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Moving Home

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After blogging somewhat infrequently for the last 5 years, 3.5 of which have been here on this self-hosted WordPress blog I feel like it’s time for a change.  The last time I changed this blog theme I tried to make it a little easier to use and more like a Tumblr blog.  However reading Will Richardson’s thoughts about blogging and his move to Tumblr I was inspired to give it a go.

It’s rare that I get the chance to write long thought posts any more, but I often have smaller snippets to share. I’m incredibly busy since becoming Assistant Head and I’m looking for something that sits somewhere between the limitation of 140 characters on Twitter and the time it takes to write a post on here.  Tumblr seems to fit the bill nicely and is more than capable of handling extended writing, whilst being extremely simple to post to.

I already owned www.danielstucke.com, I think it’s important to own your own space on the Web these days, it used to redirect to this blog but now has my Tumblr on it. I also feel like it’s time I wrote under my whole name. 5 years ago I registered most things online under ‘mrstucke’, feeling like I’d rather it was harder for students to identify me. Since then I’ve gained so much professionally from writing and sharing online that I’d rather write under my full name.

So for the time-being at least I’ll be writing over on www.danielstucke.com and not here.  I won’t cross-post everything, as I had experimented with, as that just clutters the conversation.  I’m also using www.ifttt.com to work with that content, bookmarking and saving to Evernote each post that I write.

I can be quite fickle so may well switch back again at some point, if not I hope I’ll see you there!

 

From danielstucke.com: A ‘Technical Baccalaureate’?

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A ‘Technical Baccalaureate’?:

The education charity Edge, which promotes technical and practical learning and of which Adonis is a trustee, is working closely with the Baker Dearing Educational Trust to come up with such a qualification. Under the plans, seen exclusively by Education Guardian, pupils aged 14 to 16 would spend 60% of their time studying for GCSEs in English, maths, science and another subject. The rest of their time would be taken up with a technical qualification, such as an engineering diploma or a construction course. They would also be expected to study a language, but not necessarily to GCSE standard.

This would be known as a Professional Technical Baccalaureate, and the organisations hope it would be used as a measurement in school league tables, as the Ebacc is now, and offered in all schools.

Whilst I’m no fan of the English Baccaluareate do we need yet another measure that the majority of people aren’t going to understand?

What exactly was wrong with relying on straight up single exam results any way?

on tumblr: http://danielstucke.com/post/6765794030

From my tumblr: Another High School Opts for iPad 1-2-1

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Another High School Opts for iPad 1-2-1:

TUAW:

After collaborating with Apple for a year, Northern Ireland’s Wallace High School has launched the country’s largest 1:1 iPad initiative. The school’s principal, Deborah O’Hare, said in a press release that she and her staff had been letting students bring portable devices into the classroom..

I will be speaking to Apple and the eLearning Foundation next week to ascertain whether this is a realistic possibility at our school.  I wrote about this at length on mrstucke.com and since then have decided it may be a more realistic possibility than I thought. An exciting few days with our senior leadership team planning for a future with creativity and independent learners at the heart of our school only makes me keener to make this work!

on tumblr: http://danielstucke.tumblr.com/post/6836238072

If This Then That – Automating Your Web

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I’ve been playing around with a fascinating website called If This Then That http://ifttt.com.  Think of it as virtual gaffer tape that automatically ties all of your online activities together in a myriad of possible ways.

When you sign up you then need to connect it to as many of your online presences as you choose, there’s an impressive selection of so-called ‘channels’:

ifttt Channels

ifttt 'channels'

Once you’ve done that you enter the beautifully designed ‘creation’ tool and design you ‘task’, where in essence you choose ‘if this then that’. Choosing ‘if this’ happens in one of your ‘channels’ ‘then that’ automatically happens in another channel.

Rather than twitter on here are some tasks I’ve been experimenting with:

Those are some obvious uses but you can be much more creative with some of the other channels on offer.  The GMail channel allows emails to be sent from your account based upon one of the triggers, although my test of this using the Weather channel to email Mrs Stucke every time it rains in Manchester hasn’t amused her on this wet May weekend!!

You are currently allowed 10 tasks in total – the service is in limited free beta at the moment so I wouldn’t be surprised to see options to expand this for a fee in future.

Overall this is a stunningly designed tool that has massive potential and could prove incredibly useful if you manage many different online tools (and I know most people reading this do!).

I have 5 invites available, if you would like one please leave a message in the comments. And then share your creative uses of ifttt.

Noted App – write note, send to email, done

Noted App for iOSOff topic but incredibly useful!

Noted is a new app that does one thing and one thing well. It opens up, you type a note, you click send and it appears in your inbox.

I’ve used dozens of to-do productivity style apps and with the best will in the world I make big old to-do lists and then quickly stop forget all about them.

90% of my to-do’s seem to come through my inbox, so this incredibly quick way of dumping other things in my inbox might just stop me losing them on little bits of paper!

£1.19 in the App Store.

How do you manage your busy life?

BBC Domesday Project

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I’ve spent the morning travelling back in time to my childhood in 1986 via the BBC Domesday Project!

This picture has me intrigued as it’s taken near my school and must be children within about a year of me at school – how quickly the memories fade, I can’t recognise any of them!

I should probably recognise these kids!

The Story of the Domesday Project

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