of the conference and this is exactly what our pupils doing in a number of schools. If you are a conference delegate welcome back if not read on anyway you might find something that engages you.

I was conscious that my workshop had a slant towards PE and not every delegate was from a PE or sports background, but all that I talked to could be replicated for any subject. I started by visiting the Learning and Teaching Scotland PE website and directed the group towards this case study about using blogs and wikis as there are links to videos and tutorials on how to set up a blog and information about wikis. 

I then introduced the wonderful free  web tool delicious to create online book marks for sites that you find interesting and useful it can then be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. For a simple guide watch the video below (You probably will be unable to view the video in school as it is hosted on YouTube). You may find my PE bookmarks  useful. You may want to consider setting this up for your course or in a department to tag interesting sites or share frequently visited sites with pupils and or staff. This can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection.

I moved on to talk about Blogs for those of you who want to know a bit more about blogging I previously posted this video explaining blogging in simple terms . If you want to give blogging a go check out this set of tutorials for using wordpress the provider I use for this blog. If you look on the "links" section on the left hand side near the top of the page I have links to several PE blogs that you may find interesting.

The main point I was trying to establish is that blogs can provide a fantastic conduit for communication and collaboration with your learners. You can extend the learning beyond the confines of the lesson. Your learners can communicate with you leave you questions or work to look over etc and you can deal with these communications wherever you can get online. At this point I  spoke about RSS feeds and aggregators. You may find this video on using RSS feeds useful. The aggregator I demonstrated was netvibes a great bit of software to keep track of all blogs and websites that have content which is regularly updated. I find netvibes very useful as there are loads of plug ins that you can add and you can personalise it to your own needs and the best bit is that it is web based so if you sign up for your own account you can access it form any computer with an Internet connection. Ideal for use at home and school. Here is a video  about netvibes 

The next part of the presentation focused on wikis the following video (also on YouTube) will help you understand a little more about what a wiki is.

I used the Banchory H/Int2 wiki and explained that the content was there for people to download and use and share as long as they were willing to reciprocate and acknowledge the source. Yet again I was trying to demonstrate how we can use an online tool to extend the learning experience and provide additional support.  Wikis can also offer real scope for collaboration between teachers for resource development and between teachers and pupils for learning. I explained that teachers can sign up for free wikis that are advert free at wikispaces. Wikispaces also has video tutorials to help get you started within their help section.

When I was discussing the wikis I highlighted using Youtube to incorporate inspirational and interesting videos. There is actually a lot of very good content on Youtube and other video hosting sites such as google video. We use the videos as a hook for the pupils and also to make the wiki more attractive and lastly to engage the children though adopting a piece of their own culture. Our pupils are creating their own environments outside school with video, audio text and many other applications in sites such as bebo and myspace and facebook and we want our wiki to reflect some of that cool. I also demonstrated  Youtube annotation showing how value can be added to your you tube videos. This is the direction that Dartfish are moving through the Dartfish Moves platform where you can upload and annotate videos. I was gutted that I had to leave early and could not see the presentation on Datfish moves. Something else for you to check out is the Dartfish channel on YouTube.

I punctuated my first presentation in the morning with videos I had saved to my computer from YouTube using Zamzar. This is a very useful tool as most schools block video sharing sites or you may want to play a video on a laptop in an area with no access to an Internet connection. This article form Wired explains explains some other ways of saving videos to your computer. I like Zamzar as you can save videos to your computer in different formats and you can convert videos to different formats, it can also be used to convert many different types of files and documents from one type to another.

I hope you find this a useful summary of the day and i hope it continues your learning beyond my presentation. Please feel free to post comments about the day or ask further questions for clarification.

Download the article ICT IN PE Connected Magazine

The install process was easy just like the previous versions, I was just using my full HD for this. The install was 15mins, and once it booted to the desktop I was ready to start getting the system back to the way I like. First came downloading the updates, there was 162 updates which took a total of 30mins to download and install. Now it was to get the Nvidia drivers, a mere 4mins and that was me back to using the Nvidia drivers for 3D FX and gaming.

Now it was time to install the software that I used, that wasnt included in the main install. This process again only took a total of 15mins and they were ready to use. I copied all my music and my files that I backed up before the format and after transfering over USB (30mins) that was me back to a fully working and setup the way I like it laptop.

At first glance you dont really see much difference in this version. which you want as you dont want a learning curve (like XP to Vista) to get in the way. Everything felt a lot more zippy, and looked cleaner.

The Bad -

1. As normal my webcam didn't work out the box, but add a line to the repo's and thats it working.

2. For some reason I had to find out how to enable my Nvidia drivers, normally an icon appears and I click "allow". I had to enable the desktop effects for that to pop up, not a big issue but not the best way to approch this.

3. Alsa & Pulseaudio - Since Pulseaudio was enabled by default, when i was using skype and then tried to play secondlife there was no sound in Secondlife and if i ran SL first then opened Skype i had no sound in that.  A quick sudo apt-get install esound fixed that, I feel that this should not have been added just yet...a waiting period where a good percentage of apps using Pulse as the main audio and then impliment this would have been better.

As you can see my bad points are very small and nothing major, so far I am very impressed with this release and look forward to features and versions to come.

Idioma Español-España
Idioma Español-Argentina

Para quienes usan la RC2:

Idioma Español-España
Idioma Español-Argentina

Firefox les preguntará si desean instalar los agregados desde ese sitio. Le dan a "Permitir" (ALLOW) y una vez instalados, es necesario reiniciar Firefox. A seguir disfrutando de tu navegador favorito, en TU IDIOMA!

(Agradecimientos a LEGA por el TIP !)

Actualizacion: Como no me pareció útil crear otro POST donde alojar los idiomas de la nueva version de Firefox 3 FINAL, pues aquí también les dejo los agregados de idioma para el 3.0:

Idioma Español - Argentina
Idioma Español - España