Periodic Fable

Thursday, 27 October 2005

Designing educational technologies with users
A handbook from NESTA Futurelab
By Keri Facer and Ben Williamson
http://www.nestafuturelab.org/research/findings/handbooks/02_01.htm
"In recent years there has been increasing concern about the apparent estrangement of developers of digital educational resources from those who are intended to use these resources - children, teachers or lecturers. The recent DfES E-Learning Strategy Consultation Document highlighted this as an area of concern, arguing that: ‘The lack of a direct relationship between the users and the suppliers means that the products developed are less likely to meet learners’ and teachers’ real needs.’"
This publication presents strategies for co-design with users.

posted by Helen Whitehead 11:26 AM

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Thursday, 20 October 2005

An interesting new online story ...

Inanimate Alice - How Did I Get Here?
Episode 1: China

The first episode of 'How Did I Get Here?' appears on the website of Sensory Perspective ( http://www.sensoryperspective.com ), the developer of the Electrosmog Detector which spotlights the potentially harmful pollution resulting from wireless communications. The story, written by Kate Pullinger and babel, depicts the life of Alice, a young girl growing up in the early years of the 21st century, and will be told over 10 multimedia episodes spanning her life from childhood through to her twenties.

Visit Alice's blog at http://www.inanimatealice.com , or view the episode directly at

posted by Helen Whitehead 4:09 PM

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Using blogs for learning

More on using blogs for learning

"How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiences" by Maish Nichani

This article is part of a 4 wonderful resource from the Australian Flexible Learning Community

Link: posted by Helen Whitehead 3:58 PM

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Monday, 17 October 2005

A BBC article suggesting English lessons should learn from multimedia ("Schools should take advantage of the range of texts now available to teach the language, including online") at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4337784.stm

led me to a QCA report "A curriculum for the future: subjects consider the challenge" which can be downloaded at http://www.qca.org.uk/14303.html

About English this summary says: "the range and type of texts are exzpanding with the new challenges of reading web pages and using hypertext to create individual non-linear texts for a reader. Ways of reading are changing to take account of this and English will need to adjust to these changes."

Yippee - someone's heard what we've been saying all this time!

posted by Helen Whitehead 1:45 PM

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