He said conservative policies would focus on:

1. Putting information out to the public
2. Openness
3. Transparency
4. Technology
5. Competition (both public and private sector)

The idea is that by using technology they can reduce public spending, I have done a few posts on how ICT can be used to save money in Primary Schools before so this ties in well with my views.

“The democratisation of information – primarily through technology – has revolutionised the way we act and interact. Individuals have direct control over what they want to know and when they know it” – Conservative party education policy 2009.

To summarize: The conservatives know the internet is a big deal… Well done……..

Technology or ICT barey gets a mention in the policy however there is space to mention “Strict school uniform policies, with blazer, shirt and tie and with a zero-tolerance of incorrect or untidy dress.”

How a policy can prioritise the issue of school uniform over the use of technology baffles me and shows a backwards approach to 21st century learning.

I’m not pro or against any party, I’m still convinced labour will whip an ace from up it’s sleave a few months before the general election and David Milliband will replace Gordon Brown which will have a massive impact on opinion polls.

As for the lib dem’s I can’t even find their education policy and as for Labour when I go to their website I can’t get over the fact the main focus their page design points to is to donate money to the government, is the economy really that bad?

To summarize:

Labour: No mention of technology.

Conservatives: Well sold policy but no real substance.

Lib Dems: ArgleBargle.

Naace are running a conference on using 3d virtual worlds in education. I can’t help but feeling this is mostly focused on the secondary market but I guess it has some relevance to Primary.

Right now, even though I feel it has relevance I feel skeptical that this is a good idea but I could be wrong, it’s happened before

Try to remember most primary school kids don’t even have email addresses provided by their schools yet and we’re going to open them up to a second life (be it walled or not)

I’m not going to rant about security or child safety. I want to focus entirely on the point. Right now, I just don’t get it.

I’m not going to download it or try it out, I don’t want to know if it feels good or clever. This isn’t a particularly new concept. Games have been used in Primary Education for years, mostly cartoony games that are very simple. Why do I need my character to walk to a piece of work to pick it up when its available on my VLE.. (I’m pretending I’m a kid…)

I do however think games is a great way to encourage kids to learn, Primary Games Arena is having huge success worldwide with engaging children in fun learning.

Virtual worlds should be all about engaging with other people, school mates for example.

Maybe the whole Digital Citizenship is what I don’t get. Being that I started with BBS, moved to IRC + LPMUD, now I have every possible way of being “Hailed” 24/7… Come to think of it I think I probably learned a lot of social skills through LPMuds (Multi user environments)..

I think I will go spend some time thinking about what Digital Citizenship is and how it will feel in 3/5 years time when virtual worlds MAY be at their peak. They certainly haven’t peaked yet and all the hype from Second Life is blatant hot air..

I may have just begun a revolution in my head.. Oh dear..

If you read this all the way through then you may wish to consider reading this article of Terry freedmans interview of Miller – its focused more at secondary but you get the picture..

It seems to scream to me “Teachers must teach more eSafety!“.

Consider a man wanting to cross a road, he can be instructed by the signs to a safe place to cross or we can only allow him to cross in one place. By allowing children to be educated into where we cross the road we don’t restrict them to closed options. It seems to me that we actively encourage them to make decisions and therefore learn.

Is our current approach correct?

In many ways no. We still have a compulsive fascination with ways to protect our children. Being that I was brought up in the soils of Yorkshire, I find it hard to understand a constant barrage of rules, regulation and “health ‘n safety”. We are not doing enough to empower pupils to make decisions in eSafety and this is mostly to blame on Software houses and the demand on software houses to make overly protective environments for children to learn in.

Are we confusing eSafety with a need to have extended controls?

The example I like to use is a teacher asking his or her pupils to sign into their hotmail accounts which they created. The pupils begin logging, suddenly a scream from the back bellows “Miss I can’t remember my password!”. The teacher is Shocked and now baffled by the puzzle they face. The teacher doesn’t have time to run through the registration process all over again and they can’t reset the password.

The only way this could be resolved quickly is by giving the teacher the means to reset a pupils password or by having a helpdesk type system.

Another great example where extended controls is Primary School Safe Search. With Primary School Safe Search you can Google search any site you want. Instead of displaying a set of search results from a few hundred sites, Primary School Safe Search displays all the safe search results but prioritises the educational and school related materials to the top of the search – filtering only websites catagoriesed explicitly.

My final example is that if a teacher wants to open a pupils mailbox and its with gmail/hotmail etc. to find out if that pupil is being bullied, can they?