John McLear – Page 111 – Founder, Inventor, Creator

Testing Primary Games Arena Banner

Posted on May 4, 2010May 4, 2010 by primaryt

I’m testing an embeddable banner for primary games arena.

Concept:

Actual embedded game:

Trying out remote support in Primary Schools (again)

Posted on May 3, 2010September 2, 2012 by primaryt

We have had numerous attempts at trying to find the right solution that suits us and our customers needs for technical support. We often get it right but remote support has been one of the harder things to implement. Firstly it was a technical barrier, we hope now it will just be a training barrier.

We are trying to implement remote support using a mash up of technologies that makes it as easy as possible for a teacher to get instant support. We aim to roll it out fully in the next 6 months. We are using the Google Talk protocol with the pidgin client on desktop machines and the google talk client on mobile devices.

Here is a screen shot of the interface:

If you recieve support from us for a paid product then get in touch if you want to try it out early on.

My Creative Twitter CV / Résumé

Posted on May 3, 2010 by primaryt

I wanted to updated my CV / Résumé and I figured I should modernise it a bit too. Let me know what you think.

Here is the a live site. Note: The following site is not twitter.com.

Show My Homework review

Posted on April 30, 2010September 2, 2012 by primaryt

UPDATE & Warning: Show My Homework will spam your email inbox with no option to unsubscribe.

Show My Homework is a web based service for teachers to creates a calendar for pupils that shows when homework has been issued and is due.

The process works like this:

Teacher posts a piece of homework, including information such as the recipient class and date/time.
Pupil checks on a certain URL to see what homework has been assigned to their class.

This website is primarily aimed at secondary schools and colleges where homework is set in advance and is essential to the ongoing education of the child. Comparing this service to something like Edmodo is difficult as Edmodo is much more of a communication platform where files are the focus.

I don’t see the Primary School uptake of a system like this being high. The concept is great and so is the delivery but I feel without a large change in the way primary schools assign homework and a change in the way the website handles individual/group assignments, learning platform integration that this service may be overlooked for some time to come.

The credit process encourages teachers to get other teachers involved with Show My Homework by providing free credits as a reward for inviting other teachers. There is no mention about how the process will work when all of a schools teachers have been invited onto the system. I expect this is when a small fee will come into place.

Show My Homework is focused more on classes than groups, some would argue this sacrifices individualized learning for a more formal work structure, this seems like a natural sacrifice as Show My Homework is a specific job for a specific task and that task is homework assignment.

I like Show My Homework for its simplicity and practicality and salute it for not trying to be something it isn’t. A perfect example of how it is beautifully simple are the email reminders, nudging you if you haven’t assigned any homework lately. I personally think Naimish and his team should think about providing an open standard for homework assignment that can integrate with a learning platform such as Moodle.

Watch the video and see what you think!