Category: ICT

Wireless in every classroom

Posted on by John McLear

Government’s meddling in technology in education is overdue. Remember the “every classroom gets an interactive whiteboard” push, well, I think we’re due another and due to the Governments latest appointment it makes the most sense that you will be seeing a push for “every classroom gets wireless Internet connectivity.”

So what would a wirelessly connected room bring?

It would certainly tick one of Naace’s boxes of empowering pupils devices as they would be able to get online and access learning resources and have their device “updated” by the school either via purchased apps or via free apps online.

Who wins from a wirelessly connected school?

There are really 4 or so big hardware players in this market, namely Netgear, Cisco, Meru and Ruckus. Most other companies can’t compete as the residential grade wireless isn’t up to the job in high densities. Who wins from a services point of view? There are hundereds of wireless installation companies, the key ones that have the skills to do school specific deployments are Ergo, RM and Primary Technology.

Why would the government make a push for this?

It’s true that Gove doesn’t seem very interested in technology in education however with the new appointment of Phil Smith and his background at Cisco I can imagine he will want to put a stamp on things and what better/easier/more natural way than trying to improve the nations infrastructure by empowering pupils mobile learning devices and at the same time empowering “legacy” school owned equipment such as netbooks and laptops.

Future of Tech in Education: 60 second Naace review

Posted on by John McLear

Naace’s press release on the future of technology is a great read and I thought I’d summarize it for you and provide some links to resources that will enable you to adopt their vision of the future.

Our team at Primary Technology are going through each of these points of reference that Naace have indicated and looking at ways we can provide a web based service that will enable teachers to have an easier barrier to uptake an accomplish the goals set out.

References:

Naace press release
Twitter #ukedchat
Facebook
TES forums
Naace
Classdroid
ICT Leaders RSS feed [Blogs]
School Email
PrimaryBlogger
SWGFL Learning resource
BBC Learning
Primary Games Arena
BrainPOP

Also find more web based learning resources here

PrimaryBlogger Updates

Posted on by

It’s been a long two weeks. We’ve moved PrimaryBlogger over to our new servers and hopefully you’ll now have a more stable and fast experience with your blogs. You’ll also see a lot of changes happening graphically and functionality wise to improve your overall experience of PrimaryBlogger.

Heres a list of the things we’re currently doing and are looking at for the future:

  • Soon, we’ll be starting polls and asking for feedback for any changes you would like to see or improve upon, be it themes, plugins or something else.
  • To improve overall speed of the site we’ve turned off some of the plugins we use by default, don’t worry you can still enable them in the plugins section in the wp-admin area.
  • We’ve added the ability to remove your user account if you so wish.
  • More spam fighting tools.
  • Use PrimaryBlogger to host your school’s website.
  • PrimaryBlogger custom themes.
  • New PrimaryBlogger website coming soon.
  • PrimaryBlogger Pro and other packages coming soon.
  • A better PrimaryBlogger support website coming soon.
We hope you enjoy everything we’ve done, let us know any feedback in the comments, Twitter, Primary Technology answers forum or by email.

Sounds like Glow is on the right path #EduScotICT

Posted on by primaryt

Sounds like Glow and Primary Technology share a similar vision about open technologies.  It would be really sad if they say “Yes we want to use open technologies” then adopt Google Docs, let’s hope that doesn’t happen!  Please people, try to remember than Open is not the same as Free, open means you have the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want with that piece of software.

I find it strange that so many Scottish schools that have access to the Glow blogs service still use PrimaryBlogger?  I assume it’s because PrimaryBlogger has a slightly more open feel and ability to be more creative.  I guess as Glow is part of a bigger service the government feel they need to attach certain policies and restrictions to it.  I don’t know the answer but it would be an interesting discussion to have if you are a Glow user and you use PrimaryBlogger.

If I was to be skeptical about one thing it would be about RM’s ability to manage glow.  In my experience RM tend not to consult with other small business’ about best practice when implementing new technology and I haven’t seen much of a commitment from RM to open source.  Do you know of any?  If so, please prove me wrong!

So I’m interested to see what Glow do, I wont be contributing to the date unless my presence is requested but I will be listening in and looking to see what exciting open-technologies are proposed!

Just finally, I want to give credit to some of the people working in and around Glow from a teaching and learning perspective.  Ollie Bray, Derek Robertson, Margaret Vass, John Johnston to name but a few.  Keep up the good work one and all and kudos to you!