web analytics

First post using Offline Reader

Hi,

Jim Henderson from Highland Council told me about using an offline reader to manage my blog. So here is my first post using one call ECTO. Seems to be fairly straight for so far. I will be using it over the next few days.

I have not posted for a we while as I have been very busy with work related issues. Now hope to get back into more consistent posting routine.

1956 another significant event

Over breakfast news this morning I heard a short article about the first Trans Atlantic telephone cable, the installation of which was complete 50 years ago today. Read the BBC article here.

The cable was laid as the first section of a project to connect all the countries of the British Commonwealth and could carry 36 simultanious calls. This event took place the same year that IBM introduced the first Hard Disc ( a massive 4.4 Megabytes capacity). It seems that for a number of reasons the year 1956 was a notable year.

It was eventually “officially opened” in 1961 when the Queen made a phone call to the Canadian prim minister John Diefenbaker. There is a recording of the call here.

Why might I be interested in these articles? My first attention was drawn to them as 1956 is my own birth year 😉 But I am caused to refiect in the technological progress which was been made during the course of my own life time. It is hard to imagine what the next 50 year might have in store.

SETT 06 over

Well, thats the two days of SETT over and I am now sitting in my hotel room relaxing. Its very hard being on your feel continiously. It was very good to see that many people are getting quite excited aboout the Glow project.

See http://www.glowscotland.org.uk

It does seem that people are generally quite impressed by what has been on show at the Exibition hall. It will be some time before the Glow service comes online. Its likely to be at least another year before users will be able to start to make proper use of it. There will be a series of pilot phases which will allow the developers to ensure that any bugs in the system are sorted before it is exposed to the masses.

When full service is achieved it will support the entire education community in Scotland which will consist of some 800 000 users.

Some people would consider that the system is based on well established applications which is of course true. However, the system as is stands is actually a firm basis for developing a range of other applications such as Bloggs, Wikies etc etc.

This is a space that is well worth watching! I will be very interesting to see what teahers and pupils actually do with the system once it comes into full service. I would expect that the users will do some things which we would find it very hard to predict.

As one of the people who has been involved in the Glow project for some time it is very rewarding to see the beginings of a product which was only in idea a year ago.

SETT the Scottish Learning Festival

I will be attending SETT today and tomorrow. This event will be visited by over 5000 teachers and other professional from the Education sector in Scotland. I expect that it will be very busy with lots to see, hear and loads of people to meet. yOu can find out more about this event on the LTScotland web site which is at http://www.ltscotland.org.uk

More of this later.