tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90636397583143967892010-07-26T21:07:27.929ZAndrew Evans on ICT Learning Services in the UKAndrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-5403626069871786912007-06-23T10:34:00.001Z2007-06-23T10:35:56.152Z

Pedagogue, our online eLearning content development tool for teachers featured in this month's Microsoft in Education newsletter. It's been fantastic for us at CDSM to get this kind of coverage and the feedback has been great so far. Our aim for Pedagogue is to enable teachers with an easy to use tool for creating eLearning multimedia content that will run and be tracked in their VLE (SCORM

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-39427065643514894562007-06-13T07:04:00.001Z2007-06-13T07:06:05.570Z

Last month I blogged about a Becta event titled "Making software accessible: rising to the challenge". Since then Becta have added the slides from the presentation in Powerpoint and PDF format. Here is a list of the presentations you can download: - An equitable learning experience – ICT and the legislative framework (Phillipa Stobbs, Council for Disabled Children) - PowerPoint | PDF; How

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-7782054472103181972007-06-12T13:57:00.001Z2007-06-12T14:21:00.813Z

I almost missed this (I don't know why Becta don't publish their latest SIF information on their website under Data Services)... thanks Andy for this."Report commissioned by Becta to review the benefits of adopting SIF." - SIFA UK Website.Informed by the experiences from the 1st SIFA UK proof of concept (Birmingham) Becta have released a report outlining the benefits of implementing and

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-67604927258177917662007-05-21T21:09:00.001Z2007-05-21T21:10:41.113Z

Last Thursday (17/05/2007) I attended the Becta event "Making software accessible: rising to the challenge", with Grant Broome, our Accessibility Manager. Take a look at the agenda on the Becta website to get an idea of what was covered at the event. With no disrespect with the other speakers whose presentations I also enjoyed, I am going to focus on my highlight of the day and hopefully get

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-49600162623448521352007-05-04T15:55:00.001Z2007-05-04T15:56:49.482Z

The Schools Interoperability Framework UK specification 1.0 has been released for Public review over a 30-day period. SIFA UK are inviting their members and non-members to feedback on the specification which has been in development since the start of the Birmingham proof of concept. On the SIFA UK website it states: - The review cycle is for 30 days, starting from 2nd May until 31st May 2007.

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-57267139045423055912007-03-28T01:12:00.001Z2007-03-28T01:23:10.789Z

Pedagogue is the latest product to be released by CDSM. It's so new it hasn't got a logo! As you may know Pedagogue has been keeping us busy for the past 5 months (the last 3 weeks have been hectic to say the least) and last Wednesday (21/03/07) we released version 1.0. Here's a screen grab of the login/start page (just to give you a feel for the style). Plenty of screens (and maybe videos) to

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-36898556950539239502007-03-26T13:10:00.000Z2007-03-26T14:24:27.622Z

Better late than never, eh? It's coming up to 3 weeks since my visit to Dunchurch for the SIFA UK Quarterly Meeting. I haven't had a chance to blog since getting back as we've been putting the finishing touches to Pedagogue (more on that in a future post). Usually I wouldn't post about something that happened weeks ago but there are few things I want to share with you. SIFA UK have uploaded

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-67378229264212931652007-03-04T23:44:00.001Z2007-03-05T14:25:29.991Z

I can't believe it's March already! On Tuesday I'll be attending the SIFA UK quarterly meeting where I hope to catch up with what the Birmingham proof of concept team have been up to. So what am I expecting?Dr. Larry Fruth (Executive Director of SIFA) is over from the US so I'm definitely going to make it to his session ("The State of SIF and SIFA", Tuesday @ 10:45).Andy Elmhorst (Edustructures

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-73014322955996004522007-02-05T12:55:00.000Z2007-03-08T10:32:52.840Z

Becta are running a proof of concept using the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF). The purpose of the POC is to see how SIF can be applied to education in the UK. The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) is a standard for defining how: -systems communicate in schools; data is described amongst systems; the data is exchanged between systems.Schools can have a range of computer systems

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-21224393629270877272007-01-29T13:36:00.001Z2007-01-29T13:38:32.186Z

This month Futurelab launched a new blog called "Flux". The blog covers (as you'd expect from Futurelab) inovation in education as well as listing projects and useful resources. Already Flux has a good collection of articles many of which cover Personalisation (one of the key components of the Learning Platform remit). For more go to http://flux.futurelab.org.uk.

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-68560813329628851532007-01-24T21:42:00.001Z2007-02-02T13:18:13.166Z

In November 2006 JISC and Becta announced the "UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research". Becta is a UK Government agency responsible for overseeing and advising on ICT in Schools (Primary and Secondary). JISC on the other hand support Further and Higher education in the UK. Access Management? Access management is the process of allowing or denying people access to resources

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-78704126577928726742007-01-23T18:36:00.001Z2007-01-23T18:53:08.811Z

Do you ever wonder how we are supposed to get the most relevant posts from the Blogosphere? We can't subscribe to every blog we come across that covers something of interest. If we did we would spend most of my time reading. So what can we do? Enter the Google Blog Search and the RSS Radar technique. Google has a Blog search engine and from my experience it beats Technorati hands down. In

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-44919220955054893982007-01-15T19:06:00.001Z2007-01-16T09:04:36.335Z

I thought I'd share my experience at the Bett Show 2007 with you and write about some of the things that impressed me. I went to Bett representing CDSM & Salford CLC by demoing our products in the My Learning Space Platform. This kept me busy most of the time whilst being entertained by the guys from Multimedia On Wheels (the Air Guitar sales went through the roof for the Australian outfit).

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-31771520423828019552007-01-11T11:48:00.001Z2007-01-11T13:38:00.869Z

Becta have published 2 specifications describing their Learning Platform concept.  I read them first back in June last year (2006) and have kept them on my desk ever since. The first specification is the Functional Specification, which is aimed at decision makers, IT managers, etc.  It doesn't get bogged down with the technical aspects of Learning Platforms.  The second is the Technical

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-74570956286066588902007-01-10T14:12:00.001Z2007-01-11T11:47:34.082Z

A learning platform is a collection of ICT systems implemented to support both teaching and learning.  The users of a learning platform are: - Learners; Teachers; Parents; Administrators. Learners use a Learning Platform to: - Read/complete learning resources provided by Teachers or other Learners; Complete assessments set by Teachers; Record both formal and informal achievements; Take

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-57351244945046141242006-12-18T16:16:00.001Z2007-01-10T15:28:44.595Z

I recently did some research on server-side Flash video encoding for People And Places.  Much like the YouTube model, users would upload a video clip in various formats (MPEG, AVI, MOV, WMV, etc) and People And Places would convert and compress the video to Flash Video. So with services such as YouTube, Google Video and many more you would think that there are hundreds or thousands of solutions

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063639758314396789.post-13559642154111011162006-12-12T09:00:00.001Z2007-02-02T14:05:36.776Z

It's great that people at CDSM are finally using a blog to share ideas and document their experiences in projects. The next stage is to aggregate and organise this content in some way.One solution I have come across is Pligg. It's an open source web page (or blog entry) rating system written in PHP/MySQL. I'm hoping to get this setup in-house and possibly synch it with a public web service.If

Andrew Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537366561727988063noreply@blogger.com4