Tag Archives: BECTA

Influencing Policy Part 2: Becta-X: Old Conversations, New Connections, Bright Future?

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I was honoured to be invited to Becta-X (the x stands for exchange) during the Easter break.  The conference brought together 75 leading educators and 75 leading people from the Media sector.  Thanks to @TomBarrett for getting me the invite – truly much appreciated.

The aims of the day were:

The way the digital media industry influences young people is both a threat and a real opportunity to education. As part of its “Fit for the Future” programme Becta has asked Just-b. Productions to independently bring together thinkers and doers from both these two worlds

We hope this participatory and distributed forum will break down walls between these two sectors, between big and small, between speaker and delegate, between real and remote participants and create fresh thinking on all sides.

I’ll not describe the entire order of events, if you want the details or indeed just the perspectives of others then please have a skim through some of these posts from other educators who were in attendance:

Fred Garnett / Tom Barrett / Doug Belshaw / Dai Barnes / Kristian Still / Nicola McNee / Ewan McIntosh

As you will see from those posts there was some discussion and reflection afterwards as to how much of a success the event was.  My 2-cents worth: Continue reading →

No More Year Zero

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I was surprised and honoured to receive an email on Friday inviting me to the House of Commons for the Progressive Education Network Spring Reception this Monday afternoon.

I’m bitterly disappointed that the short notice means I will not be able to attend. :(

I came across the PEN via a tweet last month.  Chaired by Mike Gibbons and supported by The Co-operative Group the PEN’s aims are:

Progressive Education Network aims to engage with and challenge policy makers of every political hue by bringing the voice of experience and the wisdom of leading education professionals and school leaders to the debate. How do we best build on what’s working now to develop the education system that maximises the opportunities for the success of every child? Continue reading →

Home Access – Free Computers & Internet for Low Income Families

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Gordon Brown finally announced the Home Access programme last week. Organised by Becta this scheme will provide 270,000 households with a voucher that is redeemable for a computer along with 1 year’s Internet access, a suite of software and also support.

Families will be eligible if they have a child in Years 3-7, they have not been beneficiaries of a similar scheme in the past and they are entitled to Free School Meals or a range of other Income based benefits.

The scheme is independent of schools, although they can organise to bulk apply for the packages (I have heard this results in delays).  Parents need to call the Home Access Grant Helpline on 0333 200 1004 for an application form, they will be told over the phone if they are eligible.

All of the packages on offer include ‘Assistive Technologies’.  I saw a presentation on these at BETT last week and they do look impressive.  The base package consists of a piece of Mind Mapping software, Mind View3; Text Help Read & Write software that includes spell checking, grammar suggestion and text to speak capabilities and finally issist iZoom screen magnification software.

The second package includes specific hardware solutions such as trackballs, high contrast keyboard stickers, larger keyboards, trackpads etc..  The third package which is not ready to go yet, is for those with more specific physical needs and will include home visits and assessments if necessary.

Although not run through our school I am keen to ensure that every child that is eligible for this benefits from it, so we will be sending a letter home to all of our Year 7-9 pupils encouraging them to apply.  I will then run some form-filling drop-in evenings at school.  Over half of our pupils have English as a second language so I’m sure some of the parents will appreciate the help in completing the forms.  I’ll also be liaising closely with my SEN department to ensure that those with additional needs benefit from the assistive technology packages.

I spoke with a representative from Becta about this package.  Many of our pupils benefited for the laptops for pupils scheme a year ago, so won’t be eligible for the new schme, but would certainly benefit from the software package.  He confirmed that the package will be available in all of the approved retailers and should be under £50 which represents a considerable saving.  They are also looking into making it available to schools for their own systems.

Further details and promotional materials for schools are available from the Home Access website if you register as a school, however feel free to borrow my letter.

And also check out @simonhaughton ‘s Etherpad of ideas: http://parkfield.etherpad.com/4?

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Google Wave – the beginning of the end for VLEs?

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Google announced a new product to the World at it’s Google I/O conference yesterday, Google Wave.

google_wave_logoThere has been much written about it around the Web, by folks more intelligent than I, so if you want to catch up on the intricacies then read some of these sites:

Ars Technica Tech Crunch Tech Crunch again LifeHacker DownloadSquad

You can sign up to be informed about Wave, and hopefully get involved with the beta at the Google Wave website: http://wave.google.com. If you’re lucky the video might be working on that site too, it was temperamental at the time of writing.

This looks very exciting for school use.  Many seem to have dubbed it the ‘new email’ already.  The collaboration possibilities in and between classrooms look fantastic.  I’ve been a big fan of using wikis as collaborative documents and this looks like it will take the concept of a wiki to a new level.  The ability to drag and drop files into a collaborative document in a browser for instance lowers the technical skills required for working with these kinds of technologies considerably.

Continue reading →

Help! – A plea to bring sanity to my attempts to use the Web at school

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As I have just ranted about on Tom Barrett’s blog post about using Google Docs for online reporting to parents, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with trying to use the Internet both myself and with pupils at school.  It is to all intents and purposes blocked and Web 2.0 seems to be considered a security risk.

As an example, I arrived in school today to find that Google Docs is blocked for staff.  When pushed the risk  was explained that private pupil data could be copied onto GDocs and shared.  I was offered the opportunity to have the specific url of my spreadsheet unblocked after it had been vetted. This logic seems to wipe out the use of the entire read/write web in my school ( Here is the sheet I am trying to share with my class, I think it’s use is fairly self explanatory: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pi_Ik07yjYQaT9yf5YdsIPQ

I can feel creativity and spontanaiety along with a wealth of learning opportunities being lost at every turn.

The school is investing in a VLE, something I am losing interest in as it will be a walled garden / fortress if everything else is to go by.

I would like to present an informed argument against this to those in power over these matters at school.  The obvious starting places seem to be BECTAs recent encouragement of Web 2.0 use in schools (also see Ewan’s take), and their guidance on safe use of data.  I believe that the former encourages what I am trying to achieve and the latter does not preclude it.

I suppose my plea at the end of this rather self-indulgent rant is for any other resources I could use to help my cause, further guidance, exemplary examples of pupil/staff on-line work etc etc.

Any advice is gratefully received!

EDIT: Just to make clear and reiterate: I don’t want to get into a moan about specific staff on a public blog, I do have a good working relationship with the IT department and senior leadership, I just need to change their ways!