John Connell: The BlogAs someone almost once said: "The point is not to interpret the world but to change it." The conjunction of education and technology is changing the nature of learning and teaching, and I want to help that process along.tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-202697112006-09-17T17:33:40ZBlogger
This is an Atom formatted XML site feed. It is intended to be viewed in a Newsreader or syndicated to another site. Please visit the Blogger Help for more info.
trueJohn Connell2006-09-16T14:25:00+01:002006-09-16T13:30:08Z2006-09-16T13:30:08Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115841340839877872GPS, social networking, and privacy
My wife, Jan, shared my usual trip to Glasgow with me yesterday as she was heading for a meeting with Niamh Fitzgerald of the Create Consultancy (they were discussing a CPD programme on drugs and alcohol for Borders teachers - yes, I know, there's a joke in there, but I'll resist the temptation). Jan told me later that Niamh had mentioned that her journo brother, Ronan Fitzgerald, had just hadfalseJohn Connell2006-09-14T15:51:00+01:002006-09-14T14:56:12Z2006-09-14T14:56:12Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115824577256408577Wordpress here I come...I now have my new blog up and running in 'shadow' mode, with every post and every comment ported over to the new format - I hope to make the change over the weekend. If anyone wants to see how it looks, just stick an 's' on the end of 'blog' in the address above and it will appear in all its glory or just click the image below.
I'd welcome any comment on the new look before I make the finalfalseJohn Connell2006-09-14T10:36:00+01:002006-09-14T09:40:17Z2006-09-14T09:40:17Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115822681784931988Are you authorised?Read Terry Freedman's brilliant rant on Authorised Madness.
Proof, if proof were needed, that we are living in an age of small minds and 'weary willies' who need to lift their heads, smell the coffee, and get a life!falseJohn Connell2006-09-13T21:59:00+01:002006-09-13T09:32:13Z2006-09-12T20:50:12Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115809421272154937Open and honest debateMy guess is that Gordon McKinlay heard the same report that I did on BBC Radio Four yesterday morning. I meant to take a glance at it during the day but forgot until Gordon reminded me to follow up the report, which was based on an open letter sent to the Daily Telegraph by a large number of "paediatricians, academics and authors".
As an old fashioned leftie, I tend to bridle at anything thefalseJohn Connell2006-09-13T20:58:00+01:002006-09-13T20:32:00Z2006-09-13T20:23:29Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115817900960587476Extreme Learning: East Lothian style
My colleague, Ewan McIntosh, has already posted his first of two reports from the meeting held in East Lothian's Council Chamber this afternoon, where some 3 dozen professionals, including one eminent visitor from Perth Academy - Neil Winton - came together to talk 'Extreme Learning'. Don Ledingham has already outlined the concept in his own blog, so I won't go into any superfluous detailfalseJohn Connell2006-09-12T20:38:00+01:002006-09-12T19:44:17Z2006-09-12T19:42:40Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115809016084949115Don't download this songIn case anyone missed it in his comment, Jim Henderson sent me this link after reading my post on CircuitSix. It won't win an Emmy, but give it a listen.....falseJohn Connell2006-09-12T15:18:00+01:002006-09-12T19:44:48Z2006-09-12T14:22:56Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115807097688629887CircuitSix.com
"Play them out, share them, sample and mash them, use them as soundtracks or just stick them on your mp3 player. If you really like them, download them, contact us or leave a comment on the blog."
So say a good friend of mine and his web partner. They are musicians who create their own grooves and who have decided to make their music available, on a Creative Commons basis, to anyone who wantsfalseJohn Connell2006-09-12T10:28:00+01:002006-09-12T09:50:31Z2006-09-12T09:36:43Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115805380381472288How long the revolution?Don Ledingham’s post on our conversation about ‘inverting the core’ led me to something I last read many many moons ago: Raymond Williams’ book, “The Long Revolution”. In a chapter on ‘Education and Society’, Williams wrote (Part II, Chapter I):
“…we speak sometimes as if education were a fixed abstraction, a settled body of teaching and learning, and as if the only problem it presents to us isfalseJohn Connell2006-09-11T19:20:00+01:002006-09-11T18:24:14Z2006-09-11T18:24:14Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115799905486366610EdBloggerNewsIf you haven't yet seen EdBloggerNews (subtitled 'News for Educationn 2.0'), head over there and take a look. Set up by Will Richardson (of "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" fame), it, "allows us to post, or direct to the service blogs, news stories, or general web sites to a listing of community selected resources. Then you can vote for the news stories thatfalseJohn Connell2006-09-11T11:30:00+01:002006-09-11T10:37:13Z2006-09-11T10:36:36Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115797099667589820Jim BuchanI'd like to welcome a new blog to the landscape - that of my good friend and colleague, Jim Buchan.
Jim, for those who don't know him, is the real technology brain that underpins so much of Glow. People, over the years, have been very kind in granting me much of the credit for realizing the original vision of SSDN that grew out of the early work of Stuart Robertson and Neil MacFarlane, but thefalseJohn Connell2006-09-10T20:05:00+01:002006-09-10T19:49:45Z2006-09-10T19:10:59Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115791545907587741What you can find when you meander......Because I'm thinking of moving my blog away from Blogger and onto Wordpress, I was interested in Warrick Wynne's experience in moving from Blogger to Edublogs (which uses Wordpress) - his old blog is here. Warrick's blog deserves further reading, which I will follow up over the next day or two.
I'll not waste your time with the precise route, but over the next half hour or so, from that start infalseJohn Connell2006-09-10T11:34:00+01:002006-09-10T16:25:53Z2006-09-10T10:39:59Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115788479913886518Jimmy shows the wayGoogle caved, as did Microsoft, Yahoo and others before them, but Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia has refused to censor Wikipedia for the Chinese government. It's all or nothing for Wikipedia - we should applaud his stance.
A piece in the Observer today - Wikipedia defies Chinese censors - also highlights the 'irrepresible.info' campaign run jointly by Amnesty International and the Observer.falseJohn Connell2006-09-09T18:35:00+01:002006-09-10T10:41:17Z2006-09-09T17:41:01Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20269711.post-115782366136518290Soutra without the KamaSomeone asked me recently where my occasional online pseudonym - Soutra - comes from. I've used it for many years as my default login name for various services, including Technorati (although I've now amended that to show my full name instead).
First things first - it has, unfortunately, nothing to do with the Kama Sutra!
Those of you who know the Scottish Borders, and especially those who usefalse