John Battelle draws my attention to W. Daniel Hillis’ 2000 essay “Aristotle”. In it, he postulates an automated online tutoring system (“Aristotle”) that would find available resources and, on the fly, construct a completely individualised course for the student on the topic they wished to learn. It’s an extraordinarily bold vision; one that contains enough…

Back in November 2000 I told educational publishers’ conference that the writing was on the screen for the paper textbook. From the conference programme: Ian Grove-Stephensen, Managing Director of the Chalkface Project, argues that any paper-based investment made today will fail to earn a return; but reveals how publishers can leverage their existing resources to…

A couple of years ago, I asked Berthold Weidmann, esteemed director of NETLinc, whether he thought school students in Lincolnshire would all be carrying laptops by 2007. This was a target being promoted by Microsoft’s Anytime Anywhere Learning initiative. His answer, unequivocally, “No.” “But” he continued, “it doesn’t matter because they all have mobile phones.”…

Saqib Akram, a very proactive teacher from Derby High School who uses our online GCSE Applied Business course, emailed us today with some feedback from his students The wording on all assignment questions eg. Module 1 portfolio A Cameron balloons. All pupils felt that the questions asked could be simplified as they found it difficult…

NLP Conference My introduction to educational publishing came when I co-authored a book of worksheets on self-motivation and related topics, called Goal Setting and Decision Making. I found the process sufficiently rewarding that I acquired the publishing rights to it, along with some 39 other titles, and used them to found the Chalkface Project. I’m…