Ken Boston, chief exec of QCA wants all school tests to be online by 2009. We’re here, Ken, whenever you’re ready.

Like most people who run large web-based projects, I’ve had good and bad experiences with open-source software. Generally, I’m very pro open source, for the simple reason that it enables me to offer better (much better!) value to Chalkface’s customers. Where I’ve had bad experiences, they have been a result of my failure to weigh…

Anarchism was one of the memes of my misspent youth, but like so many ideals it has generally failed to perform in practice. So it was with great delight that I discovered Wikipedia – a comprehensive and authoritative online encyclopedia that is both written and edited by anyone who wants to get involved, without preconditions.…

We’ve been looking recently at the idea of student blogs – encouraging students to keep some kind of an online diary – and whether Chalkface could play a role in promoting these. Most of the writing I come across in this area is still in the “blogs will change the world” genre. That doesn’t interest…

Schools normally react to technological change by confiscating it to protect the past: ballpoint pens to save our handwriting, calculators to save our arithmetic, digital watches to save our analogue timekeeping, mobile phones to save our…er well, just because they are new. Source: Education Futures, RSA, 2000.