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I’m confused… A load of secondary’s in Bradford weren’t able to get their BSF money to get a new build yet a new free school has been announced.

Does anyone know what it’s intake will be or who is behind the proposal?

UPDATE: Intake will be Yr7+ and it is funded by Alan Lewis.

UPDATE: It will be built on Northside Road in Lidget Green and will be a 2.1 mile drive from the nearest secondary school (Grange City Technology College).

UPDATE:  The school now has a website up that answers most of my questions.

There are many likely problems with the location/model and with the council taking education back from Serco I expect to see several sparks flying

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Some councils (currently 4 in the UK) manage a school closure RSS feed. This RSS feed is updated when a school is closed, this is great news for sites like my school closures as it enables them to dynamically update parents based on verified information supplied by the council. I have been in contact with a lot of schools state side who also want to begin providing closure information via RSS to third parties.  If you don’t know what an RSS feed is then this article probably isn’t for you.

Why is this important?

Globally recording school closures isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.  But if you think about how powerful it would be to compare school closures against weather/disasters etc. and the ability to then predict closures and other local closures based upon a school closure you begin to have a much bigger understanding of the economic and social impact such a system/standard can have.

The problem at the moment is that there is no framework for this information so working with it is a bit of a nightmare.  Therefore the target audience for this article is whoever is making the feeds for the council.

Remember: Computers are only as accurate as the information that goes into them.  RSS school closures feeds from councils may be a new area to explore but it is an area that will inevitably expand so we should get it right early on.

My work in this area

I write the mechanics for my school closures, providing school closure feeds and notifications for well over 5000 schools worldwide. I also work on the Ushahidi project, working on the social aggregation object which is in place to take information from social networks and assign them to schools based on locations. I am also working on a method of predicting school closures based on weather/notifications and/or and global disasters inc. fire, floods etc.

Suggested framework

I think it’s great councils are providing closure information but we need to address a few things.

1.) Provide documentation – We need either a standard for council closure RSS feeds OR councils needs to provide documentation along side their RSS feed.
2.) Do not create ghost items – Councils that create an RSS feed where the item is “No new items exist” is not cool. If your feed has no items then simply keep your feed empty.
3.) Don’t be vague – Councils need to fill their feed with as much information possible, I don’t expect lat/long but at least the street name.  Just putting the school name in the feed is not enough information, there is often two “St Matthews(replace Matthews with whatever you want) primary school’s” in the same district/council area.  Include in the feed if the school is open or closed and the reason for the closure (if this is the case).
4.) Don’t break your feed – Councils have to keep their RSS feeds working and up to date, this is a no brainer but is ignored on the previously mentioned closure feeds.
5.) Understand copyright law – Don’t put a copyright on public information RSS feeds (sighs).
6.) Use Geo tags on your feed – Consider putting some geo tags into your actual feed header, there are quite a few councils with the same name so a feed named “York Council RSS feed (new)” would get confused with New York, if you include a location tag such as “York, UK” then it will be a lot easier to aggregate this information.
7.) Use Geo tags on your items – Consider putting some geo tags into your items. I appreciate this is a bit of a pain to do but it will help us avoid matching the wrong notification to the wrong school.
8). Use the appropriate ttl on your feed.  Is 5 minutes really how frequently readers need to update this information?
9.) Create unique guids for each information update. Obvious really yet this is being ignored.
10.) Use open/closed in the title. If you use the word open or closed in the title it will save us creating a tag, however we should do that anyway.

An example of a bad feed

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:schools="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<channel>
<title>Barmon Schools - School Closures</title>
<link>https://rss.Barmon.com</link>
<description>This feed provides a list of schools that are closed in the Barmon District https://rss.Barmon.com</description>
<copyright>(c) Barmon Schools</copyright>
<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:56:11 GMT</pubDate>
<ttl>5</ttl>
<item>
<title>- No Schools Closed Today -</title>
<description>- No Schools Closed Today -</description>
<link>https://rss.Barmon.com/Schools/SchoolClosure_Index.aspx</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:20:16 GMT</pubDate>
<guid>https://rss.Barmon.com/Schools/SchoolClosure_Index.aspx</guid>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

An example of a good feed

<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Barmon Schools - School Closures</title>
<link>https://rss.Barmon.com</link>
<description>This feed provides a list of schools that are closed in the Barmon District https://rss.Barmon.com</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:56:11 GMT</pubDate>
<ttl>600</ttl>
<item>
<title>Moleswood Primary School is closed due to a fire</title>
<description>A fire swept through Moleswood Primary School, BA1 2AM.  The school is closed for an unspecified period</description>
<link>https://rss.Barmon.com/Schools/SchoolClosure_Index.aspx?school=1&view=rss</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:20:16 GMT</pubDate>
<guid>82291559asdh22184</guid>
<geo:lat>53.795740</geo:lat>
<geo:lon>-1.758306</geo:lon>
<schoolinfo:name>Moleswood Primary School</schoolinfo:name>
<schoolinfo:type>closed</schoolinfo:type>
<schoolinfo:reason>Fire</schoolinfo:reason>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Why this standard is better than the current mechanism

We basically chose to extend the RSS schema to include some school specific info. Surprisingly to some people is why we didn’t include something such as the UPN or “code” of the school. This is because the scope of this standard is global and most countries have their own coding structure.

We chose name for obvious reasons.  The schoolinfo:type allows different values such as closed, open, halfday, holiday etc. so can be extended reasonably well and the reason is simply complimentary for these values.

Why is Latitude and Longitude SO important?  Quite a few reasons, firstly is mapping, it is much easier to map based on lat and lon.  Second is conflicting school names and thirdly is very close by schools.  Lat and Lon of a location allows accurate location based results and also allows us to update records in case a school moves.

I can guarantee that councils will eventually adopt either this standard or a standard similar to this, be it through a smart management decision or through consumer demands.  A standard like this allows for much smarter closure announcements and future proofing of the quality of service delivered by educational institutions.

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Eclipse: Control Alt Down duplicates line
Emulator: Rotate screen – Control F11

As I moved closer to Droidville the air began to fill with hope, thousands of hopeful children and teachers poored into the streets, so I quickly hid and jumped into Bar Youtube (Part of the Starbucks chain) and watched another video to further my understanding of the power of Android, another good one this time by Ye old O’Reilly

Building my team to fight the forces of evil

I got in touch with a developer through rent-a-coder called Kumar Bibek who has 3 years experience fighting the forces of evil (developing Android apps). We had a conversation that went something line:  ”I can make the bow, can ye make the arrow?”  We agree’d on 100$ for the array (final bits of the work that were out of my skill set).

Overview of the bits I’m doing:
Making Classdroid look fit for a princess (Layout design/User interfaces)
Making Classdroid easy to use  (Application flow)
Making Classdroid link together (Intent assignments)
Designing how Classdroid will save our princesses minions (Database design)

Overview of the bits he’s doing:
Not shooting the messenger (Code to read/write preferences/settings to/from SQLite)
Carrier Pigeon nurturing (Control method for post to WordPress)
Controlling the Eye of  Gondor (Camera SDK modifications)

In the Sage’s library I found a piece of parchment with some notes scribbled on it:
Resource = text,pictures, sound objects, layout….
Intent = change the page
View = new page layout/display
\n = newline when using text elements

Very cryptic clues, maybe I will need them to enter the great hall of Droidville?

It’s been a long day…..

As the day drew to a close and the Sun nestled the hills of Azrowilsden I discovered WordPress have an android application that does 80% of what I want to do from a control point of view so I’m going to hack into that to save me needing to write the function that posts the RPC over XML to WordPress.  This is why the world should embrace more open source, it empowers us all instead of dumbing us down like iLem users who are too scared to google how to create an android application (or don’t see it being a valuable use of their time).

As the iLem users fall off their platform I am gently warmed inside by the knowledge that we are creating a better, more open world without any corporate borders.  One application at a time.

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Important or not?  This is the link to the tool.

• Election timetable: this week’s deadlines (libdemvoice.org)
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The first Edular I worked with refused point blank to quote me on SESP as it wasn’t in their system etc. They knew nothing about SESP – even its existence was a shock to them.

I went back to my MS licensing contact at Microsoft via Twitter and asked him if he had a recommendation on another Edular to try.. I also recommended he managed communication and training better with future education licensing models, he agreed.

The second Edular admitted they knew nothing but said they would investigate. A few days later after hearing nothing I rang them back to ask for an update, they sent me through a Select quote but not a SESP one so I emailed and rang back requesting SESP, 4 days later, still no quote….. On the 5th day I vented my frustration online and a third Edular (I didn’t know so many existed…) got in touch via twitter saying they can help and dropped me through ane email asking what I was looking for so I sent them an email with my requirements.

On the 7th day I was told by the Edular they were having some problems getting the actual pricing from Microsoft.

12 days later I still didn’t have a quote so I wrote a few tweets online which were picked up by some Microsoft people who then scurried away to ask the licensing team why Edulars couldn’t provide a quote.

14 days later I eventually have a price, thanks to Richard from Bechtle for all their hard work in helping me obtain these prices.

One of the things that’s different between Select and SESP if that you need to know the total amount of devices, amount of pupils and teachers inside of the school – as far as I’m aware with select licensing you just need machine count.

Lets compare the old vs the new pricing model

I have requested 2 pricing structures: Select & SESP.

For this experiment I’m supplying the Edular with machine and pupil counts for an average size 2 form entry Primary School in Bradford (480 pupils – 28 staff members) and requested the following licensing:

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“With Family Safety, you decide how your kids experience the Internet. You can limit searches, block or allow websites, decide who your kids can communicate with when they’re using Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, or Spaces and monitor what websites they’re visiting…”

In this review I will be installing the package and looking at what this really means in real life.

The product is easily downloadable from http://download.live.com/familysafety

Once you have downloaded and run the package you get this installer screen:

I was shocked to see Photo Gallery, Toolbar, Writer, some outlook and some Live Add ins bundled. Also SQL Server CE 3.1 is required and some of my applications will be updated.

For me this is bloatware already. I want an application that does what it sais in the blurb so I am going to remove all of the additional programs except from Family Safety (However you may want some of this functionality).

With everything else removed the install is a quite large 109 MB. I hope this disk space usage is justified.

I needed to close MSN messenger to proceed and the install process took 8 minutes to complete on a machine with with an Intel Core2 6600 & 2 GB ram.

Once install is complete you are presented with this screen:

I have already set my search provider to google safe search and my home page to Primary School Safe Search so I don’t want to do that. I also don’t want to help improve Windows Live, not right now.

Now for a restart… Microsoft never seemed to learn that this is the most frustrating thing about most of their products for IT professionals however parents might not mind this restart as much.

After the restart I was prompted to “Sign Up” to Windows live but I already have windows live so I clicked Close. Nothing has been placed on my desktop or start menu and Windows Live Messenger has not opened as it usualy does. Very bad first impression.

I had to browse to Start – Windows Live – Family Safety, here I tried to sign in as a parent using my hotmail/live username/password. I was given an Error That I have not yet ereviews the Windows Live Terms of Use. No link was provided. I logged into my hotmail to look for the Live Terms of Use.. I clicked More then Family Safety and then clicked “I accept”.

Then I clicked Sign in again, now im in. Already im convinced this is too complicated for parents.

I am going to leave it here for today, it has been 30 minutes so far and the install is done but the configuration isn’t.

In my opinion most parents would simply not go through this entire process as it is too complicated.

Part 2 of this post will review configuration. Expect it in a few days.

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Pupils not gaining access to email at primary school due to safety concerns.

The current solution employed by many safety-conscious schools is to deny pupils’ the ability to send or receive emails to the outside world.  However, a survey of national schools revealed that “only 3% of UK schools have individual email accounts for all teaching staff and pupils in year 3 upwards.”   (CITATION) This is a surprisingly small percentage, considering e-mail is first introduced to the curriculum in year 3.

There are many cross-curricular benefits of allowing children to communicate effectively with other children, whether locally or globally.  The Global Gateway (www.globalgateway.org.uk )  is building a community of links between schools around the world and e-mail provides a cost-effective means of carrying the messages between pupils.

But it’s hard to build communities over the internet when the children have no way to contribute.  What if we let our children speak and listen freely?  There is a risk that children may be groomed by sexual predators or threatened by other children. 

Can we not filter e-mail in the same way we filter websites?

The solution:

A pioneering new hosted email service called Primary Email.  This service scans all emails to  determine if the recipient is a pupil or teacher and applies the following filters accordingly:

·         Detect phrases and key words for bullying or sexual predators

·         Detects curse words

·         Check email origin (location/ISP) for known high risk areas

·         Anti-spam and anti-virus

·         All emails are tagged with a reminder to pupils never to give out any private or personal information over email.

Email is scanned through the filters and if a potential threat is detected the system instantly sends a copy of the email to the school office notifying a member of staff of the risk.

To confirm a specific threat requires access to the pupil’s inbox.  This can be completed by a school admin/SLT member without the requirement of knowing any additional passwords or any training.

Now you have identified and confirmed a threat, what do you do now?  At this point you can work with various child protection agencies or use your current school child protection/e-safety policy to deal with the matter. 

Do we have a safe, accessible, stable email system that teachers and pupils actually want to use inside and outside of schools?  It certainly looks that way!  Testing since 2007 in the majority of Bradford schools and various nationwide schools shows an increased level of communication between all users, with email being used as a cross curricular tool accessible on a number of devices including iPhones, PDAs and UMPCs.  Next generation learning is also achieved through anytime/anywhere learning over the internet.

“Primary Email has allowed our school to confidently give all pupils 24/7 email access for the first time.  Our pupils use their PDAs at home to email back and forth between their friends and teacher.  It is an eye opener to see what the pupils sometimes email each other.  Previously when we taught email we never gave the pupils access to the internet however this did not increase learning, we now have an email system that is used frequently by all staff and pupils to communicate and learn.”

Sharon Dominic – Wilsden Primary School
2008 Hand Held Learning- Innovation in Primary winners

Primary Email is not just about safety; children are given interactive games to learn how to use email and staff are given access to a shared school diary which publishes via RSS to the Internet. This allows schools to easily populate a Learning Environment or Website.  Teachers are provided with distribution lists to email all the pupils in their class/school and distribution groups for governors/parents are available.  The email system automatically updates from the school MIS making management extremely easy. 

How and when can your school start using this new technology?  Now!  You can find out more information at http://primaryemail.co.uk, by emailing hello@primaryemail.co.uk or calling on 084566 80 90 95.

The system is currently limited to the English/British language however worldwide packs are currently in beta testing in various countries.  The French and Spanish packs are due in the last quarter of 2009.

The technical bits

The exciting part of this new technology is the sexual predator filtering.  There have been recent successes using similar techniques – See the below URL. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/10/71948

Primary email uses two key systems to detect a threat.

The first is a database of key words/phrases used by predators/bullies, each of these words contains a certain weight of risk.

The second is similar to using sender profiling.  Primary Email checks for patterns that predators or bullies would use and likely sending domains that a predator would use to try to cover his/her tracks e.g. free email services.

To build the database of key words and phrases, several key strategic partners provided logs/conversations of sexual predators and their victims.  By identifying key phrases and words and assigning them a score per hit, Primary Email was able to build an algorithm to accomplish the detection process.  An example of this system working properly is that if the word “Pussy” is detected then it looks for “Cat”, in this scenario the risk level is reduced.  If the prior word is “Shaved” then the risk level is increased.  Initial testing showed that phrases could be disguised with foreign characters and abbreviation marks.  Tweaks were made to the system and this has led to approximately 98% accuracy in detecting potential risks.

The pupil protection system keeps a record of past conversations and senders.  This allows more stringent checks when one external account contacts more than one pupil, when one pupil is contacted by multiple external accounts or when a series of short emails are sent back and forth between pupils and external accounts.

Links

Primary Email – http://primaryemail.co.uk
Wilsden Primary School – http://www.wilsden.ngfl.ac.uk

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