Spannerman's Edublog
John Spencer
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About Author
Dr John Spencer began his teaching career in 1981 armed with a Sinclair ZX81, thereby demonstrating two things at once: Firstly he was in at the very start of ICT in the classroom and secondly he is a sucker for duff technology. Thereafter he taught joining a start-up open source company as their Head of Education in 2002. Now John is bringing his iconoclastic disposition and tendency to throw a spanner in the works to blogging.
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eBook revolution postponed
ebook readers are fantastic, I love them.
by John Spencer
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...
November 28, 2012 3:20 PM Read Full Post
Computing in schools - an exercise in futility
Rasberry pie, abstract thinking and political medling
by John Spencer
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...
November 26, 2012 2:53 PM Read Full Post
Why we buy computers we do not need
So much waste in schools but still we go on...
by John Spencer
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...
November 20, 2012 11:55 AM Read Full Post
The Ctrl-V generation
It looks like Michael Gove has not finished with his shake-up in education. In fact, he may be the human equivalent of the Duracell Bunny, he does that much in a week
by John Spencer
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...
November 15, 2012 5:22 PM Read Full Post
Capita ONE is watching you
George Orwell should have written, 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,' in his book 1984, but he did write 'If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones,' which I think is even better
by John Spencer
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...
November 12, 2012 4:00 PM Read Full Post
You wait forever for a Computing GCSE and then 27 come along at once
Can they still deliver the GCSE? Of course they can, as only half of the 27 qualifications have any computing in them!
by John Spencer
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...
November 6, 2012 3:37 PM Read Full Post
It's time to start spending again
Schools should buy technology of the workplace of the future
by John Spencer
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...
November 2, 2012 1:24 PM Read Full Post
£20K incentive to teach computing... would you?
One of your students WILL BE the next Alan Turing or Berners Lee
by John Spencer
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...
October 29, 2012 3:40 PM Read Full Post
Ysgol goes FOSS
It may be, at last, happening.
by John Spencer
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...
October 24, 2012 4:36 PM Read Full Post
The fall and fall of the proprietary school database
Schools are abandoning closed database-driven products in favour of home-grown spreadsheets
by John Spencer
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...
October 10, 2012 3:28 PM Read Full Post
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