Spannerman's Edublog

The Spreadsheet and BYOD anarchy

John Spencer — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:41 GMT

I’ve been reading reviews of the fate next year of ICT and Computing in schools. Depressing is not a strong enough word to describe my reaction. Michael Gove, the original swivel eyed loon, abolished New Labour ICT only to find...

BYOD in schools: Knocking loudly on the door

John Spencer — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:30:09 GMT

As we brace ourselves for this season’s round of smartphones it is becoming obvious that the little devils are getting just a bit useful and connectivity pretty acceptable. The ‘life companion’ motif is ringing true. Better still the users can...

Technical Baccalaureate: It might actually work

John Spencer — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:06:23 GMT

From this September the Department of Education will launch a new qualification called the Technical Baccalaureate or Tech-Bacc for post 16 education. It combines a vocational A-Level-equivalent qualification, such as BTEC IT, Engineering or Science with an A level standard...

Could Maggie have stopped Microsoft?

John Spencer — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:56:34 GMT

Margaret Thatcher’s first year as Prime MInister was marked by the release of Clive Sinclair’s ZX80 personal computer followed shortly by the BBC Micro. Within two years the Department of Education and Science had introduced its Microelectronics Education Programme which...

Strike and Skype will take your job

John Spencer — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:48:16 GMT

Teachers are currently not a very happy bunch. In fact they are planning to take quite a lot of industrial action to express just how unhappy they are. Teaching is a profession that in the greater scheme of things enjoys...

Education, 3D printing and all that

John Spencer — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:12:31 GMT

Is anything moving in the education-IT market? Well yes, sort of. It’s not moving in the way that pressurised magma does not move much before the top blows off the volcano and it will move in the way that magma...

When BYOD went to college

John Spencer — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:59:02 GMT

It’s nearly 18 months since my Chromebook and Galaxy SII came to college to become my wireless ‘work’ computers. The motivation was simple: the college had a good campus-wide wireless and inconvenient XP wired desktops; the Chromebook booted really quickly...

Computer Science in schools (postponed again)

John Spencer — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:40:07 GMT

Two weeks ago we heard that Michael Gove had added computer science to the EBac. The EBac of course was the new certificate of education which was to replace GCSEs. The EBac made English, science, maths, a modern language and...

MIS-management data: Evidence based policy does not work

John Spencer — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:24:03 GMT

Just out of interest I searched for Big Data ‘trending’ in education. Why? Because last year I searched for Cloud and the year before it was Tablets. Fashion, but sure enough at the BETT computer show for education next week...

Problem Solving: Solutions by RM, Capita and Ubuntu

John Spencer — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:01:41 GMT

Over Christmas I stimulated my brain, specifically my left brain’s inferior frontal gyrus, para-hippocampal gyrus, and parietal lobe as well as my dorsal rostral anterior cingulate, amygdala, the left and right parietal lobe, the thalamus and right cerebellum. I other...

Virtual Learning... why?

John Spencer — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:52:00 GMT

Two figures produced in 2012 impressed me mightily, as both are all-time records. The first, is that world production of carbon dioxide has hit an all-time high and the other is that HIV reached its highest ever level in the...

eBook revolution postponed

John Spencer — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:20:00 GMT

I love the dinky screens (especially that square one), the sharp text, the battery life and the storage capacity. I don’t love the union between hardware and ebooks that the major vendors are so keen on, for Kobo, Kindle and...

Computing in schools - an exercise in futility

John Spencer — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:53:31 GMT

I’ve done a fair bit of thinking about this business of teaching computing in schools and I think the new proposals have got a simple thing quite wrong. The reinvention of ICT at GCSE to include 27 different qualifications is...

Why we buy computers we do not need

John Spencer — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:55:12 GMT

NESTA* reported this week that schools are wasting millions of pounds buying computer equipment that they have no real idea what to do with and which end up sitting on shelves. They cited the current craze for tablets. It was...

The Ctrl-V generation

John Spencer — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:22:00 GMT

Last week, bang went the A level resits hard on the heels of modular GCSE’s demise. This week, he gets rid of 25 percent of the Department of Education (mostly HR and IT... shorter acronyms go first it seems) and...

Capita ONE is watching you

John Spencer — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Not so very long ago, the previous Government set out to build a giant children’s database which would contain all sorts of information based around the issuing of a Unique Pupil ID that would follow them for life. This data would...

You wait forever for a Computing GCSE and then 27 come along at once

John Spencer — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:37:00 GMT

By 2014, schools will be able to design their own ICT and Computing curriculum, which will enable them to respond to local needs. Naturally there will be limits to this otherwise unbounded freedom, in that schools will be able to...

It's time to start spending again

John Spencer — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 13:24:00 GMT

The results of a survey published this week unequivocally supports the thesis that school-children are revolting. Specifically, they are not happy with the technical resources provided by their schools. It seems they have spotted that this is the 21st Century...

£20K incentive to teach computing... would you?

John Spencer — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:40:00 GMT

Among the highlights of last week’s press releases were two education initiatives. To whit: "High-flying graduates are to be given a £20,000 golden handshake to train as computer science teachers. Ministers have asked Facebook, Microsoft and IBM to help design the training...

Ysgol goes FOSS

John Spencer — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:36:00 GMT

It could be the most significant escape act since David Blaine dangled over the Thames in a cage. It would be a turning point in school ICT. What exactly? Why, only the great escape from XP and IE7, that’s all! And...

The fall and fall of the proprietary school database

John Spencer — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:28:00 GMT

I have just completed a small IT project for primary schools in my area. It was to track pupil progress through the Early Years. The progress of young children from birth to 60 months is tracked by their teachers in...

Back to the School of the Future

John Spencer — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:30:00 GMT

It’s about time I revisited the “school of the future”, a phrase which supported countless symposia and conferences in the pre-crash age of the early 21st Century. It of course was part of the Building Very Expensive Schools of the...

Bring back Becta

John Spencer — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:41:00 GMT

Who? For those of you with long memories, Becta was the education ICT quango which had the dubious honour of being the first to be abolished by the new government. During my days as an Open Source apologist I often...

Innovate in schools or die of boredom

John Spencer — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:54:48 GMT

I have discovered that I have a shorter attention span and lower boredom threshold than even my students. I blame the Internet for this as, via the Web, I can sate my curiosity and learn as much as I want...

DNA and all that

John Spencer — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:25:00 GMT

I think I may have found a job for the Raspberry Pi.This week I have had to modify part of the molecular biology lecture notes for my young biologists. We have known for a while that only 2 percent of...