Author: John McLear

My Teachmeet tale

Posted on by John McLear

This is a short tale that will tell you exactly why people like me need to go to Teachmeets.

I rocked up at Teachmeet, flyers out, brain on, willing to listen. The talks were all great and then @largerama got up and showed something similar to PrimaryWall. Brilliant, I thought, because it wasn’t as nice as PrimaryWall but he showed 2 features PrimaryWall doesn’t have!! Oh noes!! Export to Wordle and another one that is coming soon, sssh(secrets)! Anyway.. Long story short, I was at TM on Thursday, I did 30 minutes implementing the new wordle feature today and it’s now live… 30 minutes!! That’s all it takes for a great idea to end up on a great platform.. Kudos to @Largerama, he is a genie’s bum!

The functionality is available for both pro and basic accounts. PrimaryT will make a formal announcement later this week hopefully once all the CSS is polished etc.

My move to GiffGaff [And why t-mobile suck]

Posted on by John McLear

Over the last few months you may of heard me ranting about why t-mobile have really let me down. I’m not going to dwell on t-mobiles failings, they aren’t worth the pixel space. All I’m going to say is that t-mobile failed to provide both technology and customer support to me, I was bound to a contract I never signed, there was no record of signing. I should take t-mobile to the small claims court but word of mouth is WAY more powerful so if I can put 10 people off signing up with t-mobile I have done my job..

So after 18 months of pure frustration I was introduced to GiffGaff, now GiffGaff isn’t squeeky clean, ultimately when you pay GiffGaff you are paying o2 and o2’s track record isn’t great, but safe to say, it’s a choice of the lesser of two evils..

GiffGaff is a pay as go service, I’m not going to try to sell it.. It does what it says it will do on the tin.. I have waited two years to have a conversation over a mobile phone in my house.. That may sound shocking but that’s the reality of T-mobile in comparison to o2, the service is just leaps and bound apart. So what do I like about GiffGaff? It’s easy, so easy.. I was driving home today and thought how did I actually switch? It required no phone calls, no faff, no stupid registration and/or giving half of my life story… It’s social, when I signed up a friend got some credit just for me signing up and putting some credit on my phone. It’s consumer centric, goody bags give the perks I NEED not what they are trying to sell me at the time.. It’s mostly online and community driven, support comes from an active community[the community is rewarded for helping out with free credit(Gamification meats customer support)..].. Free internet.. Need I say more?

I will say that I researched a lot of options before moving away from a contract phone, I mostly take incoming calls and use my phone for emails. If you do sign up for Giffgaff let me know and I will give you my username so I get free credit 🙂

What Microsoft’s purchase of Skype means for Primary Schools

Posted on by John McLear

Microsoft’s $8.5bn purchase of Skype has raised a few eyebrows, but we don’t care about most peoples, what we care about is how this purchase will affect Primary Schools.  In this post I am going to try to summarize the real life impacts of such a purchase and how you should consider using Skype in the classroom.

Things we can expect:

  • Skype will come bundled with Windows 8.
  • Open source & tech folks will stop using Skype and begin looking at alternatives.
  • Google will be panicking.
  • Windows Mobile 8 will have a big emphasis on VOIP connectivity
  • Microsoft will attempt to play a bigger part in mobile data connectivity
  • Skype and the VOIP stuff used for Xbox Live will be integrated
  • You will be able to Sign into Skype using your XBLA or Microsoft.com/Live.com account

Microsoft will use Skypes deep telco contracts to leverage cheaper mobile communications.  With all these new connections and contracts it is conceivable Microsoft will partner with a manufacturer to provide a data connected laptop/netbook using the Amazon Kindle model of data.  The kindle model of data is basically a pay once, use forever but it has recently been announced this is likely to be subsidized by adverts appearing on your device.   You should seriously think about where you stand on Ads in the Primary School Classroom.  I think the potential use of these “light internet use netbook devices” could be perfect but basic net browsing however they won’t be suitable for 5+ pupils in the same classroom browsing “rich-content”, whatever that is in 3-10 years time.

If you are interested in e-Safety then I would say that now is a great time to have a really good think about the e-safety risks that Skype poses, especially if it is going to be installed natively on Microsoft Windows devices.  Skype has the same e-safety challenges of Facebook, it just gets less attention because it currently isn’t as widely adopted.

You may be wondering if you should sign up for the Skype in the Classroom and I would say go ahead, it’s unlikely Microsoft will lose this battle in the same way they lost[/committed suicide] the MSN battle.  Skype was running at a loss and Microsoft has basically “bailed it out” and given it a long future.  At Primary Technology we use Skype as our main source of voice communication and we have no plan to leave it as it provides great value.  We will leave Skype is a good, open source source, distributed telco connected solution appears, I doubt that though.

So to summarize..  We are one step closer to getting 4G connected Windows devices, we have an elevated e-safety issue to address, Microsoft own yet another part of your life.