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I'm starting my 4th year as an independent ICT consultant and felt that it was about time I pulled together everything I do into a brochure (well, a PowerPoint, actually). Please take a few moments to flick through the slides (there are only a dozen, or so) and don't hesitate to get in touch if you want to find out more...
In the past, when I've been talking to schools about blogging I've skated over the topic of RSS a bit. Newbies don't tend to get it and don't see it as a major selling point. For a long time now, Pageflakes has been my favourite web desktop. As well as all the engaging content you can drag on to your page, you can use it as a perfectly good feed reader. With this in mind, I set up a bunch of blogs for some teachers in Liverpool to try out and thought that rather than putting loads of links to each other's blogs in the sidebar I'd set up a public Pageflakes page (known as a Pagecast) that collected all the feeds together on a single page: http://www.pageflakes.com/john21/9409516 OK, so these schools haven't exactly been quick off the mark in trying their blogs, but you get the idea. Gold star to Booker Junior School for having a go! The point is that the page automatically updates whenever anyone writes a post via the magic of RSS - thus, hopefully demonstrating one of its simple uses.
I was profoundly depressed by this article on the BBC Education website today. I wonder what thinking lay behind the notion that it would be a good idea to put photos of children on to the school website, and then blur their faces? I have always felt that a good school website should celebrate the achievements and successes of a school, and this should include pictures of children - after all that's what schools are about. Green Park Primary School in Maghull is an excellent example of a school that uses photographs extensively to celebrate the excellence that goes on within its walls. By all means discuss what's right for your school at a local level, but I would suggest that a sensible policy might include:
Surely in the case of the Essex school above, a "no photos" policy would be better than the faceless and slightly uncomfortable message that rubbing out faces gives. I wonder what the children think about it? But I guess they weren't asked.
