Yahoo News reports that Thailand has committed to the $100 One Laptop per Child Project. BANGKOK, Thailand – Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has announced that an ambitious project to provide low-cost laptop computers to all of Thailand’s millions of elementary school students will begin in October. OLPC themselves downplayed this slightly… Thailand: Prime Minister Taksin…

I had intended to blog this because it raises issues that are important to Chalkface as we refocus our efforts increasingly towards assessment. But my post came out turgid, so I scrapped it when Doug made the point so much better. From the its-so-obvious-it -hurts department, the TES reports that research has found that schools…

Cultural anthropologists are not known as a particularly radical bunch, so when they rally to the defence of a non-academic cause, it behoves us to take notice. I am referring to the banning of MySpace from American schools, by Congress. The aim is laudable enough, to protect children from online sexual predation by banning not…

Mark Austin (who wrote these ECDL tests – login req) recently showed me some web quests he’d authored. They are specific to his area, so not appropriate for Yacapaca public space, but good end-of-term fun nonetheless. But what if you want young imaginations to soar beyond Google’s utilitarian façade? Pick up a copy of Philipp…

Right from the start, I conceived Yacapaca as an ‘assessment platform’, but what sort of assessment? In particular, does it qualify as a tool for Assessment for Learning (AfL)? I’ve spent a merry evening going through various writings on AfL and trying to match the attributes of AfL to Yacapaca features. Very instructive and reasonably…