Creative ICT News

Products and Services Brochure (it's only taken 3 years!)

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...

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Using Pagecasts to Demonstrate RSS

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.

What Message does this give out?

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:

• no linking of names to images
• group photos only
• allow parents to opt out of having their child appear on the school's website
• consider whether "at risk" children should appear at all

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.