Geography and all that Jazz

Since I started all this blogging and social networking thing, various people have questioned its value, and although I knew that it made a difference it was hard to 'quantify' that difference... A BECTa report into the value of these tools has now been published... Becta has published major new research into the use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs and social networking, by children between the ages of 11-16, both in and out of the school environment. The reports found that young learners are prolific users of Web 2.0 technologies in their leisure time but that the use of Web 2.0 in the classroom was limited. However, schools and teachers who are innovating in this area have found benefits, such as: Web 2.0 helps to encourage student engagement and increase participation – particularly among quieter pupils, who can use it to work collaboratively online, without the anxiety of having to raise questions in front of peers in class – or by enablin...

BECTa ONLINE REPORTING TOOLKIT A new publication that can be downloaded from the BECTa site. 'Exploiting ICT to improve parental engagement, moving towards online reporting: An introduction for schools' (this publication with accompanying dvd is also available to order separately) 'Exploiting ICT to improve parental engagement, moving towards online reporting: Framework guide' and the set of four posters to help you to assess your school's readiness for online reporting and determine priority areas of attention.

Was very interested in this post on Ewan McIntosh's EDUBLOGS blog , while looking for something else as it goes. The post is about BECTa's research on the use of WEB 2.0 technologies in education (and of course my interest is from the geographical angle.) Charles Crook, one of the people behind the research has been trying to get in touch with me for a good few weeks now to ask me about my use of the technologies, but something has always conspired to keep us apart. I'll try again after Easter (if you're reading this Charles, that's a promise) to try to add my two pennorth... There are plenty of interesting snippets of information in this posting. This was interesting for my media presentation at SAGT: what media do students have access to ? Access and opportunity Their first main research area revealed extensive access and opportunity to digital media. In order, from 100% down to about 10%, young people have access to: TV Mobile phone with camera Digital camera ...