Posted on Nov 19, 2007

What am I for? – I’d much rather be the learner!

With all these independent learners and teachers around – what am I for?

Lots of interesting interactions have been wounding my pride recently, which is on the whole a good thing! Students who are better than I am at a whole range of things, teachers responding to exciting opportunities quicker than I do! – you know who you are :)

You give them enough of the skills to work independently and make choices, a direction to go in, fuel an enthusiasm and give them some space… then what do I do once they are on their way making exciting discoveries?

Leave your answers below, but I guess it is along the lines of:

  • Peer reviewer
  • Recipient of their new found knowledge & skills
  • Occasional guide, light house or way point
  • Role playing of boss, work mate or client
  • Crowd control
  • Cheerleader
  • The guy who fixes the printer :)

None of them sound much like teaching :( – I think I’d much rather be the learner.

I know I should be the learner alongside them, but here comes the pride again, maybe I’m just a little bit too tired to learn at the moment.

As for my colleagues, it’s great to see them finding exciting new ways to communicate understanding and share experiences, I wish I had the time to do half of what I wanted… – in a real creative-whack kind of way I guess that the question becomes “where am I spending my time in a way that isn’t producing that joy”? – Hmm, now that’s a trickier one!

Posted on Nov 13, 2007

Places to Eat & Drink in Sudbury

Just compile a list of some places we eat & drink in Sudbury for some friends who are new to the area. It might be useful to someone?
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Posted on Nov 7, 2007

Google Apps for Schools

Google Apps

We’re soon going to partnering with another local sixth form to provide a greater choice of courses for students. This means that students could be studying in different locations as well as at home each week. Although we could host their documents at one of the two schools and make them accessible over the Internet our local authority never seems to make this very easy. We also can’t afford to implement a complete Email solution to our current students and staff.

So here comes Google Apps Education Edition to help us!

Google Apps provides “free communication, collaboration and publishing tools” which we “customize with our school’s logo, colour scheme and content.” without us having to provide or maintain any hardware or software.

As our headteacher said “Wow – the Google Apps looks fantastic – there must be a catch somewhere!”

Two quick answers:

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Posted on Nov 7, 2007

And the winner is… eUKhost.com

eUKhost

And we think we have a winner, our first Virtual Private Server to host our school systems – if I give them a plug they might increase the already generous discount :) – just type in EUKCOUPON to get a 15% discount.

For our £200 year, we seem to get:

  • 15 GB Disk Space
  • 300 GB Monthly Bandwidth
  • 256 MB Guaranteed RAM
  • 1 GB Burstable RAM
  • CPanel and Web Host Manager Tools

…and a free setup and transfer our site from Siteground – yipppee… all I have to do is change the name servers!

I’d recommend the deal to anyone, and just hope the quality of the service matches the promises.

Posted on Nov 6, 2007

Elgg Hosting

We’re shopping for a Virtual Private Server. Hopefully, at least 256Mb RAM guaranteed, Linux based, with cPanel, hosted in the UK with fantastic support – all for under £25 a month? Here are the contenders so far: