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March 21, 2011 By

Ten Minutes on Twitter – Equinox

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21st March 2011

The challenge again – can 10 minute visits to Twitter generate sufficient information and ideas to assist our customers and our business? Is the exercise worthwhile?

8am

@tonyparkin Want your photo in Facebook ads? No? Facebook will use your photos in ads from today. Go to Account Settings, FB Ads tab & choose “No one”!

Interesting – yet again Facebook seems to be quietly eroding user’s privacy. This whole area has been discussed on Twitter and in blogs by many users.

@jobadge @oliverquinlan not me – husband is geneticist but knows his insects too – esp dragonflies, if u ever need 1 of those ID-ing !

Terrific – Oliver had a picture of some creepy crawly or other and didn’t know what it was – Jo kindly found him the answer. Twitter really is a fantastic tool.

@MikeBostock @johndavitt “The US experience tells us that criticising teachers rather than supporting the development of teaching is an unproductive route to follow” True enough – but also true in most walks of life?

@josiefraser The Digital Beyond is a blog about your digital existence and what happens to it after your death http://goo.gl/JHuOW http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/

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9am

@FSB_L_N_R Off to give a talk to students of Rutland College about arranging business events. Love their enthusiasm! Hope I am invited!

Terrific – this is the regional organiser of the Federation of Small Businesses – helping to improve links / relationships between schools and local companies.

i am not well. Damn you alcohol. Twitter is a conversation, and this unfortunate shall remain anonymous Smile

@kvnmcl What 3 easy to use online tools would you recommend to teachers? #3tools pls RT Leading staff meeting in ICT today

Kevin knows lots of great free online tools – he’s also probably using this as a way to help teachers understand he benefits of twitter

@dajbelshaw Feedly for iPhone (which is #awesome) is free for the next 72 hours: http://www.facebook.com/feedly

If Doug says it’s good – then it’s good

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@NikPeachey kids stories that read themselves http://www.storytimeforme.com/series

Out of time – explore it yourself! If it’s from Nik – it’s probably worth seeing

So -  what happened to the rest of the day?

A school network failed in a very fascinating way – one of the lads in year 6 had re-cabled a couple of points. Boredom can be so destructive.

Filed Under: Blogging, ICT Strategy, PSHE Tagged With: , , , ,
August 27, 2010 By

Ofcom Bulletin – Another view of what's happening

Issue 36 of the Media Literacy e-bulletin now available

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The current bulletin has some great information and can be downloaded from Ofcom’s site here.

The sign off on the introductory page ‘Enjoy the last of the summer’ suggests they may have been preparing this for some time :)

Links to all the below items are in the bulletin itself.

‘Social Media Surgeries supporting the Big Society’ – looks particularly interesting, as I’m a trustee for a social enterprise. I’ve been advocating that voluntary sector organisations should really get on board with social networking. Interestingly, American business author, Jim Collins, regards some of the approaches needed in education to be similar to those needed in voluntary sectors.

Media Literacy Conference 2010 is appealing, but not free :( There looks like there’ll be some great speakers and very useful breakout sessions.

ActionFraud has a wake up call. In June this year they found that of all the reports they took where a fraud had actually taken place, 37% occurred online.

Do you want your share of £9,000 worth of kit? The BT Internet Ranger Schools Award will be made to a school or a group of schools who encourage young people, up to the age of 16, to use their ICT skills to help other people learn about computers and go online.

The Ofcom Communications Market Report includes these snippets – .. the over 55s are the fastest growing age group to adopt technology… 16-24s are the most efficient users of communications services as they squeeze 9.5 hours of media consumption into just over 6.5 hours actual time (we used to go to t’pub) ..

Other notes –
There’s a document on a major research into young people, the internet and credibility.
ClickCeop for Facebook has now been downloaded 55,000 times.
Details of various related seminars and meetings are also included.

Links to all the items are in the bulletin itself – available here

Filed Under: Esafety, Social Networking, Trust Tagged With: , , , , , ,
July 7, 2010 By

Strategy and Tactics – so what?

Joined up thinking (lack of) - not exclusive to the public sector

Business ideas and developments fascinate me. Military history fascinates me. So what has that got to do with ICT in Primary Education?

Maybe quite a lot.

In military terms, strategy is what you do before a battle. This was (in)famously carried out in the First World War by the senior officers sat too far back. Mesopotnia by Rudyard Kipling makes a good read on this subject.

A more powerful example of strategy was employed by Hannibal in the battles at Lake Trasimene and at Canae – Wikipedia has long articles on both. Basically Hannibal made use of information in a much better way than his Roman counterparts and organised, fought and won the battles on his terms. (if you’re covering Romans and have some year 6 G&T who want to do something exciting – these are worth a look).

Tactics are what you do during the battle. This is when the commander in the field has to take control and make decisions which hopefully win the battle and fit with the long term strategy of the powers that be.

So much for military – what about business?

Here’s a business most people can understand – most people reading this blog have cars. I used to work in the car industry, when we still had one.

Car companies became obsessed with a strategy of growth – ‘the business will grow by x% in the next z years’. To grow any business in the face of terrific competition AND a changing environment – keep reading – is challenging.

When I was a lad a family friend had a Vauxhall with 100,000 miles on the clock. This was such a feat that he received a ‘5 9s’ tie from Vauxhall. In a few months my current Peugeot is likely to be the 4th car I’ve had with over 100,000 miles. So – if cars are lasting longer, surely  a growth strategy is even tougher?

The strategy converts into the sales tactics and marketing activities you then enjoy at the local car dealers.

What lessons / ideas do these tales offer to ICT in education?

For more insights in how business thinking MUST transfer to education – see my other blog www.eolat.co.uk

Filed Under: School Business Tagged With: , , ,