Posts made in December 6th, 2009

Royal Institution Xmas Lectures

Posted on Dec 6, 2009 in Conferences | 0 comments

I was really fortunate to be offered tickets to go and see the Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution this year. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been to the RI before, but now I have, I really do want to go back there and have a good poke around their museum.

I loved the display of optical instruments in the cafe:

The lecture theatre is much smaller than I imagined it from having seen the lectures on the television. And it was quite steep. All the adults were up in The Gods looking down, but we still got a pretty good view. As a science geek it was a real thrill to be in a space that had seen some of the big names of science give talks – Michael Faraday, Richard Dawkins, David Attenborough and even Carl Sagan (list of speakers here)

It was quite fascinating to see all the TV people doing all the behind the scenes work. We didn’t have too many retakes to do. The biggest problem occured when the laptop all set up to take an x-ray reading just didn’t work. I’ve felt that pain many times. Thankfully it had just been left on and had run out of battery power.

The theme of the lecture was the 300 Million Year War and it was all about how plants have evolved some fantastic defence systems to fight back against the onslaught of herbivores. This lecture looked mainly at some of the chemical defences such as stings and poisons. I felt very sorry for the chap who ate one of the hottest chillis going. That was one experiment they didn’t ask the kids to take part in!

If you want to see the lectures – they will be on More 4 from 21 – 25th December at 7pm. It’s well worth a look. And you will be able to talk about it via Twitter after each show.

And go visit the Royal Institution website. They have some great teaching resources for Science teachers at all Key Stages. Go and take a look.

TeachMeet BETT 2010

Posted on Dec 6, 2009 in Conferences | 0 comments

It is alomst that time of year again when London Olympia plays host to the annual ICT in education event that is the BETT Show. And jike last year TeachMeet BETT is taking place again this year on the Friday night, between 6.00pm and 9.00pm, in the APEX room.

We have been very fortunate that the organising body behind BETT – EMAP – offered the TeachMeet community 3 consecutive nights for free in the APEX room. The proposed events are as follows:

• Wednesday 13th January 2010 - TedX Orenda (Independently organised TED event)
• Thursday 14th January 2010 – AmpEd (Amplified event)
• Friday 15th January 2010 – TeachMeet

More details on the Wednesday and Thursday events to follow, but from what I have heard from talking to one of the guys involved in organising them, they will be quite special and a different format to the Teachmeet concept.

Teachmeet, of course, will be on the Friday night and you can sign up now at the TeachMeet wiki here. I’ll be going along as an enthusiastic lurker. If you have been doing good stuff in your classroom, then why not sign up for a mini-talk? We’d love to hear what you are doing.

Etherpad to go Open Source?

Posted on Dec 6, 2009 in Useful Links, Web Tools | 1 comment

I’m a massive fan of Etherpad. Out of all the new tools that I have discovered and played with this year, none has had the impact of Etherpad when I have shown it to a group of teachers. Give them 5 minutes to play with the amazing collaborative writing space and you can see little light bulbs pop above their heads when they start to think about ways that it could be used with their class.

The greatest thing about it was that it was totally open. No need to registers, get passwords, share with other users etc. All of which can make using web2.0 tools with a class tricky. With Etherpad you could create a pad, and have users writing on it, within 60 seconds.

So it wasa great shock to read that Google had acquired Etherpad, and that they were going to close it down. The Etherpad tech was going to be incorporated into Google Wav, but Etherpad itself would be no more from next March.

This prompted a massive disturbance in the Force (ie Twitter) as if a million voices cried out in horror. Well OK. Not quite. But it did get a lot of edtech fans up in arms, and they all made their feelings known on the Etherpad blog.

I think Google were shocked by the response, and in a very fast turnaround announced that they will keep Etherpad as it is for now, and to try and make it open-source. So good news. For now. Let’s hope Etherpad, or something very similar, can continue.

I guess what this does highlight is the transient nature of teaching with Web 2.0 tools. Do not plan your lessons on a web tool that’s available now and rely on it always being available. Or being available for free. Make sure anything you create on these tools is backed up elsewhere and that you have a Plan B for those moments when that site you want to use is down. Or gone.