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The following extract has been taken from this years Budget statement, I have extracted it from the eGov monitor website:

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We have now set up a blog specifically for our Learning in the 21st Century conference on 5th April.

I have now put all the cpd courses for Secondary ICT teachers into our ICT Community on Digitalbrain.  Most courses will have a phase focus, and this is indicated by a (S) or (P), but some are cross phase.  Some more courses will be added shortly, focussing on new technologies including blogs and podcasting as well as some courses for Apple pc’s.

I have just read this article on Education World, and I have to say it made me chuckle.

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The Christian Aid website contains a variety of resources for teachers to use,  the resources include several simulations for pupils aged 9 - 16+, there are both free simulations and ones you can purchase for between £2.50 and £3.99.

After a successful session yesterday when I introduced the T&W hands on support team and a teacher from Abraham Darby to GameMaker I promised to put some links to support pages here.
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The Educationblog has moved to this new environment. We’re now going to run a wordpress blog, as we’ve been struggling under the weight of spam on b2evolution. Let’s hope things improve.

You will still be able to get to the blog at educationblog.org.uk, we will just update the referrer. You might however want to update your rss feeds in your aggregator when we move.

So long B2e, and thanks for all the fish.

EDIT The initial hurried message of this post has been enhanced by linking to words and phrases that might have been unfamiliar to some. Please feel free to explore their meanings and their use in this context, and if they still confuse it would be an honour to hear from you via comments so that the whole blog experience will be enhanced for all.

From Tim Lauer’s blog I found Zoho Creator at the Zoho stable, a Web 2.0 app in public beta that lets you build your own database-like web apps quickly, easily and with no coding knowledge. Having spent 5 mins creating a form it reveals itself as simplicity itself to operate. Amongst many other things, it allows you to create a form and email notification to respondents (or leave it public) who simply follow an embedded link to make their responses. Bingo, an instant survey mechanism! Output can be viewed onscreen or to Excel (apparently - haven’t cracked that one yet).
I should think that this is especially useful to those needing to create surveys, since respondents can enter their data by any web-friendly device eg mobile phone, and the data collected with relative ease.
Tim mentions other Web 2.0 apps that do the same sort of thing, namely Ning and DabbleDB, both of which I’m eager to try.
There’s a hastily-created zoho app here if you want to see what can be created in 5 minutes. Imagine what could be done with a bit of thought and effort…

I have just received this via Richard Parry, Bridgnorth Endowed School:

The lifespan for the SPB has recently been extended. As a result candidates are able to submit eportfolios in:

December 2005
June 2006
December 2006
June 2007

That means you have three further opportunities to submit work. Confirmation of the changes will be on the DiDA website shortly.
Regards,

Conor Burns
Assessment Coordinator for DiDA & ICT

This is excellent news for all schools delivering the DiDA suite of qualifications.

I have just had confirmation of this, from Ann Weidmann, for all future SPB’s.

The marking of DiDA courses seems to be causing a lot of concern at the moment, from a discussion group I am a member of came a link to this ‘Mark your own DiDA project‘ webpage (it doesn’t work with Firefox), it was posted by: Ernest Waller, Hartismere High School.

Another poster to the discussion group uploaded a similar mark sheet, produced in Excel. I have linked to this page from the ICT Community DiDA page.