An excellent phone conversation yesterday with Steve Margetts. He’s been assessing a “Managed Learning Environment” that in his opinion isn’t. I won’t name it here, but its key feature seems to be that teachers can put their notes on the web using it. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t wildly impressed. Then today, an excellent research review by…

Examination scandals, usually reserved for announcement of results, have come early this year. The problem this time is that Edexcel deliver the exam papers to centres ahead of time to offset the risk of delays in the post. Enterprising young North London tealeaves exploit this window of vulnerability to help themselves and their classmates to…

I’ve quoted Berthold Weidmann on students using mobile phones to access lessons before, and will doubtless do so again, because I’m intrigued by this largely-ignored scenario. Now, this excellent overview from Reuters puts a little flesh on the bones. It explains why we’ve not got there already with 3G, and covers the technical choices that…

Most schoolkids have access to dictionaries and encyclopedias, both on- and off-line. The problem with them is that they generally present only a single definition of a term, which the student may or may not truly grasp. To get a more complete understanding, wouldn’t it be great if a student could look a term up…