Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 1

Today I started on my journey towards Droidville, past the gargoyles of SDKs and into the realm of eclipse. I began my journey equiping myself with the finest weapons possible in the form of eclipse and android sdk including all the power ups and runes. I stopped for lunch at bar youtube where I indulged in an excellent documentary and began my developing whilst following the gentle, slightly distant voice of the presenter. “Whisper control shift oh! to the sage and ye be blessed with organized imports” I heard him mutter under his breath..

Hours went by and the youtube video was stopped, rewound and replayed various times, as the sun set I had my Hello world working and some UIs designed, unfortunatly my Hello World app is called com.golf.. The icon is set. If this is groundhog day let it end…

Flute playing and shots of rolling hills come into screen..

Will tomorrow bring safer travels for our hero?

Jaycut in the primary classroom – Video editing

Recently when making my GTA application I checked out Jaycut.

Jaycut is an online video editing tool.   I was super sceptical of using Jaycut, what with the size of video files and how slow preview should be over the internet, especially on my poxy home internet connection. I was very surprised by the results, although at one point I did lose all of my work!  Watch the video and check it out.. No doubt it will be filtered inside of your school, get calling your LA/internet provider and get it opened up.  It’s another great web2 tool we should be supporting.

As you can see it is very simple to use and accessible anywhere which makes it my #1 preferred option for editing video after they have been captured by a digital video camera.

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Bye bye creative curriculum?

The new Primary Curriculum is axed. Cutting the creative curriculum means 1 of 2 things, either:
a) schools can adopt their own creative curriculum without government guidance
or
b) schools have to stick to the current curriculum

Option a seems to make most sense as Cameron talks about empowering teachers.

So it is very likely schools will have to stick the current curriculum (option a) as sensible decisions isn’t the way Whitehall operates.  Anyone else get the “If it can be cut – cut it” type mentality?  On the same day as Cameron reminded us that our national debt is larger than Ron Jeremy’s libido.

It is no surprise that any “new spending” or “new project” would get cut but it seems like the Conservatives need to be clear and frank about the Primary Curriculum and their reasons for not proceeding with it after teachers have collectively spent tens of thousands of hours working towards delivering it.

Before Becta closes they have rushed through the Self review framework changes.

What do you think?  Do you think it will be option a or b?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

UPDATE:  In the meantime, the Department has advised schools that the existing primary curriculum will continue to be in force in 2011/12 and primary schools should plan on that basis.  Source

Ouch…