I previously had a short play with the Eee PC so I won’t go into the specs of this again. I had the 701 version with the 7″ screen.

Here’s a video review of the Eee PC:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The HP MiniNote is a fully spec PC but in UMPC format. It has a larger 8.9″ screen compared to the Eee PC that I had and was running WIndows Vista Business. The full spec is:

• Operating System     Vista® Business preinstalled
• Processor     VIA C7 (R)- M ULV Processor 1.2GHz, 128 KB L2 cache
• Chipset     VIA VN896NB and 8237s SB
• Memory     DDR2 SDRAM, 667MHz, one SODIMM memory slot, supports up to 2048MB (2GB supplied as standard)
• Internal Storage     120 GB 5400 rpm SATA
• Display     8.9-inch diagonal WXGA (1280 x 768)
• Graphics     VIA Chrome 9
• Audio     High Definition Audio, stereo speakers, integrated stereo microphones, stereo headphone/line out, stereo microphone in
• Wireless support     Broadcom 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth (TM) 2.0, HP Wireless Assistant
• Communications     Broadcom Ethernet Integrated Controller (10/100/1000)
• Expansion slots     ExpressCard/54 Slot, Secure Digital (SD) slot
• Ports and connectors     2 x USB 2.0 ports, VGA, power connector, RJ-45/Ethernet, stereo headphones/line out, stereo microphone in, webcam
• Input devices     92% full-sized keyboard, touchpad with scroll zone
• Software     HP Backup and Recovery Manager, Roxio Creator 9, Microsoft Office Ready 2007 (purchased separately)
• Security     Kensington lock, Symantec Norton Internet Security
• Dimensions (h×w×d)     33 (at front) x 255 x 165 mm (does not include extra height for extended battery)
• Weight     1460 g with standard 6-cell battery and 1299g with optional 3-cell battery, 1116g with no battery
• Power     6-cell battery (55 WHr) or optional 3-cell (28 WHr) Lithium-Ion battery, 65W HP Smart AC Adaptor, HP Fast Charge
• Warranty     Limited 1-year pick up and return warranty (options to extend available), 1-year limited warranty on primary battery

Here’s a video review of the HP MiniNote:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr Challoner’s were one of 33 schools who attended the final. There were 11 primary, 11 KS3 and 11 KS4 teams who took part.

In the morning pupils prepared their cars and in the afternoon there was one race for all teams. The top team from each age range would be the winner wherever they finished in the race and the overall winner across all age ranges would of course be the team that finished in first place.

Dr Challoner’s Grammar were 25th on the grid of 33 schools (11 from each age range). As the race progressed they slowly climbed up the leader board and as they completed the final lap they had reached 12th position which gained them third place in the KS3 age range!

Full details of the day and finishing positions can be found on the Maths Challenge website.

Photos of the day can be seen on the same website here.

Congratulations, Dr Challoner’s Grammar School!

So, what have I been doing since the last post?

• Went to the Naace conference in Torquay in March
• centralised VLE training for primary schools
• individual primary school training on VLEs
• secondary school training on VLEs
• Cars Maths in Motion competition again (with Dr Challoner’s Grammar through to the national final next week! )

As you can see I have been doing a lot of VLE training! There’s plenty more to come over the next year as we continue this, hopefully delivering training to all our schools in that time.

Yesterday I went to Microsoft in Reading for an RM’s LA Partnership Day. It was useful as I haven’t been to one of these for a couple of years (due to RM always announcing the dates with too little notice, though they are finally learning…) We had a chance to hear about changes and improvements to the rm.com website, see the new i-nfer plan assessment package (though we weren’t really the right audience, this should be assessment and primary strategy consultants who are shown this), learn more about the new RM WindowBox. Then in the afternoon there were breakout sessions where I chose to hear about CC4 and Kaleidos (I was hoping to see content rather than just the Learning Platform itself – ho hum). Plus at lunchtime there was an exhibition where I got to see the new 8.9″ screen version of the Asus EeePC ( RM Asus miniBook) and the HP miniNote PC. Hopefully I’ll be getting both of these on a trial in the near future.

So there we have it, a potted catch-up of the last 7 months.

The Asus Eee PC is a mini PC that runs using a Linux OS rather than Windows (yay! ) and comes bundled with a whole bunch of Open Source (yay! ) software:

• OpenOffice for documents, spreadsheets, presentations
• Firefox (for Internet, of course)
• Thunderbird for email
• Pidgin for Instant Messaging (MSN, Yahoo, IRC)
• Skype
• PDF Reader
• Music, Photo and Video Managers
• A range of educational programs including TuxPaint
• A range of games (Solitaire, Sudoku etc)

You can see what is available and test drive some of this here: Asus Eee PC Online Interactive Demo

The specs of the Asus are:

• Mobile Intel Celeron-M ULV 900MHz processor
• Asus-developed Linux-based operating system
• 7″ TFT screen
• 256MB or 512MB Memory
• 2GB or 4GB Solid-State Hard Drive
• Integrated LAN
• Lithium-Ion battery
• Integrated IEEE 802.11b/g wireless
• Integrated webcam
• Integrated microphone and speakers
• Ports for external microphone and speakers or headphones
• Options of wireless 3G module
• 3 USB ports
• VGA-out port
• SD card reader

These are taken from RM: RM Asus miniBook

There’s an 8Gb model planned for next year. The solid-state hard drive should make it a bit more robust than a PC with a standard hard disc. The SD card reader is a nice addition as it means the capacity of the Asus can be increased beyond the current 2Gb/4Gb size without having to have a USB pen drive sticking out of the side.

Wireless capability will be great in schools that have this, as a group of children or a class can then be using the Internet from the classroom without having to trek down to the ICT suite.

Asus estimate that the battery will last for around 3.5 hours (depending on usage), which would be enough for half a day’s work before charging at lunchtime or at the end of the school day.

It is possible, although not that easy, to install other software on the Asus. Here are details of software that has been tried on it: Applications tested on the Eee PC

I am very excited about the Asus Eee PC/ RM Asus miniBook. I think it has great potential – more so that using PDAs in school. I can’t wait to get my hands on one again to give it a thorough testing.

So could the Asus be the “one laptop per child” that we’ve all been waiting for…?!

I tried this with a search on Tudors:

Clicking on a + expands the branch. Clicking on the green circular arrows centres the map on that branch and displays all branches related to that. Clicking on the text of a branch opens up a new tab or window and displays the wikipedia entry related to that branch.

I think this could be a really useful research tool for pupils. Wikipedia contains a wealth of information but it isn’t that easy for pupils to use when studying a topic. Now they can access that information more easily and in a visually helpful way.

The day started for me with a 90 minute journey from home and up the M40 to the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon. Pat Trowbridge also journeyed there – she is the link ICT Consultant for Elangeni and so was there to support her school. Schools arrived from 9.15 am and all were there and ready to go by 9.45 am.

There were introductions from Brian Richardson from Cambridgeshire Software House (CSH), who organises the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge and wrote the software along with Ian Whittington (who was also at the final) and then from a representative from Jaguar. After a few rules were mentioned (no calculators!) it was kicking-out time for all of the adults. We then had a couple of hours to wander around the motor museum whilst pupils worked away on their cars.

After a fabulous lunch we all gathered together again. There were some speeches and then there was the teachers race. Vicki, the teacher of the Elangeni pupils had bravely entered the race and, although she didn’t win, she successfully completed the race. Well done!

Finally it was the moment we’d all been waiting for, the race! Elangeni’s pupils had not felt confident when they came out before lunch, so we were all just hoping that they would manage to finish and not run out of fuel or crash. There is only one race in the final and all cars go into this. Each is clearly marked with the age range they are in – 1 for Primary, 2 for KS3 and 3 for KS4. The top team from each age range would be the winner wherever they finished in the race and the overall winner across all age ranges would of course be the team that finished in first place.

The race began… Elangeni were 22nd on the grid of 33 schools (11 from each age range). Although this doesn’t sound too good, they were the fourth placed primary school on the starting grid. The first few laps were dominated by KS3 and KS4 teams, which took the top 15 places (which is all the software displays). We could see from the text display though that Elangeni were jostling for position with other cars, overtaking some and giving way to others. After a few more laps a primary school appeared in 15th position. They then disappeared, then reappeared and continued this for a while. When we looked again, the primary that appeared in 15th position was Elangeni! Then to our amazement they didn’t disappear off the screen but instead climbed the positions! They then flitted between 4th and 6th place for several laps and in the meantime, only one other primary school made it into the top 15.

The final lap arrived and Elangeni hung on to their lead in the race against the other primaries. They were the National Primary Winners!! Overall they were 4th in the race – only 3 secondary teams did better than them. Conversely, Elangeni were better than 19 secondary teams and 10 primary teams! I must say that I did have a tear in my eye at that point!

Here are the finishing positions of the top 5 schools and where the second and third place primary schools came:

1st Longfield School, Darlington (KS4) 2h 19m 10s
2nd The Grove School, Nottinghamshire (KS4) 2h 19m 21s
3rd Weydon School, Surrey (KS3) 2h 19m 22s
4th Elangeni Primary School, Buckinghamshire (KS2) 2h 20m 21s
5th Chatham House Grammar School, Kent (KS4) 2h 20m 24s

15th Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School, Portsmouth (KS2) 2h 28m 13s
16th Meavy C.E. Primary School, Devon (KS2) 2h 31m 24s

So Elangeni were only 1m 11s behind the first place KS4 team and they were 7m 52s faster than the next placed primary team!!

Full details of the finishing positions (but not times) can be found on the Maths Challenge website.

The presentations followed and photos were taken. The top three schools in each age range received prizes. Elangeni’s prizes included and iDesk, Epson printer/scanner, Texas Instruments calculators, Pentax camera as well as book tokens, medals and Jaguar caps for the pupils.

Link to photos on the BucksGfL website

My congratulations go to Elangeni School, to Vicki who taught herself and then her class how to use the software, and of course to the pupils who did the hard work to get through the Buckinghamshire Knockout Round, the Buckinghamshire Final, the National Semi Final and then beat a total of 29 schools in the National Final to become the National Primary Champions for 2006-7 and overall the fourth best team across all age ranges. That’s no small feat considering that around 1000 schools took part in the Maths Challenge this year. To think they nearly didn’t make the final either – they got the 11th and last primary final place by just 0.69 seconds!!

I would also like to thank Brian & Wendy Richardson and their family for all of the work they put in to organise the final and run the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge each year. Without them none of this would happen.

So another year for the Maths Challenge is now over. It takes me some work in organising this in Buckinghamshire and at times I’ve been a little despondent when schools who have purchased the software have dropped out and so many other schools, especially the secondaries, just don’t seem interested in taking part. Today though has made it all worth it and gives me a renewed determination to run this again next year and to try and get more schools involved.

Who says maths is boring?! With Cars Maths in Motion it isn’t! So bring on the Maths Challenge 2007-8!!

After the training session we had our second workshop, with three people attending this. We covered various things including forum problems, ‘jazzing up’ the appearance of Moodle (Themes etc) and wikis.

It’s become clear that we need to produce a bunch of Adobe Captivate movies. Ian Usher has done a few already. Time has been the problem though. I also think that some written documentation beyond the downloadable Moodle book, especially as this was based on an older version of Moodle. It looks like we’ll be busy over the summer…

The new structure was announced at the end of April and was finally confirmed last week. I, along with the rest of the ICT Curriculum Support Team, are among the fortunate ones and still have jobs. In some ways it is a celebration, albeit a muted one as a few colleagues are losing their jobs. Exactly what is happening to them is unclear – there will be efforts to find alternative posts in Buckinghamshire but inevitably a few are likely to be made redundant. Some have already ‘jumped ship’ and taken jobs elsewhere, so it is possible that for those who remain there won’t be redundancy because of this.

Times may well be changing for the ICT Curriculum Support Team. We have Ian Usher joining us as part of this restructuring and we will soon be discussing the work we will be doing from next term. I think there’s going to be an even greater focus on VLE/ Moodle training and support as well as other new initiatives – videoconferencing and e-portfolios. We shall soon see…

The session focused on getting some content onto their VLEs. Seven teachers from the three schools were shown various things including how to create a course, add text and pictures to sections and upload and link documents.

It really does make a difference the number of schools and teachers taking part. In previous terms we’ve had many more attending these sessions and there has been a buzz and interaction between them. There is not so much of this with only three schools, and this may also account (in part) for why most turned up without a definite idea about what they wanted to create a course on. In previous sessions teachers have come along to the same session with a range of ideas and some have sparked off what others are doing.

There’s one more session to go with this group, in the first week after half term. I’m already looking ahead to the autumn term and have more schools signed up to the training we’ll be holding then than we have now. We do have over 100 schools still to train though…

Congratulations go to Elangeni School for being the first school in Buckinghamshire to achieve this. This is also the first year that they have taken part so they have done well to get through the Buckinghamshire knockout round and final, and now the national semi final. They will go on as one of the eleven primary schools to compete in the national final at the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon on 29th June.

Needless to say I will be there, along with Pat Trowbridge, to cheer them on!