One of the major tasks I will have this year implementing our new VLE is to train staff. To get staff on board I will need as many staff on my side as possible and one idea I had was to run a separate group of teachers not just learning to use the VLE but …
Author Archives: D Needlestone
Student e-council meeting part 2
I previously wrote about our student e-council meeting held last term. The aim of this was to get students opinions and ideas on how technology should be used in school and what features they would like. This year I want to evolve the role of this group to actually taking on a hands on role …
Starting our VLE / Moodle from scratch
So a year wiser and another year on I’m about to start Rickypedia again from scratch. Our pilot VLE was set up at the cost of about £40 a year using hosting from Siteground. It did a good job but I lived in constant fear that we would overload the servers and have the whole …
How online communities and social networks helped me
For the last two years I’ve been studying for an MA in ICT in Education at Leeds University. The last piece of the puzzle my MA Critical Study (a 15,000 word research project) went in the post last week and the process has come to an end. Looking back the whole MA was proof of …
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Meme: Passion Quilt (digital natives, digital babies)
Thanks to Drew Buddie for tagging me quite a while ago for the Passion Quilt Meme – it’s taken me a long while to respond but I recently came across the perfect picture to add. Actually it’s more than one so I’m not going to stick to the original rules. I’m also not going to …
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Reflection – 1 year of Rickypedia, a pilot VLE
Another year older another year wiser, so the old adage goes. The problem with that adage is that technology moves so fast you might be wiser in one aspect but have completely missed out on something brand new that’s just come out. I try not to let that worry me though as if the new …
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Hosting your VLE – internal hosting vs external hosting
So we’re onto the next stage of our VLE decision making. The last year with Rickypedia has, as I’ve said before, been a pilot project to experiment and learn. Now we are planning a larger and I hope more stable system. The first step was deciding which system to go with. We decided on Moodle …
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Student e-council
After a year of our pilot VLE and a few years teaching ICT I was eager to hear the opinions of the students. I hear lots of little student comments and gripes during my lessons in the ICT suite. Most of them are “why has so and so got a better computer than me” pointing …
ICT and English Masterclass, China Videos
This project has been on my list to write up for a long time. A successful presentation at the Teachmeet North East London Conference gave me a bit of kick to get it done. This project was a cross curricular project for gifted and talented ICT and English students in year 9 (ages 13 to …
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Teachmeet
I’m looking forward to Teachmeet on Monday in Essex. I attended my first one at the Bett Show in January where I met lots of interesting people and heard lots of interesting talks that lasted a maximum of 7 minutes. Entertaining, interesting, educational, inspiring and perfect for my attention span. I wasn’t sure I’d make …