Very quick post, of an introductory nature….

I’ve been challenged, and I’ve duly accepted, to see if it is possible to gain a (basic) understanding of a programming language within a month.

The programming language must me new to me and it must be a ‘proper’ prgramming language.

So I chose C#.

Why C# and not C, C++, VB, COBOL etc? Well the reason I chose C# is that that particular programming language seemed to be the language of choice for guys who develop software for multi point manipulation applications.

As I’m currently playing around with a Wii Remote and an IR LED loaded pair of gloves, the knowledge and skills gained may come into use.

So, to attempt the challenge I’ve purchased the SAMS book Learn C# in 21 Days…

Hopefully I’ll be making a post per each of the 21 chapters… you have been warned.

By the way, if anyone does know of any cool sites / resources that may assist me in my C# journey please pass them on.

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Nominations are invited for the Handheld Learning and Innovation Awards that we are introducing this year to celebrate those practitioners, learners and participants who have excelled in the use of emerging technologies for improved learning and teaching.

There are four categories plus a special award

• Primary
• Secondary
• Further and Tertiary
• Special Needs

Within each category there are two awards

• Practitioner – An Individual working in their respective category awarded for their achievement as demonstrated by innovative practice resulting in improved learning
• Innovation – An initiative, project, service, organisation or product that has had the most positive impact within category

The Special Achievement Award is for the person or organisation that has, in the opinion of the judges and community, made a significant contribution to support improved learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies.

New deadline for nominations is Wednesday September 10th!!!

Judging will take place on September 12th.

The Finalists will be announced by September 19th.

Winners will be announced at an evening awards party on Monday 13th October.

Link

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I have to say that I do get a touch jaded when people tweet me, email me or pm me with a ‘hey, have you seen this…’ message.

Band waggon jumping and a general sheep like mentality is prevelant amongst the average Web 2.0 fanboi’s….

But, there are exceptions… namely the bloody marvellous Pixlr.

In a nutshell Pixlr is a self contained Flash IDE full featured, robust image editor.

There’s a quote on the Pixlr homepage

It made me have the same feeling I had when I first saw Gmail:
“this can’t be running in my browser”… - kitsched

and that is exactly what I thought when I used it for the 1st time! You really will think that it’s a desktop application.  There’s support for layers a plethora of tools - which you’d expect from an image editing tool - and even the usual shortcut keys to speed up your workflow are there!

I was concerned about using HUGE files as any files appear to be staged on Pixlr for editing. I edited a 1.3mb jpeg there wasn’t any noticeable lag while performing various edits or applying filters. Unless you’re on a fast pipe I would stick to using PS if you want to edit 25mb raw files straight from your camera…

The environment is attractive and well layed out using the now ubiquitous panels layout found in PS and Fireworks. When running in full screen mode I’d challenge anyone to guess that this was a web application - it really is that good.

This is one for the Art and Media depts at school this September for sure!

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Installed IE8 Beta, all went well even though it needed a system restart and I have to say I was quite impressed by it. Love the suggested sites feature - I swear to god IE is getting as useful as Firefox!

But then…

… old faithful reappeared

The IE crash.

Not too certain if it’s just ‘my system’ (XP Pro SP3) but every time I either CTRL+V’d or did a Right Click > Paste to paste a copied URL IE8 beta crashed

It even took dear old Dr Watson with it too…

No mention of it at all over at MSDN or any other support forums…

I suppose that’s what you get for playing wth Betas!

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Reasons to to like pointless Web 2.0 applications #1…

Tweetwheel

Using the Twitter api, GoogleApp Engine and Pylons Augusto Becciu has created a very fine visual app that shows your Twitter friends and shows any connections between them.

The result is a sweet looking cartwheel that highlights each of your Twitter friends when you hover over their name and shows the connection with your other Twitter friends

Very tasty indeed!

Here’s mine…

My twitter friends displayed via TweetWheel

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and another video that speaks volumes…

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I don’t teach.

Having been on a PGCE course I know how to teach but I don’t teach.

Why? I don’t think I’d be any good at it.

Maybe that’s down to self confidence or maybe is down to recollections of woeful, uninterested teachers that taught me at secondary school and the thought of me being like them (woeful, not uninterested) is enough for me to have found employment in another role within education and leave teaching to those who are good at it.

Another reason I don’t want to teach is from my observation of the education system as a whole. Teachers, it appears to me anyway, are now employed to get students through exams and nothing more. Learning, creativity and enrichment are all secondary to getting students to memorise information and regurgitate it in the exam room.

A great example of this is a ‘web friend’ of mine tweeted about his students’ GCSE results were lower than expected. Now this particular teacher is knowledgeable, a published author on his teaching specialism, a doctoral level student himself and, more importantly, passionate about his subject.

What was one of the reasons why he think he’s ‘failed’?

Because he tried to move away from the usual chalk-and-talk style of teaching and introduce a little creativity, using various Web 2.0 tools.

How can a teacher try and get their students more creative, more independent and yet more connected in their learning if they have the fear of being beaten with the poor results stick?

The school I work in is a great example of this kind of no risk taking. The GCSE results are fabulous, around 83% A-C’s inc English and Maths.

Now, which teacher in my school, under immediate pressure to maintain the schools existing high standards and meet the expectation of 80+% GCSE results, will take the ‘risk’ and dispense the chalk-and-talk method of 2-dimensional drumming of information into our students and allow a little 3-dimensional creativity to permeate into our classrooms?

I’d like to say “the inspirational teacher” or “the one who can see the bigger picture” or “the one who actually cares about the skills he’s passing on to his students” but I’d probably have to be realistic and say “the one who’d probably lose their job”.

I’m glad I don’t teach and until things change I will never ever contemplate going back and retake my training to be a teacher…

But to the point of the post… the video. It’ll probably prompt polar responses, but I found it inspiring… hope you do too.

Enjoy

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Having been a follower of Johhny Chung Lee for some tine now, I only realised today that I’d not actually posted anything about the truly wonderful, innovative stuff this guy produces…

As you can see… it’s simply breathtaking!

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I’ve just contributed my Top 10 Tools for learning & development.

Having decided to contribute to the project I found it a little harder than I originally thought it would be…. yes, there are a few resources and applications that did immediately spring to mind but a few of my entires needed some thought.

It’s a really good reflective exercise…

Here’s my list linky

Why don’t you contribute your list…

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