On Twitter today

After the good reception of this approach last week – it may be a regular feature.

In future posts the full web site address will be used, rather than the shortened versions. We’ve discovered that the shortened versions sometimes can’t be accessed through school filtering systems.

10am

Good news. Physio says I am two weeks ahead of schedule. Should be allowed on bike in one more week (@nickwhittome). Nick is a fantastic, helpful technical genius based in Ireland. That’s great news.

@DavidCookAuthor The Fall of the White Rose, visit Bosworth Battlefield at a truly wonderful heritage site! http://www.bosworthbattlefield.com/ Being a Yorkshireman, I’m not sure I like this idea.

@NikPeachey Teach Yourself to Teach with Tech: The first 10 tasks http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/nikpeachey/teach-yourself-teach-tech-first-10 If it’s by Nik Peachey – the chances are that it is very, very good!

@innovativeteach Prof. Sugata Mitra was great at #saltash11. You can find out more from when he spoke at our event in Nov. – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/teachers/archive/2011/01/25/share-part-of-the-uk-innovative-education-forum-with-your-colleagues.aspx This is from the Microsoft Partners in Learning group. Some of their stuff is really useful. They often highlight fantastic free resources from Microsoft. (Yep – free and Microsoft in the same sentence – ‘tis true! I am using the free LiveWriter to make this entry).

11am

@tonyparkin RT @the_college: Join @mberry in our new discussion on doing more for less with ICT -https://www.nationalcollege.org.uk/session-timeout?urlParams=servid=44 Oh – I do wish people wouldn’t do this – raise our expectations then dash them! Or maybe put an entry on the tweet – requires log-in

Two fire alarms by period two! How many more will there be today? Place your bets now! If I didn’t laugh I cry… I won’t name this teacher, but here’s a primary school teacher tweeting on her iphone – therefore completely bypassing the school proxies. When will the RBCs and the folks that set the rules realise that they are dealing with adults as well as pupils. Note to central ICT staff who think that adding radius servers to primary school networks are a good idea. They’re not. (personal view)
Update – this comment by @kernowbaird on twitter made me think – “good blog. but what is wrong with the primary teacher tweeting about fire alarms if she did it at break time?”
I agree with James – and I’ll add to it. What is wrong with adults using adult tools to support the learning and teaching. I often see tweets asking for a quick vote or for a visit to light up a blog or for an idea – these tweets are clearly during lesson times and they’re not all in PPA time. What are your thoughts?

@russeltarr Excellent maps re. World War Two / Origins of Cold War #historyteacher: http://tinyurl.com/6byamw2

This looks fantaastic -

The unfortunate thing is the link to the link to the link makes it crazily stupid to copy.Look – and this isn’t even the end of it

@thisisleics MP quits to join race to be Leicester’s mayor http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/MP-quits-join-race-mayor/article-3299965-detail/article.html

This is the ‘official’ twitter channel for our local paper The Leicester Mercury. Like the idea about quitting as an MP for an ‘odds on’ favourite job. I’m not a a gambler but ‘odds on’ favourites I can recall include .. (finish this sentence)

Noon

@The_NEN 21st Century burden: Parents are under immense pressure, writes Sophie Raworth

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12664259

@peterford The more I see of @missionexplore , the more I wish I had been a geography teacher I fully agree – so there are at least 2 closet geography folks out here in twitterland. (peter and me!). Geography and ICT were made for each other! Can someone let me know the most straightforward way to get a Geography ‘A’ level?

@ePaceonline At the heart of every class are 30 very different students, all coming into school to learn the same material in a wide variety of ways. This I like – Mary Blake is openly the face of her company on Twitter and sometimes drops out gems like this. Often, these are followed up later with the way their solutions can help with the conundrum. I do like this use of twitter to both provoke thought and introduce the solutions.

@SchoolDuggery Wrote detailed email to Asst Dir of Ed about a key local issue. Got a one line response referring to a different pyramid of schools #argh. So – here’s my view. As the ‘local layers of administration’ are under threat, now is their chance to shine or to keel over. Which response was this one? I suggest that @schoolduggey  sends the said ‘Asst Dir of Ed’ a copy of “Good to Great” and highlight any 2 pages. Any 2 pages would make a difference.

1pm

ZenologueBlog Sunidhi Chauhan loves photography – Times of India #photonews http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/music/news-and-interviews/Sunidhi-Chauhan-loves-photography/articleshow/7645317.cms Sadly, I was expecting more (how Twitter sets the bar high!). Good example of how NOT to construct a blog page – IMHO !!

HodderGeography Did you catch this? The World’s Most Typical Person is a 28-Year-Old Chinese Man http://ht.ly/49d91 worth seeing – but once again the link is in a link in a shortened link. I think it eventually points to a National geographic web page.

@nancyrubin New Skills for the Learning Pro? The Big Question http://performancexdesign.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/new-skills-for-the-learning-pro-the-big-question/

Well – the post is over 18 months old – but it’s still very thought provoking

@thedisruptdept New Blog Post: “Disruption Department PSA #1″ http://thedisruptiondepartment.org/blog/?p=93

the disruption department is a wonderful project – their about page may sound familiar.

There is a great resource tucked away on this page – http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/ – here’s their site “Here, you’ll find only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.”

These are fabulous fonts – created in Opentype format. I was so impressed with this resource that we’ve made a ‘how to’ page on our company website -

2pm

@ericorayner BBC will shoot Wimbledon finals in 3D this year. No 3D on BBC of course, but will be sold to other broadcasters. Surely a fascinating first step – also, we should be happy that the BBC is okay selling things to other broadcasters – keep the licence fee down!

would it be really unethical to send out iPlayer and drinking game rules links to my 6th formers as HW? I won’t name this teacher – but it does look like a very good idea. I’m struggling to work out ‘Homework in which subject?’

@OhLottie Having trouble embedding an SWF file in my wordpress blog. Just coming up as a link? Can you help?! I think I used an embed plugi quite happily (until I discovered Vimeo Plus!)

@HPTeachExchange Great site. Online task manager. http://budurl.com/lqrc – sounds good – but naff link (I think a naff link shortener!)

@cherylren Using replaynote app to explore diagrams replaynote.com/notes/MzY0 This is probably realy good – the link is to a video which will play havoc with my 10 minute rule. This app is for an ipad.

@PfS162 Sunshine much needed to lift spirits after another disappointing funding notification – PfS fights on to continue to benefit young people Not good news – this is from Rex hall Associates who have been behind the Playing for Success centres across the UK. We’ve been lucky enough to work with quite a few of these centres over the last 12 years. Their loss will be sadly felt by a lot of schools.

3:40pm (3pm and 4pm) – lets try 15 minutes.

@unmarketing See what apps have permission to your account http://twitter.com/account/connections remove ones you don’t know This is worth knowing – how many 3rd party apps. have you given access to your twitter account over the months?

This is a small selection of mine I’d forgotten about – time for some action.

@deerwood Technology scheme to transform education in Kenya http://afrinnovator.com/innovation/intel-corporation-in-kenyan-education-initiative

@ZoeRoss19 RT @MrsThorne: New blog: next steps with Google Maps http://sallythorne.com/2011/03/07/more-work-with-googlemaps/

What a brilliant, thorough blog post – this is merely a snippet!

@terryfreedman is anyone aware of a later version of Shift Happens than 4.0, preferably a UK version? Thanks

I’m sure the copy shown at Naace was UK based – hey – I’ve just found a copy called ShiftHappens UK. I’ll try to get it to Terry – or better still… here’s a copy on Vimeo that you can download. http://www.vimeo.com/20746877 Now if anyone at Microsoft wants me to remove it – no problems – please can I have a link?

@thisisleics Should primary pupils be paid to do extra lessons? http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Children-paid-extra-lessons/article-3299465-detail/article.html

Leicester mercury -  fascinating article. Surprised that the education correspondent didn’t tweet it though. Maybe she hasn’t twigged twitter in education. Maybe we need a chat.

4:45pm

@ZenologueBlog Photobucket Wins MediaPost’s 2011 Appy Awards for “Best Photography App” – Business Wire (press release) #photonews http://tiny.ly/oM3s http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110307005956/en/Photobucket-Wins-MediaPost%E2%80%99s-2011-Appy-Awards-%E2%80%9CBest Probably really fascinating. But – a press release about a photo app – and it’s all in text. Come on folks.

@idletim New blog post – Stunned by Storybird http://challengeclc.primaryblogger.co.uk/2011/03/06/stunned-by-storybird/

Storybird looks like a fascinating facility, and I have seen lots of reference to it on Twitter recently.

@Ideas_Factory Bringing art and design into science education – article in SEED by John Maeda of RISD

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_meaningful_observation1/

RISD is the Rhode Island School of Design and they do have some intersting facilities – not quite matched by the typical primary!