‘Mobile phones are strictly prohibited’

Something that really annoys me, is signs like this:-
“The use of mobile phones in the reception area is strictly prohibited”, why do they need to put the word ’strictly’ into the sign? – What is the difference between something being ‘prohibited’ and something being ’strictly prohibited’ – and why was I allowed to take this [...]

Learners ‘recording’ lectures with their mobile phones!

Last week at a MoLeNET event, James Clay pulled of an impressive stunt, where he used his mobile phone to record and broadcast live to the Internet a question posted to the panel of experts, showing both how easy it would be for a learner to do the same thing, and then how many issues [...]

“Get Ahead Event” at the University of Derby

Last week, I was back at the University of Derby running a Mind Genius training session as part of their ‘Get Ahead Event’. This is a week long induction type event that they advertise to all pre-entry students who have declared a specific learning difficulty or disability. The event is designed to give them help [...]

Excellence in Inclusivity

Today I have been at en event in York (that I organised) closing one project (called Learning for Living and Work) and opening another called “Excellence in Inclusivity”. This is a project in the Yorkshire and Humber Region, with the JISC RSC for this region, and will be a multi-facetted approach to the area of [...]

Using Jaiku to send text messages to learners for free

Text messaging has been used by educational establishments for quite a few years now. In the early days most people had a 1 way system set up, where the tutor could send texts to the learners, to notify them of things like room changes or reminders to turn up. Then some systems allowed for 2 [...]

It is nice to be important – but it is more important to be nice!

I have spent quite a bit of time in the last few days and experienced some different methods of staff dealing with situations, which has highlighted to me the importance of humour and politeness when dealing with difficult situations with people.
One train manager who was brilliant gave an announcement along the lines of:-
“Welcome to this [...]

The advancement of technology

Recycling of VHS tapes

Originally uploaded by Dave Foord

My local tip recycles all sorts of things, and when I noticed a sign saying that they recycled video cassettes, I remembered that I had put a broken tape in the bin that day, so I retrieved the tape, and on my next visit sent it to be [...]

In defence of TurnItIn – a plagiarism detection system

TurnItIn is a plagiarism detection system that is widely used in the UK , and was subsidised by JISC making it affordable for FE and HE. I personally am a fan of the system, because I used it to great effect in my teaching, with the end result of seriously deterring plagiarism (which is its [...]

Google to launch Internet Browser

The BBC website is today reporting that Google is to launch its own Internet browser which again can only be good news for the consumer, and the beauty of the web browser options, is you can have multiple browsers installed a machine at the same time, and it will be possible to switch between the [...]