Disqus - Latest Comments for Ewan McIntosh

Re: NCSL Primary SLICT

Ewan McIntosh — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:28:30 -0000

I wrote a post on the things that a leader of ICT can do to help nurture any new technology: basically it's about finding that balance between training, tooling, standing back, getting out of the way and jumping in when it's about to go pear-shaped. A more reasoned approach here:
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/08/blc07-mci...

The most important element in a school is, arguably, the teacher. Without good teachers learning will not excel, regardless of how wonderful the community and students are. Therefore, teachers need to also be the best learners, able to adapt and understand what other professionals are doing in order to improve their game. To do this you need to part of an ongoing community, not just one that you see once a year at an ICT conference or subject event. Education is changing too much around us to not engage each and every day with those changes.

Therefore, teachers need to connect virtually to whoever is making those changes, wherever they are. Technology-enabled connections are the only way to effect improvement.

Re: OLPC - is anyone preparing?

Ewan McIntosh — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:33:51 -0000

At the moment I'm badgering away trying to get the US-only deal on Buy One Get Two For Someone Else available to those with Scottish addresses. Watch this space...

Re: Speedtexting

Ewan McIntosh — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:59:11 -0000

Do you want a loan of a Cre8txt next week to have a competition and see?
http://ltsblogs.org.uk/connected/2007/09/18/cr8...

Re: ScotEduBlogs has a new home

Ewan McIntosh — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:17:28 -0000

I'd never say anyone in this space is particularly expert, since the milieu changes so often. Full-time amateurs, perhaps ;-)

Re: Getting around school site blocks

Ewan McIntosh — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:11:21 -0000

Hi Robert,
I was in New Zealand at a school last month that had fully open access to most things, bar the obvious.

I've got some great pics of kids using YouTube, Bebo, World of Warcraft etc for school project research on my FLickr, starting here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edublogger/1529121...

Re: The Map Is Not The Territory: the changing face of the edublogosphere

Ewan McIntosh — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:35:33 -0000

I'm going to jump to the defence of UK bloggers, or at least north of the border. Scotland has a very healthy edublogosphere, full of people churning out the whys. We do feel frustrated, though, at the lack of conversation created from those blogs in the wider 'sphere. Quite often we'll see edubloggers in other places around the world struggling to get grips with, say, Assessment for Learning when, for *months* some Scottish edubloggers have been talking about the long-term effects of their work in this field over the past four years.

Who knows? Maybe they're not of interest. Maybe they're irrelevant for other people. Maybe they're just hard to find in the cacophony of bland Joneses.

Re: dougbelshaw.com redesign

Ewan McIntosh — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:24:38 -0000

I'd pull the ads altogther - you'll get more readership and better Googlejuice by not having them and make your money in other ways from that increased readership. It looks a bit tacky.

The tag cloud is good, shows what you're interested in, but it's lost under a plethora of 'related' stuff. If something's related to that blog post, then put it at the top or bottom of the post, not in the sidebar, which should remain a constant during my surf.

The stats don't help me do anything as a reader (subscribe, find posts) so I'd get rid of them. Show people how good you are in other ways (like your blog posts).

The different types of post you present - random, recent, related - need cut back. Have a separate page with your best bits, perhaps, and get rid of the random posts. Your other involvements come through in your blog posts, and if they don't they're probably not relevant any more.

The top link takes me away from this site to the Tumblr. I'll get confused about where I should go, especially since your delicious links are on this page, too.

The latest images from Flickr don't actually show me images. As a newbie, I'd find this weird.

I hope the feedback's useful. The content continues to be great, and I do read through a feed reader, so I'm trying to put myself in the position of someone who reads only a few blogs a day or none, and wants to get to your content quickly, not all the rest.

Cheers, mate. Hope you get better soon!