Newsnight special education iissue

Peter has asked me to draw your attention to Wednesday's special edition of Newsnight (BBC2); the BBC site says;

A special programme dedicated to education. Newsnight politics editor Michael Crick examines why education - not a make or break issue for parties in recent elections - is set to be a key battleground in the weeks to come.

We look back at Labour's education legacy. Have they delivered on Tony Blair's famous 'education, education, education' pledge?

Justin Rowlatt asks what is education for, and we'll also be examining choice and cutbacks.

Jeremy is joined in the studio by Ed Balls, Michael Gove and David Laws, as well as people from the teaching profession, a businessman and a former children's Laureate to debate the big issues.

 Click on the heading link to watch it again on i-Player for the next week.

From the Year two Study Day 6 March

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to the Study Day on Saturday!

Here are the processed results from the group-based exercise; I must apologise for the fact that some of the charts I showed at the plenary were wrong, for technical reasons (i.e. I cocked up). I have re-processed them, and I'm confident with these.

Given my personal prejudices, I am delighted to see that the cumulative cynicism about ICT comes out tops for the "win-win" scenario (although I must confess that the wording of that item was not entirely neutral), but it seems to be the only case in which there is real synergy between the two criteria.

Having It Both Ways

And here are stats from the evaluation, although they don't actually show as much as they may appear to. The response rate was only one-third, so unsurprisingly the views of the more local centres are over-represented (and there was only one from Grantham and apparently none from Tresham, for some reason.) What kind of bias this represents, I don't know...

Basic Stats From Evaluation Of 2nd Study Day

And for those of you who wondered about the cool, non-PowerPoint introduction to the presentation, check out http://prezi.com (although if everyone gets in on the act it will soon become as routine as .ppt)

New address for Unit 2 blog (for the University cohort)

Sorry! I did promise to put a link to the new url here a couple of weeks ago when the blog migrated but I forgot--so apologies to anyone who hasn't found it. And thanks to Jill for reminding me.

Guidance on Academic Writing

You may well find the linked blog post, and its follow-up at http://www.autonoblogger.com/cooltools/academic-writing-part-2/ useful both in informing your own practice as an academic writer on the course, and perhaps with supporting your students. The fact that the author is in the specialised position of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at a Japanese university does not actually make his points specialised.

Note too the links to useful sites, particularly--if you don't have time to read Autonoblogger's post and follow up yourself--the link to Andy Gillett's very useful site on Using English for Academic Purposes.

Sue Cowley's session, 18 November 09

The video of Sue's session is now accessible through BREO. Go to the "Study Days" tab and the link appears as item 1. You will need RealPlayer on your machine to view it, and it is approximately 100 mins. All Centre Leaders have a better quality copy on DVD.

Free mind-mapping software

The ComputerActive "Ultimate Guide to Free Computing" Jan 2010 (£5.99, but why don't several people buy it between them?) has a CD of full software including MindGenius Home 2, which is a perfectly competent mind-mapping package. It's also got useful guides in the mag to OpenOffice etc. as well as cloud computing tools.

You can download free time-limited trials here, but the magazine version is an unrestricted version of an earlier release.

Results from 28 November Study Day Evaluations

Basic Stats From Study Day Evaluation 281109

View more presentations from James Atherton.

I don't think these results will come as any surprise to the almost three hundred of you who were there (the figures are based on 209 responses). There was a real buzz about the day, which was only to be expected after Sue Cowley kicked it off so energetically and constructively.

So, on behalf of Peter Hadfield and the entire team across the network, many thanks for your contributions on Saturday, and please use the comment facility to discuss your reactions, or use BREO