Merlin John Online

Sponsors sought by PR 'more Channel than Chanel'

There's a wicked tale going around that PR Sue Murray overheard a colleague talking about bathing in Chanel - and promptly announced that she'd like to swim the Channel too.

Of course that's just cheap "blonde PR" stereotyping, because Sue Murray, whose Mango Marketing agency represents pukka education brands like SMART Technologies, BETT and The Education Show, is about to do a sponsored Channel swim to raise money for Camfed, the Africa-based education, anti-poverty charity.

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Crucial questions on the road to innovation

John Galloway gets the message that "policy and research rarely agree"

Like all Futurelab's handbooks, Curriculum and teaching innovation: Transforming classroom practice and personalisation is well researched, and aims to push at the boundaries of educational conventions.

Here is a necessarily wide ranging examination of the issues and agendas shaping the curriculum and the opportunities for innovation. There are few answers in here, yet it raises many, many questions. The first of which is "What's a curriculum for?"

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'Teacher educators need 21st Century learning too'

By Bob Harrison

The potential for transforming learning using digital technologies, while well developed in some areas, is being held back by teacher trainers' own lack of knowledge. They are “often not aware of the learning potential of key technologies or are not confident in their use”. That's a key finding of an evaluation of a new report "ICT in ITT [Initial Teacher Training]" by Wolverhampton University.

Since 2003 the Training and Development Agency for Schools has offered support for ICT in ITT costing more than £20 million, and more than 13,000 trainee teachers have benefited. However, the researchers found that some training organisations felt they were “unaware of the potential benefits to practice of ICT” although they also found that individual trainee teachers did progress - and at a faster rate - than the trainer organisation. Read more...

Futurelab's digital take on inclusion and ICT

John Galloway welcomes a helpful new handbook
Researchers at Futurelab, the internationally renowned ICT in education research group, approach their handbooks in a very well-grounded way. They combine a solid academic base with practical examples, and research outputs from their innovative, if sometimes slightly eccentric, projects.

Using digital technologies to promote inclusive practices in education begins with a very easy-to-read overview of the development of the "inclusion" agenda, - from the trends of the 1980s and 1990s to build more special schools, to the policy around the turn of the century to have greater integration, and the shift in language, and focus, from SEN to "inclusion". Read more...

MERU signals wireless stability for school networks

Wireless technology continues to disappoint. And it's not just the scarcity of free access. Schools spending big budgets on wireless for laptops and PDAs report dropped connections and poor performance that affects their hopes for anywhere, anytime learning and teaching.

But a new generation of wireless technology, from MERU, looks like reversing those experiences. Instead of individual devices "looking for" the best connections - the status quo for most wireless networks - MERU networks are intelligent. They track the users and direct them to the best access points - and video and voice are also well supported. Business is already responding, and schools look like following suit. Read more...

'Can't play just be fun any more?'

By Maureen McTaggart
Irrationality, subversion, risk, danger, destruction and conflict are - alongside learning and democratic relationships - all in a day’s play for children, says Professor David Buckingham.

If we recognise this, we might get beyond the “rather tiresome polarised, binary logic” that often characterises discussions about play and video games. Can't play just be fun any more? Read more...

Curtain rises on schools digital theatre project

In one of the most ambitious digital theatre projects since the BBC's breakthrough Shakespeare CD-Roms, award-winning Greenwich Theatre has paired with start-up production company Stage on Screen to record live performances of classics for learners to use in school and at home.

Schools will get access to contemporary performances from a top professional theatre company on DVDs, and students will also get to play interactive movie editors by remixing footage from different cameras for their own digital productions. Read more...

Andy's turn for help - pedalling for motor neurone

As one of Becta's best, most generous ambassadors for ICT and learning, Andy Black (illustration by Rob Englebright) has helped an astonishing number of educators and innovators. Now he needs some help himself.

Andy Black is pedalling through Midlands and east coast byways day and night to get fit for the cycle ride he is undertaking from Land's End to John O'Groats to raise money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association. Agent4change is going in with £50 - what can you manage?

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