Ian Addison presenting Class PET

This time last week, we had just got back to the hotel after a long day of setting up our BETT stand.  We sat in the bar, and considered that this year’s BETT could go one of two ways… Would it be like last year? Relatively busy, but full of visitors  who weren’t quite sure what they wanted, and even if they did pretty sure they didn’t have any budget. Or would things have settled down a bit and we have a good show?

The good news is that this year, BETT was full of visitors who came with a shopping list.  They knew what they wanted, and how much they had to spend. In addition, the  buzz that was at the show meant that visitors to the stand seemed much more interested in what we had to talk about.

Now, whether you are a fan of Mr Gove or not, there was a big shift between not appearing last year, to opening BETT this year.  The speech was heavily trailed, and although the big news was the removal of the ICT Curriculum, the big news for us was Gove saying:

“…technology brings unprecedented opportunities for assessment. Teachers can now support pupils’ learning by assessing their progress in a much more sophisticated way, and sharing assessments with pupils and parents.

Each pupil’s strengths and weaknesses can be closely monitored without stigmatising those who are struggling or embarrassing those are streaking ahead. Teachers can adjust lesson plans to target areas where pupils are weakest, and identify gaps in knowledge quickly and reliably.”

For Scholastic, with Class PET and Read & Respond Engage that do just this, and help with the revised Ofsted framework, this meant we had more teachers coming to our stand looking to see exactly what they do and how they could help. It meant that a lot of the demonstration schedule was rewritten to get both resources demo’d a bit more, and by Friday night my voice was more husky than someone who smokes 40 a day, and I hadn’t had lunch for three days.

In amidst all of this, we had some astonishing TeachMeet Takeover sessions, and quite possibly even more impressive KidsMeet sessions.  I honestly think that some of the demonstrations by primary school pupils from Ian Addison’s, Charlie Deane’s, Nick Jackson’s and Tim Handley’s schools were more slick than many adult presentations.  Thank you very much indeed to all of the teachers, and pupils who presented on our stand.

By Saturday night, I tweeted that I’d like to have a foot transplant.  Apart from my feet feeling as if they were going to fall off, everything else seemed well in the world. Our teacher resources had sold incredibly well, Hutch (our caricature artist) had gone down well again, and we had so many leads to follow up that it has taken two days to sort them all out.

A good BETT – and one that was a fitting end to it’s time at Olympia.

I can’t wait…really, can’t wait.  We have been planning for the BETT 2012 show for nearly a full year – our first meeting on it was in February when we had  a full look at the 2011 show, and then pretty much monthly after that, until October when things got super busy!

As I mentioned in the post I wrote before Christmas, we are going to be running a much more comprehensive round of resource demonstrations, including:

• Using paired story videos and non-fiction EBooks to build a love of reading

• Using real time digital assessments in the classroom

• Using favourite children’s books to structure your literacy teaching

A full list of our demo’s, and the times they are on is here.  We are super happy that we have at least three different schools on our stand as well!

In addition, TeachMeet Takeover is happening again! Here’s the agenda.

As always, BETT really isn’t BETT without the fringe events; and this year I’m going for the full-house yet again!

Wednesday night: BETT Awards Dinner.  Read & Respond Engage is up for an award in the Primary Digital Content category!

Thursday night: Scholastic are sponsoring the Collaborate for Change event in the Apex room.  I am also hosting a table at C84C which has the title: ‘How much should children be, or feel, in charge of their work?’ which I hope will be an interesting discussion!

Friday night:  Scholastic are sponsoring the  TeachMeet at BETT – can’t wait!

Right, I’m off to watch Sherlock before a very long week!

It all started yesterday, a moment when I wondered out loud what would happen if we didn’t erect a stand at BETT this year, and instead turned the 100m2 into a dance floor, where we could host ‘Strictly Come BETT’.  This seemed to take Bev Evans fancy, and from there, we now have a full line up for the ‘show’.  Unfortunately (?) we are putting up our stand, so are looking for somewhere to host this event – current thinking is that half-time at TeachMeet BETT is probably best (mainly as we can live stream it!).

So to the line up…

The Hosts

Duly voted in today: @tonyparkin and @dawnhallybone

The Judges

After much deliberation, it was decided that @deputymitchell is the bald one; @janwebb21 is the brunette; and @frogphilp and I are the camp judges.

The dancers

I’ll let you decide which is which, but the three couples voted in were: @ianaddison and @charliedeane; @ewanmcintosh and @tombarratt and @joga5 and @dughall

Thank you to all for being very good sports (especially when you had no clue what was going on!).

Anthony Browne on the Scholastic stand in 2011

Here we go again, BETT is just around the corner and Scholastic have been getting ready (almost since BETT 2011 ended!) for a big show.

We have kept the bits that you said you loved from last year (More resource demonstrations based on the needs you have in your classroom; TeachMeet Takeover and Hutch, our caricature artist is back again!).

We have changed a couple of other things – we are taking a selection of our resources that you can buy on the stand (thank you to @dawnhallybone among others for this suggestion) – to make this extra special, we are offering 20% off at the show!

In full… we are hosting 60 sessions on stand G40 to help you in the classroom. From Using real time digital assessments in the classroom, to Using favourite children’s books to structure your literacy teaching

Here’s what you can do on our stand:

• take part in a demonstration of resources that can help you in the classroom
• a chance to win Olympics resources worth £50 every half-an-hour
• take a look at our latest resources, and try them out for yourself
• watch and take part in a KidsMeet or TeachMeet
• save 20% on all orders placed at the show
• charge up your mobile phones while you have your caricature drawn
• and most importantly enter our Treasure Hunt for a chance to win an iPad!

Scholastic Treasure Map

If you want to get ahead of the game, download the treasure map now – you can fill in the answers on the Scholastic web site.

I would say that in the 10-12 schools I have been in since September, about half of that number started this academic year without a VLE. Not the greatest sample size in the world, but then if you know me at all you’ll know that one swallow always makes a summer!

The reasons that the Head teachers I spoke to for getting rid of their VLE ranged from – “we never used it”, “to it cost us too much money”. One Head, and I won’t say at which school, gleefully told me that she and the Deputy Head had cancelled all of the online subscriptions the school had (Espresso, Education City etc.), plus the VLE and not told any of the teachers…they had a bet to see how long it would be until the teachers noticed the services had gone – and by the middle of October, no teacher had noticed a thing.

Now there are a few things you can take from that anecdote, and a few concerns! But one thing I took from it was that you only get out of a VLE what you put in – and if the management of the school aren’t supportive or active in pushing the VLE then there is little wonder that the teachers didn’t use it.

One thing that does seem striking is that the government policy which dictated that every pupil should have access to a personalised online learning space by spring of 2008 made schools and LAs look at VLEs, and buy into them, but unless well trained and supported they weren’t used. Or, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Time for another anecdote? I think so… Another quite stark example of the way this policy was implemented was in a primary school I know very well. One of the members of staff who left about 12-months ago in her exit interview asked why the school hadn’t invested in a VLE – the shocking answer was that they had, in 2005, they just hadn’t gotten around to telling anyone yet. This is a very large school, who for five years had been telling anyone who would listen they were running a deficit budget, but had spent five years spending money on a service no-one knew they had and consequently never used.

Don’t take from this that I am anti-VLE, much the same as my thoughts around interactive whiteboards, in the right hands they can be incredibly effective tool which allows teachers and pupils to prosper, but when you’re not trained on something properly, or don’t have the technical know-how to do it yourself, it is a waste of time and money – both of which are in tremendous short supply in schools at the moment.

My School Holidays is a free web site from Primary Technology that provides UK school term and holiday dates for 16000+ schools for 3+ years and has recently launched in Germany as Schulferien. My School Holidays is the best place to organize, update and publish your school’s holiday dates.

My School Holidays’ vision is to be the #1 provider of school holiday dates in the world with fantastic features such as, the embeddable widget(see above), and countdown to the holidays we expect big things from the guys at Primary Technology who will do us all proud!

Some more features you might like:
· Dates are available for 1 year into the future
· Mobile version of the website
· Council/district dates as well as specific school dates
· Printable calendar
· Various APIs for software developers and partners.

We are going away soon to the US so that I can be best man at my best mates wedding. Elizabeth and Jet are coming too, and we thought that as we will spend  a lot of time in planes, and waiting around that being able to distract ourselves with a good film or two would be a good thing.

We looked around a bit (quite a bit actually) and it came down to a decision between getting an iPad2 and an Eee Pad Transformer.  We knew exactly what we would get with the iPad2, but the Transformer was a bit of an unknown.  After deliberation, we opted for the Transformer.  The reasons?  It is cheaper – significantly – something like £200 all in, the ability to read websites as they are meant to be (flash) and we read many many good reviews from very well respected websites.

Out of the box the Transformer is amazing. After a quick charge, and logging in with your Google account, it knows exactly who you are – not only that but your contacts are downloaded, your photos are there, and all docs.  The unit itself is slick, image amazing and clear.  The Honeycomb UI – no problems with it at all (I haven’t experienced yet any of the problems with 3.01 that others have).

So what nearly caused us to return the Transformer only hours after receiving it? The things we wanted to use it for (films specifically) are so blinkin difficult to get on it!  I spent hours last night looking for ways to transfer films on, and woke up early again this morning to do the same thing.

The problem isn’t the unit specifically, it isn’t even the OS that runs on it. It is with Google.  I can see why people crow about the iPad.  The simplicity of having a store where you can select a film, and download it is just what you need.  The time and angst trying to find the right file coding for Handbrake, working out how to transfer it on to an SD card (which is not as easy as it sounds) is very close to not being worth the hastle.  Google need to address this, and quickly.  There are companies such as Netflix and Amazon who in the US allow for file download. The closest we have in the UK is BlinkBox which just allows download to PC.  It is a conflict that goes to the heart of the Android ideology – freedom to use which app you like, when you like with little control from an equivalent App Store, with amazing multitasking  etc. etc, but when the main competition is Apple, that likes to hand hold you through every process you have a problem.  it is not good enough to be good enough, you need to be the best, and sorting out this problem soon is critical.

Luckily, I have managed to find the right package to sort out the films – it isn’t perfect at all, but I can live with it until Google get their act together. And  I can stay with the tablet I love

Earlier this week, I came across a Guardian article about where schools were on strike – it included a Google map that had each Local Authority highlighted to show what percentage of schools are on strike.  Now, I have made my own map in Google before, and carefully drawn around each territory to show where we have School Representatives, but it is painstaking, and definitely not as professional as the Guardian one.  It made me wonder how they managed to create it.  If you want to skip to the end, then here is what I made!

The answer was in Google Fusion Tables – and after a couple of minutes of tinkering, I was hooked.  The possibilities here are amazing. But also quite a bit of learning to do – and as with everything new, lots went wrong.  Here is how I managed to create my Fusion Table showing all of the different areas of the UK, and where Scholastic have school representatives:

First.

Golden rule: don’t build your data table in the Fusion Table itself – it is a very long winded and convoluted way.  Either build it in Excel or Google Spreadsheets, as you can import them when you are finished.

Get yourself some location data.  Now it depends which type of map you want to show. If I had wanted to show points in the map, then a place name, or postcode would have done and I could have skipped happily onto the next step. But I wanted to show each area as a layer on top of the map.  This is a lot more complicated.

I did plenty of Google searching to find the right data.  In the end, I found some from Nearby.Org, which isn’t perfect, but I can refine over time. To draw polygons over the right data you need a string of coordinates that show the edge of the area you want to cover.  Now, most coordinates come looking like this:

54.91567645	-1.743341174
54.91925706	-1.724644054
54.91056256	-1.718651474

Unfortunately, the lovely way that Google works, you need to reverse these codes, so they end up looking more like this:
-1.74334117369273,54.9156764522577
-1.72464405391863,54.9192570581909
-1.7186514736122,54.9105625612723

Second

Once you have all of the location data (and in my case I have 164 different lines in my database, each with up to 4000 coordinates in) – you can start to build up your spreadsheet.  I wanted to show the Rep name, Area name, phone number, email, Area number (more on this later) and finally the location.  Here is an example of mine.

All of the columns are self-explanatory, apart from location.  In the location column, you need to put in the KML data for the areas you want to show.  This can be done with the following code:

<Polygon> <outerBoundaryIs><coordinates> -2.51998453948394,51.6881171980821
-2.51981095720608,51.6881179666459  </coordinates> </outerBoundaryIs> </Polygon>

Now to do this for all areas would be very time consuming, had it not been for the wonderful concatenate function in Excel.  By using this, it saved me hours of coding work.

Once you have this in your table, you can then import it into Fusion Tables, using the import function.

Third

Once you have imported it, you can click on ‘visualise’ which allows you to show the data you have in your table as a map.  As long as you have included the KML data here, you should have no problems.

All of the areas are red to start with, and you then have to work out how to change each area.  If you click on Configure Map Styles, then on Polygons, fill colour, buckets, you can then set the colour to be what you want.  Now as I had numbered my areas, I was able to set the number of ‘buckets’ to 100, and then I could say that bucket 1, should be green, 2 blue etc. etc.

Once you have done this, you have pretty much finished, you can grab the embed code and put that into a website or blog post.  There is, however much more you can do. You can merge tables to compare and contrast different sorts of data.  The visualisations are much more than maps, you can do timelines, heat maps, charts, storylines…the list is longer, and the possibilities pretty much endless.

Pic: Pencils by Topgold - Attribution-NonCommercial License

I was asked earlier to advise on blogging platforms… I answered as follows. If you agree / disagree please let me know!!

I have a few and have used a lot of different platforms…

Blogger
I write a blog for booksellers in blogger, which is very basic, but reasonably easy to use (the platform, not the blog, well actually, both). The problem I have with it is that every time you want to do something slightly different from the norm in Blogger you find you can’t do it, or you need expert html knowledge. I know that there have been some advances of late, but of them all, I’d say this is my least favourite blogging platform.

Posterous

chrisrat.posterous.com
classpet.posterous.com
I started properly on Posterous which is superb, really easy to post stuff to, although limited in themes and plugins are almost non-existent. You can email in your post with an image/video/audio attachment and it sorts it for you. Great for a first blog, and for community blogging, but not advanced stuff really. Has been known to have a bit of down time, but nothing massive.

Tumblr

chrisrat.tumblr.com
I use Tumblr just for pictures and videos – incredibly easy to set up, and use. I post from an app on my phone, which Posterous, Tumblr and WordPress also have (blogger maybe also, but I’ve never looked). Very similar to Posterous in look and feel.

WordPress

chrisrat.com
educationblogawards.org

WordPress is the ultimate blogging platform (in my opinion!). It has millions of themes to choose from, unlimited plugins that allow you to have tag clouds, custom menus, voting etc. It is completely open source, so free.

Both of these blogs and are self-hosted. This means you don’t necessarily know it is on WordPress. The Education Blog Awards looks and feels like a website (as does another site I put together, also built on WordPress). The self-hosting is reasonably cheap, and the domain name is as expensive as you want it to be. If you don’t want to self-host, you can use WordPress.com which hosts it for you, but you get a URL that looks like this http://educationsales.wordpress.com/ (if you can see the content of this, then let me know, as you shouldn’t be able to!) The other downside is that you don’t get the added functionality that a self-hosted blog gives you.

One other option if you are a school is to use Primary Blogger, which is based on the WordPress platform and is also free.  It has built in spam filtering and SEO optimization and you get the same ability as with the normal WordPress to post from your mobile.   Over 1500 primary schools use it, and it costs absolutely nothing!

There are a few other blogging platforms, such as TypePad (paid for), Moveable Type (free), Squarespace (paid for), Textpattern (free, but low support).

What blogging platform do you use, and why?

I’m sorry to say that the latest Seth Godin offering, Poke the Box, is not up to his usual standards. A huge Godin fan, I was really looking forward to reading this – especially after reading Linchpin and being inspired.

I have to start by saying I haven’t quite finished it (about 10 pages to go). I had hoped it would get better, but it hasn’t. I also admit to recommending it half way through and wish I could retract!

I also will admit to having just finished one of the best books I have ever read – What is the What by David Eggers, any book following it would pale in comparison.

Right. Excuses over. Poke the Box is meant to be a manifesto about how to ‘ship’. A good idea, but rather than introducing an idea, expounding on it and concluding, it seems to be an exercise in trying to say exactly the same thing 64 times, with different words. In short: if you have an idea, don’t keep it to yourself, do it, market it it, produce it, ship it. Um, that’s it.

One or two of the examples are nice as they always are, but nothing up to usual standard. I am a keen reader of Seth’s blog, and will continue to read it, but will be more circumspect about his next book.

By the way, I have to thank Drew Buddie (@digitalmaverick) for recommending What is the What. If you want a motivating book that shows triumph over adversity, success against the odds, vision when all is lost, then buy this rather than the frippery that is Poke the Box.