With such manic activity, it’s quite clear that there are indeed pearls to find in the verbiage; the Secretary of State’s word count must top all in Government, and he has certainly become a major character in this Coalition, but how can you stop him throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Well that must be the Commons education committee in Parliament’s worry too, as they have enlisted public support to provide a raft of challenging questions for Mr Gove. And they have enlisted the support of Twitter – to suggest a question for Mr Gove, all you have to do is tweet that with the hashtag #AskGove. Now you don’t have to have a Twitter account to watch the Public Storm in return – go to TwitterFall, type #AskGove into the Search button and watch the TwitterFall happen. My best question at the time of writing was ‘why did you slap an injunction of the Daily Telegraph revealing your immoral 2nd home expenses fiddle?
Now TwitterFall is one of those great headline readers that lend themselves to all sorts of teaching opportunities – your ideas to James please if you are already playing.
- On the broader picture of Education on-line this week, I spotted this great piece of work on Digital Citizenship on the edorigami.wikispace (I know, it’s amouthfull!) in which is identified the 6 tenets of Digital Citizenship and a nice hierarchy for primary and secondary schools to include –
Senior Students Middle School Students Junior School Students
Respect yourself Looking after yourself Looking after me
Protect yourself
Respect others Looking after others Looking after others
Protect others
Respect Intellectual Property Looking after property Looking after stuff
Protect Intellectual Property
Please have a look at the intellectual stuff behind; if nothing else you’ll find the broader work this site highlights in the world of digital education.
- Staying with the Citizenship scene, I also found the work ‘Digital Demons Code of Conduct’ down-under in Victoria, highlighting how youngsportsmen could develop appropriate behaviour online, and assisting them to use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook safely and responsibly.
And for Teachers working as 21st Century educators, the Twitterforeducation wiki has hugely valuable resources for those thinking about introducing ICT on-line for their children – nice link here to the 5 things children understand about online searching before starting middle school
And finally; back to Mr Gove and that stuff he said at BETT about Programming. Have read of this not totally hostile view of the current world debate about Learning Code.
Footnotes:
I am working up a piece for next Week on how Schools can join the Google crusade to encourage Great Science – the prize being $50,000 plus great trip across the pond.
- Well done to the 8 GAPPs delegates at the Dixie Grammar School on Saturday, beginning their quest to discover about the 6 tools for Education.
- •February Google Training Courses – there are 15 people already booked on the Halliford Course (4th Feb); 4 people booked on the Claires Court course (15th Feb), no people booked on the Red House Course (28th Feb); 3 people on the Bridgewater Course (3rd March) and 3 people on the Heathfield course (14th March). You can find all the links on the ISANet site and here.
- And for Teaching Professionals seeking to attend the 2012 Google Teacher Academy in London, the deadline for applications is the 9th February, more info here http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html
Have a great week and enjoy the ‘new model’ winter – it’s like living on Cyprus here in the Thames Valley, warm, balmy and dry.
?Follow me on Twitter? @james_wilding
A Principled view 
