Cleveratom

Apple iPhone review and wish list

Hal

I know that the iPhone has been out since last November, but I only got one at the beginning of this month. In that short time I can honestly say this little device has changed the way I work. Not only does it give me access to my emails with a reasonable data connection, but it gives me the most seductive interface I’ve yet used. Two staff at Cleveratom now use the iPhone, and another is seriously considering it.

A lot has already been written about most of this stuff, and I’ll probably not say anything new. The Edge network is slow compared to 3G, and a 3G iPhone is about to emerge from Apple, if you believe all the rumours. Hence my 1 month old gadget will be out of date in no time at all, such is the way with technology. However, before the iPhone I didn’t even have an Edge connection, I refused to pay the extortionate costs for accessing the internet through my old phone, and managing email on the go was a joke. The iPhone has at least given me a connection I can afford and some excellent tools to manage the things I need to manage. So why complain about any of that?

There are some areas where I think there could be improvements, and again, lots of this has already been said. However, it’s worth repeating from a user’s perspective that whilst the iPhone is a massive improvement over my old Sony Ericsson, and a massive improvement over the call plan I was on, there are some simple wins which I think Apple could make with this soon to be outdated gadget.

Let’s make a list:

  1. the ability to select and mark as read a whole lot of emails in one go, instead of managing them one at a time.
  2. the ability to send a contact to another person
  3. have a link through to contacts on the home screen instead of within the ‘phone’ app
  4. Be able to set a default page in safari
  5. better spam filtering (well, to be fair, ANY spam filtering)
  6. ability to remove a single call record from the calls list
  7. ability to forward an SMS to other people, or at least convert the content of an SMS to an email and forward that

Then there are the simple things I used to enjoy, such as the ability to write an SMS from my mac book pro and send it using the phone. I have been using the excellent ‘BluePhoneElite‘ for this purpose up until now, but the iPhone doesn’t play well with that, yet.

Basically, the more integrated the phone is with my laptop, the better it becomes for me. There is a suggestion that the phone’s data connection could be accessed by a laptop and then we’d have permanent internet access from any machine. However, I think that is only going to undermine the phone’s abilities, and perhaps we should avoid doing that.

Matt came up with a suggestion too -and that is for the calendar to link to the ‘favourites’ list in the phone functions so that if there is a contact listed in an event that the phone number for the contact gets put into the favourites list for three days, the middle of which would be the day of the event. This is actually a cool suggestion, I think. The number of times you need to speak to a person before and after an event would merit such a piece of functionality, I think.

And then there is the idea of the developer community now able to make apps for the phone. I think this is simply awesome and we will almost certainly be swimming in such things before too long. However, with that power comes the responsibility (to paraphrase someone else) to ensure the apps are good quality and needed, not just trite and uninteresting to all but a few people.

One of the very simple things I have found when using the phone is the ability to add web pages to the ‘Home Screen’ of the phone – a little like adding a bookmark but making it very obvious. The thing here is that the phone will take a snapshot of the web page and convert it into an icon for the phone, unless the website itself has already declared an iPhone icon in the root folder… a little like a favicon works. Such icons need to be made 57px square and labelled correctly for them to work, but when done properly they are superb ways to get to your favourite sites very quickly. Given that teh iPhone can have three sets of screens as the home screen (just flick across the screen to move between them), this makes a lot of sense.

In conclusion, this is a superb tool for lots of reasons, but it certainly has room for improvement. I wouldn’t complain about al the missing features though, as I didn’t have them before (mostly) and I can only list them because I see potential, not because I feel cheated. there are plenty of folk who think of the iPhone as a gimmick, and some who feel it is not yet worthy of buying as they can do more with other phones (Nokia N95, perhaps), but I would say that they couldn’t do them in as sexy a way as they could with the iPhone. The thing is way too nice to use, and far exceeds any other touch screen interface I have used on any other phone. I am sure the comptetition will play catch up, and that can only be good for the consumer, but until then I’m delighted with the phone, with the features and with the thought that it can get even better still.

BBC Micros Live On! Geordie Racer runs once more!

Hal

Today I’d like to give a special vote of thanks to Ridgeway Primary School in South Croydon, particularly to Geoff Blyth, who arranged for me to pick up some old and dusty BBC Masters, BBC ‘B’s and Cub monitors, along with software, floppy drives and manuals. It was all donated freely to Cleveratom so that we could extend and develop the rather innovative ‘BBC Micro News’ project.

The BBC Micro computer is 25 years old this year and has been the stalwart of many a school computing lab, or classroom computer. The device was always streets ahead of its time, but as with all things technology changed, development ceased, newer machines became available and life generally goes on. Many a BBC was consigned to a skip, never to be used again.

And what a shame that was, for all the wrong reasons! As a teacher in the late 80’s and early 90’s I definitely didn’t know very much about the BBC computers. I didn’t appreciate the ability they had, and apart from the excellent ‘Logo’ language and a range of associated input and output modules, including sensors and motors, I actually despised many of the programs available.

How wrong I was to think like that! Today, Ridgeway Primary School (and Geoff) helped me complete a level of understanding I have been missing for a generation. Today, in amongst all of the bits and bobs, was a copy of ‘Geordie Racer’!

I used to take a class of eager 8 year old children to the TV room at school and have them watch episodes of ‘Look and Learn’ the fabulous BBC series that brought us such greats as ‘Through the Dragon’s Eye’ and of course Geordie Racer. Children would merrily sing the opening music then sit glued to the screen as the story unfolded week by week. Once the episode was over it was back to the classroom to play the computer game. By today’s standards of Quake Engines 3D graphics and Wii consoles the games are very very dull. But back then, this was enthralling stuff as the children battled with Baz (the villain in the story) and picked up a huge number of literacy skills as they did so. As the teacher, I remember thinking that I really ought to find a way to turn down the music as it was soooo annoying, but today I went back in time and relived some classic memories.

Thanks to Geoff, we think these BBCs will be able to help us develop the innovative ‘BBC Micro News‘ website where BBC Micros read RSS feeds from the BBC web site in their very ‘Steven Hawkins’ voices, helped by a couple of more modern machines as they do so. This project started as a bit of a mental challenge and has grown into something more – quite what is not yet clear, only that we need to get this able to handle more requests soon.

There is much to do, of course, and we need to reset all of the hardware so that it will run the ‘BASIC’ program we need it to. In checking the machines today, most are in working condition with few, if any, ailments. Some keyboards are not quite fully working, one or two keys are missing, all of them are dirty and need cleaning, but even so, after years in storage, years of use in a busy school, and a bumpy ride from Croydon to Chelmsford, they ALL powered up!

So imagine my delight when we got to look at the diskettes that Geoff kindly donated – including a box of unopened 5.25″ floppies – and found Geordie Racer, and found that it still ran (no pun intended). Fabulous stuff!

As we get more done, and the service becomes more reliable, I’ll post pictures and write about the developments. We will of course be crediting Ridgeway Primary School on the web site for their very kind donation. If anyone else has got any working BBC Micros (any model, but particularly ‘B’ or ‘B Plus’) then please do get in touch – especially if you have got old software to help us relive special memories!

Essex ExCite exhibition, Charter Hall, Colchester

Hal

The Essex ‘Mini BETT’ show is running on Thursday and Friday this week at Charter Hall in Colchester, Essex. It really shouldn’t be called a ‘mini BETT’ but it is an old tag and it kind of stuck some time ago. However, lots of very good companies will be exhibiting at the show over the next two days, and Cleveratom are delighted to be part of that.

Cleveratom Display stand image

We will be showing off the personalised learning software with Edison Schools, as we were at BETT in January, but also the new and vastly improved community software for schools which we are using in Norwich college. We have several working names for it, and the one that we want to ask about when isitors appear at our stand is ‘Thought Park’ – an online space for communities, group activities, conversations and so on. It really is a seductive piece of software that is not trying to be another VLE. It would augment a VLE nicely, and it would be ideal for groups wanting to run colaborative projects. Aimed at secondary schools and primary settings, this is going to be interesting to see a response to.

If you are coming over to ExCite, do look out for us. We will be using a smaller display stand than we had at BETT, although it looks similar…

The 24th is the day of industrial action by teachers in England, and it is likely that the show will either be packed, because staff are not having to go to school, or empty, because teachers are staying at home! Either way, we’ll be there, and we’ll be keen to hear your opinions about what we are doing.

You will also be able to talk to someone from Edison Schools about PLiP – an ingenious process for introducing a personalised approach to learning, using software that we have created. The question we need an answer to is how would this need to be adapted to fit with how Primary schools like to work – after all, personalisation is not just for secondariy schools, is it?

ICT Needs Analysis

Hal

screnshot of questonnaireI was recently asked to create a training programme for staff to develop their ICT capabilities as part of a piece of work we were doing at Cleveratom. Creating a training schedule is actually quite an open-ended task, so I thought it best to do a needs analysis first to find out where everyone thought they needed help.

The analysis consists of three sections of questions related to different skill levels using ICT for learning. The first level focuses on basic skills – email, internet browsing and so on, and looks at the extent the participant is confident in using these technologies for themselves and for their pupils. It goes on to more advanced skills, looking at video and audio, interactive white boards (that perhaps should be a ‘basic’ skill by now) and other more creative activities. It completes with a look at the use of ICT to support the wider professional effectiveness.

The questions are simple, but the discussion around them is very important. Running this as a group session enabled people to talk to each other about what their fears and concerns were and really get to grips with the notion of what they need. Revealing the tensions and concerns as a group added weight to the process for sure, and rather than keeping their responses private I was pleased to see the level of openness in the group.

Developing a needs analysis questionnaire is quite interesting in itself, and strangely there are very few available using a google search. One or two very simple ones (how to hold a mouse, turn on or off the computer and similar) but nothing of real substance. This is fine, of course, and I expect there are commercially available schemes, but I wanted to create a unique tool for the occasion.

From the outset it was intended to create sections that tested people in different ways. A needs analysis for ICT is not going to be the same for a teacher as it is for a learning support assistant if a section is all about planing, assessment and delivery of a lesson (it may be, but not in the same way that it is for a teacher, perhaps). Therefore in introducing the survey it was important to explain that not all questions will apply, and where it is clearly not relevant, not to spend time worrying about what you don’t know! Ultimately, if you don’t know anything about databases or control technology, but you don’t need to know these things, then that section could be left blank. It is all about what you need to know in order to be more effective in your job, and how your work relates to the curriculum being taught, not what you don’t know about in general.

Having created the needs analysis questionnaire as a paper based exercise we are now looking at how to make it more accessible through electronic means. Trouble is, if your audience are not too familiar with a web browser to begin with, how do you get them to complete the needs analysis in the first place if it is only online?

In short, if you or your organisation (be it a school, college or company) is looking to review their skills with ICT then you should start with a questionnaire that enables the analysis to take place. We would be delighted to talk to you about how the needs analysis that has now been created could help, and how this would translate into an effective staff training or development programme for improving skills, knowledge and understanding in ICT.

BBC Micro News

Hal
BBC Micro

A colleague from Cleveratom (Nick) was at the recent science museum event in London which saw the BBC Micro creators reunite to celebrate over 25 years of the machine. In preparation for it Nick created a unique system which uses a BBC Micro to read out the current BBC news RSS feeds! You can subscribe to through iTunes, too. This alone is worthy enough of being called geeky, but in fact also shows the amazing capabilities of this remarkable machine.

Whilst the RSS reading antics do also rely on a couple of other (more modern) machines, the experiment shows the BBC Micro still has enough about it to be used creatively, even now.

In fact, if anyone has a BBC ‘B’ or Master, with or without a CUB monitor, that they want to see used as part of this experiment then I’d love to hear from you. Read on for why… or go to http://www.bbcmicronews.co.uk and see it in action. Read more →