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The BBC, Independent, and TES all report on the findings of an Ofsted inquiry into the effectiveness of the Creative Partnerships scheme, which runs in 2,500 English schools. They found that skills such as improvisation, risk-taking, resilience and collaboration were developed and motivation levels increased. Surprising, that, isn’t it? Doing something that actually matters with inspirational, passionate teachers leads to good responses from students…

There’s a list of graphic organizers here. What are graphic organizers? They’re a way of classifying and organizing information in a way which students can understand and remember. Examples here include idea wheels, persuasion maps, and sequence charts.

Jumpcut has just been acquired by Yahoo! What is Jumpcut? It’s an online video editing and ‘remixing’ application which accepts a large variety of uploaded video content. It might be more straightforward to use and have an output that is more widely compatible than the flaky program that is Windows Movie Maker…

If you find yourself with students who don’t give the detailed verbal responses you desire it may be due to the questions you’re asking of them. Murray State University has an Open Response Questioning Strategies page to help you develop more open-ended questioning. It’s biased towards Maths and Science due to the people who have developed it, but it’s good for a start if you’re looking for improvement in this area!

The University of California at Berkeley has begun to ‘CourseCast’ their material. They are using Google Video to disseminate videos of lectures, etc. – looks useful/interesting!

The Google Operating System blog has mentioned a potentially useful tools called Fraps which can be used to save video in Google Earth. Although it costs $37 to register, the free version can save files of a limited resolution with a watermark. You will need to compress the uncompressed output using a program such as Windows Movie Maker, iMovie or VirtualDub to make the file sizes manageable…

If, like me, you not only work with different versions of software but with different operating systems, it’s often handy to have a PDF copy of a document so that you know you’ll be able to open it pretty much anywhere you go. PDFonline is a website that allows you to convert pretty much anything to PDF through a web-based interface – formats supported include Microsoft Office files, images, and HTML files. No OpenOffice formats yet though… (via Lifehacker)

I noticed an article about this in The Sunday Times and intend to write about this in more depth, but just to point out that BBC News has an story about the plans of Alan Johnson, the UK Education Secretary. He wants state schools to open on a Saturday. Am I against it? Well, in the words of Simply Red, if you don’t know me by now you may never (never never) know me…

Looking through the RSS feed from someone’s del.icio.us bookmarks (can’t remember whose – sorry!) I came across this short (8:23) gem of Stephen Downes explaining the difference between networks and groups. Groups, he says, are predicated upon principles of unity, coordination, being closed and distributive, whereas networks are diverse, autonomous, open and connective. Well worth a look! :D

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It’s been possible to create virtual visits or field trips for at least 10 years: all that’s been needed is digital versions of photographs taken at a location which are then added to a website. Of course, with continuing developments in technology this has become easier and there is now the potential to make such virtual visits a lot more interactive and engaging. In what follows I intend to look at ways you can use the Internet to make creative and stimulating virtual visits! :)

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