Naace Communities

http://milesberry.net/?p=525 Sugar, the operating system and GUI for OLPC’s truly innovative XO-1 laptops is now available, in beta at least, as a bootable USB stick, allowing any netbook, laptop or desktop to run this amazing re-interpretation of educational computing.Sugar is built on the idea of activities rather than programs, with an interface designed to be ‘discoverable’, ie one which children can learn through play and experimentation. Sugar also affords a social... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=519 Written for Open Source SchoolsOfsted’s report on The Importance of ICT was published over a month ago, and was met with perhaps a degree of surprise at some of its criticisms about aspects of ICT provision in schools, most notably for higher attaining and older pupils. There’s much in the report to strengthen the case for greater use, and indeed development, of open source software in schools.The report acknowledges that, particularly in the primary phase, good use... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=516 Originally published on BBC Open Lab.Awareness of open source software amongst teachers, technical staff and students is certainly far greater now than even a few years ago, thanks to projects like Moodle, Firefox and Audacity leading their respective fields. For schools, the appeal of open source is that it’s free. But ‘free’ is about freedom at least as much as it’s about price: Liberté rather than... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=509 The government’s support for open source software, as outlined yesterday at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/123372/090224opensource.pdf, is to be welcomed. Given that most UK education takes place in the public sector, it is to be hoped that this support from central government will be reflected in greater confidence at school and local authority level to adopt, specify and develop open source solutions, making possible the re-use and sharing of... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=502 Given the increasing interest in Twitter amongst educators, and indeed the general population, it’s hardly surprising that a number of teachers are starting to explore ways of using this in class, with ideas including collaborative storytelling, gathering feedback, home-school links, e-penpals and word games (see, eg Tom Barrett’s colaborative presentation). The sort of personal learning network which we see people developing through Twitter in their... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=488 There was a story in Friday’s TES about a number of schools’ Moodle installations being compromised, resulting in some fairly graphic pornography ending up on these school’s learning platforms. Whilst I’m not sure of the exact details of this particular exploit, this could so easily have been avoided, in this case by just keeping the software up to date.The security of open source applications is a complex but interesting area. Security is an... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=476 My first experiments with the Wordle site were with children’s reports: these were great, would make brilliant report covers, but alas pupil confidentiality prevents me posting them here!The survey Terry Freedman and I conducted last month of children’s use of technology outside school produced some great, if non representative, quantitative data, but also a fair number of qualitative responses which a former mathematician such as myself struggles to... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=464 Tessy Britton interviewed me about my own and my school’s use of social media for the thriving too blog. The original is published under a CC by-nc-nd licence at http://thrivingtoo.typepad.com/thriving_too/2009/01/miles-berry-headteacher-talks-about-social-media.htmlMiles Berry is the Head of Alton Convent Prep School in Hampshire.  Miles is one of very few Headteachers who is currently using social media, keeping his own blog and communicating on Twitter. He... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=457 It was an honour, once again, to be asked to present alongside Terry Freedman for the BCS Education and Training Expert Panel at BETT this year. Our previous presentations had looked at the e-strategy, web 2.0 and personalised learning through technology, so how to follow that? We’ve both become increasingly interested in the area of informal learning through technology, ie that beyond the formal school curriculum, an area which we’d touched on briefly... Read full post

http://milesberry.net/?p=442 The Open Source Schools presentation at BETT on Saturday 17th January was very well received, with good numbers joining the team in Olympia’s Club Room, despite the early start. I introduced the presentation, outlining what open source means as well as exploring some of the advantages which it offers to schools; I also spoke about Moodle (much to Ian Usher’s surprise) and the Open Source Schools community. Michelle Walters talked about Open Office and... Read full post