JDMcDsblog

Football_Manager_Live-OnlineScreenshots8367rankings.jpg

Originally uploaded by dennisbp

My younger son plays the PC game “Football Manager 2007″ pretty constantly, if he is not actually playing for real, or playing the X box. While I sometimes get exasperated by his hogging the computer, I am greatly impressed by the level of technical skill the game, and others like it, seems to demand. I reckon playing FM07 must satisfy any number of sound educational principles-handling and synthesing screeds of data about player performance, morale, fitness multi tasking, decision making and independent learning (a footballing dunce, I certainly haven’t taught him how to play.; it’s all self taught) And, as he and his friends become ever more adept, they collaborate by sharing the latest cheats and, recently, have begun to play online football on the X box, talking through the headset to like minded guys in the USA and Ireland. The same is true for strategy games, like Cossacks and Age of Empires, which I love. I love the attention to detail, the excitement of creating whole units of troops in exotic uniforms, of building farms, monasteries and ships, digging for gold, hewing timber and ploughing fields all to support an army of miniscule soldiers who traverse across the screen in search of an enemy to vanquish. Again the level and extent of complex information that has to be assimiliated and acted upon must surely be good for the brain. We are meant to encourage deep thinking and offer intellectual challenge to our pupils. In my opinion, trying to complete a historical scenario in Age of Empires does precisely that. What we need to do in schools is harness the intellectual potential of games and use them to develop skills like collaboration, thinking, problem solving, independent learning and self evaluation.

My problem with all this is do girls miss out? is gaming a solution taht appeals much more to the mindset of teenage boys, not girls, or can it cross the gender divide? In general do boys gain more from ICT than girls?

shapes

Originally uploaded by jmmcdgll

I Put some of Fraser’s Paint doodles on my Flickr Gallery. He did these whe he was 11 and I love the use of colour and shapes-kind of reminiscent of artists like Kandinski and Klee. Have upgraded Flickr to Pro, unlimited account which allows unlimited posts and sets to be created. I find I use this site a lot for original and arresting pictures to use in class. The combination of sophisticated internet tools and digital cameras have really unleashed a major social change in Flickr-with millions of photos out there, just waiting to be shared!

Attended meeting of the Former Pupils’ Council this evening; one thing that I am interested in developing is how we can use “social networking” as a way of keeping in touch with former pupils. I think this may be a particularly good way of reaching the younger or “out of town” and overseas FPs: I can imagine Flickr Photoshare site being used to create online galleries of FP events, for example. You may be interested to see a sample I piloted at my former school, St Columba’s, where I created a folder on my Flickr account to showcase the annual FPs hockey and rugby match and various Pipe Band events. Some of the photos have been viewed several times, although I would like to see some comments, as this is where interaction and feedback takes place.

You can have unlimited storage space for about £15 a year.
Click here to see how one insitution, a business school, have used Flickr.

Also worth looking at is the Royal High School of Edinburgh Royal High’s blog, which gives a link to a photo gallery.

Finally I see some FP Rugby Clubs have set up blogs, see, at random: Saint Mary’s
Walcot Old Boys

The Americans are big on alumni reunions, see for example, chosen at random Mariner High School Class of 1976 blog , and how they have used it.

One initiative that is in my In Tray is “EcoSchools”. As a geographer I am naturally pleased to be involved in helping to take this vital area of the school’s life forward. We already have an EcoSchools committee, made up of pupils from each year group, under the enthusiastic direction of my colleage, Cate Hamilton. First up is a Green Day, to be held on Wednesday 10th October. The Hall will be turned into a continental cafe and various green items will be served; entry is limited to those who wear a green ribbon, which will be on sale that day. At this stage we are working towards gaining a bronze award, with the ultimate goal of achieving a green flag. To gain a bronze award you need to meet the following citeria:

Set up a Committee
Carry out an informal envoronmental review, and plan some actovities that will improve the environmental performance of the school
Devise an Action Plan, with tasks, timescale and personnel identified
Establish ways in which environmental issues are covered across a range of subjects
Set up and maintain an EcoSchool noticeboard
Devise an Eco Code

Cate has set up a blog which will certainly help to raise the profile of our EcoSchool initiatives-I shall put a link to this on to the new Ethos section on the staff intranet. We are also considering putting a “green footer” on all School e-mails. I propose to talk with individaul departments to find out the contexts in which they cover environmental and green themes, and therby make up a summary chart showing current situation and future priorities.
I had an interesting chat with our Head of Technology, Robert Furness, who is currently doing post grad research at the Centre for Alterntative Technology in Wales. Set in Southern Snowdonia, CAT is is one of the world’s most renowned eco-centres, featuring interactive displays and practical examples of sustainable living, renewable energy and organic gardening. It takes a refreshingly positive look at environmental issues and offers practical solutions to help us lessen our impact on the environment.

Robert and I agree that while recycling is an important and necessary first step, there are huge issues in terms of energy efficiency and design which need to be looked at in the future. Of course, we don’t have the luxury of building a new school, so the challenge is to come up with innovative ways of saving energy and being as efficient as possible in our design and behaviour.I think we should look at the possibility of arranging a visit to CAT-must mention this to Cate.
(Incidentally, Robert has an article on “switching from hard wired to microcontroller-based design” published in Autumn 2007 issue of “Electronics Education”) Click here for home page and links to PDF versions of this magazine-Autumn 07 noy yet available online)

Heads Again

Originally uploaded by jmmcdgll

This is the title of the final chapter of David Attenborough’s “Life on Earth”. it is an apt analogy of the current desire to keep in touch.

Indeed, fom the early rudiments of speech, like the grunts of Neanderthal Lok in Golding’s “The Inheritors” to the oral traditions of Norse and Anglo Saxon, African and Indian folk tales, from cave paintings in Almeira, to runes and illuminated manuscripts, from the sophisticated language of the Greeks and Romans, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Keats, the flow of Joyce, to the insatiable desire to phone, text, twitter and blog, from Bebo, FaceBook and MySpace, Friends Reunited to newsfeeds, alerts and instant messaging…people truly are “compulsive communicators”

TeachMeet07

Originally uploaded by Edublogger

I know it was my First TeachMeet, but did I need to look so nervous!?! I was actually gazing intently at the screen ahead of me, just before giving my nanopresentation. I think it was Neil Winton’s piece on Bebo that I was engrossed in.
I see this photo on Ewan’s Flickr has elicted a comment, in French. Zut Alors!!

[slideshare id=115391&doc=timea-reflection4055&w=425]

why this slideshare? Read on……

I drove like mad from Glasgow to Greenock with my two boys to make sure I saw, one last time perhaps, the QE2 sail out of Greenock and down the Firth of Clyde. More precisely, I wanted to hear the QE2, for it is the deep bass of the horn, sounding three times, that always makes the hairs on my neck stand up. That sound summons up old moments from the past, when I half remember boats and ships’ sirens and hooters welcoming in the New Year in Greenock. And so it was again that the QE2 blasted out her farewell, valedictory, but awakening, I am sure, a host of nostalgic yearnings in many of the crowd at the Esplanade.

I turned to head back to my car, which I had abandoned miles away, frustrated by the static car jam at the top of Greenock. As I walked back I retraced the steps I used to take each summer as I walked from home to the filling station in Regent Street where I worked as a student in the late 70s and early 80s. Much of Greenock is still the same-pockets of old tenements, run down factories, derelict land, abandoned multistoreys and scrap yards and one-man car repair works. Even the smells are the same. But elsewhere the old houses and street patterns have been overwritten by new layouts of maisonettes, neat gardens and play areas, clean new convenience stores, with only the street names fossiliing the original plan. I walked past the Garage , showing my son where we’d sit in the sun while waiting fill up the next car, walked by St Lawrence’s RC Chuch and Regents Court, past my best friend’s house in Bawhirley Road, out in the East End. I remembered playing with Timpo soldiers in the front garden way back in 1969. i remembered having spaghetti hoops for tea. Climbing up Kilmacolm Road I looked back over the Clyde, as the sun filtered pitifully through the greys and blacks of the next imminent shower.

All this prompted me to reflect on time. How many people, I wondered, as they watched the QE2 were instantly transported back 40 years to the day she was launched? How near the past seemed as I walked through the old haunts of Greenock. How close the link between time and place. And I was struck by how the notion of time changes as we grow up. I used to imagine time as a kind of x axis, a linear concept with a begining, a middle and an end. it;s like the stratigraphy of a rock face or the sequence in an archaeological dig. But then, sometimes straigraphies are reversed; tectonic forces folld old layers back on top of young layers. Cataclismic events jumble near horizons of settlement occupation and old sherds work their way to the surface. And so , time is, to me, like a CD, where you can jump back or forward to any track as the mood takes you. With binary code we can access the deepest memories and jump straight back 20, 30, 40 years in a second, prompted by smells, images or, as today, sounds. The sound of a ship’s horn on the Clyde.

Until the time that time stands still………Until our wounds are healed….

Originally uploaded by *Rosemea

Not long back from TeachMeet at the Science Centre. Not sure what I was expecting, as I had never been to one, and, on arriving I suddenly wasn’t quite sure why I had offered to speak, especially as other speakers had plenty more to say. Still, it was very stimulating, and I came away full of admiration for what people are doing, often on their own initiative. If my blogmap shows anything, it is the relatively piecemeal and spontaneous nature of innovative work in Scotand, with core areas like East Lothian and a kind of distance decay effect operating thereafter.(excuse the spatial analysis)
What I like is that the concept of TeachMeet is practioner-driven rather than “top down”; it’s the teachers and support staff doing the innovating, and driving the agenda, who are seeing how their practice fits on with Curriculum for Excellence and HGIOS. I’d be interested to know what HMIE think about what’s happening-do any inspectors blog, for example?

As newly appointed Depute Rector, I have been having very positive discussions with my colleagues at Hutchesons’ about how we can expand the collaborative aspects of our website and develop blogs and wikis. One of my younger colleagues runs the EcoSchool initiative, for instance, and she has just made up a blog to support the work of the pupils. She is an excellent photographer, too and she has put some great photos on Flickr. I also help with Young Enterprise-one of my sixth year team has made up a Bebo site to help launch their product, so there is definitely scope for social networking sites like Bebo, as Neil was saying.

I came away from this evening very optimistic-there is a lot of good work going on out there and it is important to celebrate this, and spead the word!!

InterRail plan, 1984

Originally uploaded by jmmcdgll

Found this plan of one the inter-rail trips my mate Ronnie and I did in 1984. i love the concept of inter-rail, the sense of freedom and choice. To some extent we limited our choices because we prebooked which Youth hostels we were going to stay in each night. However, that was part of the fun, planning out where we were going and having the satisfaction of actually achieving these goals-the best bit was slowly easing into Istanbul railway terminal early one morning after a long haul through Bulgaria and knowing we had successfully negotiated independent travel through two rather hostile Communist bloc countries, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The worst? Stuck in the futuristic, but soul-less concourse of Sofia railway station all night, when we reaslised we had no means of changing money and that our prebooked accommodation was 25 miles away, in a national park. Tarvelling through Europe gave me a taste for books like Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train and the travel writings of Patrick Leigh Fermour. My goal, which I may have to put on hold for a while would be to take the OzBus, from London to Sydney. What could be more exciting than travelling overland through all these countries? My wife and sons think a week in Portugal might be more realistic…sigh……..

Speirs Wharf conversions

Originally uploaded by jmmcdgll