Most teachers regularly write resources for their classes, but very few make the leap unaided to producing resources that colleagues in other schools will use. The difference is that, with a resource you wrote yourself, you completely understand the original intention and can teach over the gaps where the resource fails to deliver. Traditionally, this…

I’ve mentioned Danah Boyd before as one of the people I turn to when I want to understand how young people perceive the online world. Here she is (video, needs broadband) talking off-the-cuff to a group of students. Most interesting to me is the home truths she has to tell about the historical function of…

Like most publishing companies, Chalkface has long been nurtured by a diaspora of authors, editors and illustrators whom we rarely if ever actually meet. Over the past few years, we steadily extended this principle, until only two members of staff were working permanently from our office in Milton Keynes. What kept them there was the…

Sometime over the weekend Yacapaca passed 150,000 registered students. I’ve got my fingers crossed for quarter of a million by the end of term. Time to buy some more servers, I think!

Yep, it’s true. No more charges for using any part of Yacapaca. Not even the brand-new ePortfolios. Over the summer, I decided it would be fairer and more logical to charge for the bit that really costs us money. That’s training and support. Early-adopting users tend to just muck in and work Yacapaca out for…