What's del.icio.us today...

Links for 2008-02-22 [del.icio.us] Posted: 23 Feb 2008 12:00 AM CST Wealthy 'thrive at poor schools' So... family background is more important than selection of school... who knew...

Trust no-one... well, do... but trust yourself more!

The web is your hard drive -- but it's an unreliable hard drive | Technology | Guardian Unlimited: "Bear this in mind when the next snake-oil salesman does a pitch for 'cloud computing'. Sure, you can let somebody else take responsibility for the safety and security of your data, but only if you don't mind losing it."

Useful reminder about why it's good to use the web 2.0 services that are out there... but relying on them for 100% uptime and for complete reliability of data storage is a mistake. Just as with learning out to manage our digital identity is a skill modification we need to get to grips with, so are issues of data storage, ownership and management. If you want it doing right... don't necessarily do it yourself because there are some fantastic online tools out there. But if you want it doing reliably... make sure you take backups and take responsibility for those backups yourself.

Nothing ever really changes, huh? A slight tweak with the way you do things to take account of differing contexts, and you'll be right.

What's del.icio.us...

Links for 2008-02-20 [del.icio.us] Posted: 21 Feb 2008 12:00 AM CST Context beats exam tables in search for best schools University dropout steady at 22% Interesting to note because of the attempt to manipulate figures to superficially improve outcomes rather than addressing the real support issue Why do so many students drop out, MPs ask | Students | EducationGuardian.co.uk Student retention and the issues surrounding that and widening participation There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading | Comment is free | The Guardian Interesting response to an earlier article about the Dawn of the Digital Natives (also in The Guardian)

Links for 2008-02-18 [del.icio.us] Posted: 19 Feb 2008 12:00 AM CST Can we teach people to be happy? Interesting seed for a debate on the future of education A third of teachers 'struggle with technology' | E-learning | EducationGuardian.co.uk

What's del.icio.us today...

Links for 2008-02-17 [del.icio.us] Posted: 18 Feb 2008 12:00 AM CST JISC : supporting education and research Mind42.com - Collaborative mind mapping in your browser Free online mindmapping which could be extremely useful and compete with the MindMeister version

What's del.icio.us today...

Links for 2008-02-16 [del.icio.us] Posted: 17 Feb 2008 12:00 AM CST Lesson one: no Orwellian language The impact of Orwellian language on the educational environment. One to get the mental juices flowing!

Lesson one: no Orwellian language

BBC NEWS | Education | Lesson one: no Orwellian language: "The need to measure everything and to find equivalents for different types of education arises from a natural enough desire to achieve value-for-money, and to promote different routes for young people.

But it can also be a strait-jacket, implying that all types of learning can, and should, be forced into the same model."

Terrific article about the impact of language in education or rather, the language used to talk about education. Makes you think about the debate surrounding quantitative vs. qualitative methods and which is most appropriate for education. I think that the point is that there are strengths and weaknesses in all things and that by blundering on with scant regard for the weaknesses, focussing only on the strengths matching what you 'need' from education, then the impacts can extend beyond the immediate. Can language really change educational culture? The way it is perceived in general? If we talk about 'delivering', 'facilitating', 'customers' etc when we're describing the educational environment, do we risk forgetting that it's actually about people's development at all and it becomes a tick box, future-employee-producing exercise...

Very thought-provoking.

Simple ideas

LinkBunch BETA - http://linkbun.ch: "A link bunch is just that - a bunch of links"

Aren't simple ideas just great? The ability to shorten and send a bunch of links together. Reading lists in a single URL - done. Collections of resources for research - together. Enthusiastic 'same theme' URLs being shared via several 'tweets' - nope. Just bung them altogether. Pop into LinkBunch and... ping! Done! The Firefox extension looks pretty nifty too)