Printer ink

This may sound like a strange title for a blog post, but its an interesting topic. Many of us have had the experience of walking into the local technology shop and seeing a printer on sale for a ridiculously cheap price. I know of people who when their printer runs out of ink will buy [...]

Project management

Project management is a topic that I teach in many of my classes. Whether its working as a member of a team or as an individual managing the project is a critical skill that the students need to develop. If the students are working as an individual, I get them to use the waterfall or [...]

Hole in the wall computer. Video

This is a BBC clip about the hole in the wall experiment – This is about a computer made available to the young people in Gurjola. Professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University is setting up a ‘hole in the wall’ experiment to explore the impact of access to computers on learning. Watch the video – [...]

Making designs real

Can you imagine how your classroom would be changed if the students could make the models and products they design there and then in the classroom? I am not just talking about a design or technology classroom. Consider the science classroom as the students are constructing models of molecules, protiens or strings of RNA or [...]

New laws of Robotics

I have just read a very interesting article from the BBC called “Ready for the robot revolution?” The article itself is very interesting and a great starting point for discussion in class but two aspects were worth discussion. The first involves Azimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics – this is a standard and one I make [...]

The wonders of technology

Around the outside of my classroom are whiteboards that the students use for their work. There are four of them and I seldom write on them but the students make quit extencive use of these. The students today were looking at the London Riots and examining the social and ethical issues (for IB ITGS Teachers  [...]

Google vs facebook – infographic

Here is an interesting infographic that compare the Old favourite of facebook and the new kid on the block Google + The original site of the infographic is – http://plusweek.ly/facebook-vs-google-infographic-via-singlegrain/

IT Trends – Moore’s law

My students are working on a unit standard that requires them to examine two past IT trends and analyse these and then to examine two current trends and predict how they will influence the future. One of the key trends that is impacting on Information technology and pretty much everything else is Moore’s law. Gordon [...]

Data Infographic

Infographics are a very powerful tool for learning. While we do have learning preferences –  Visual, Auditory, Read/Write or Kinesthetic – our dominant sense is visual. Further we process images faster, some estimate 60,000x faster than text.  Infographics when they are well designed effectively carry a message to us and our students that is easy [...]

Fun, logic and SQL

The Mid Year ITGS examination had a number of questions on Databases and DBMS. Its an interesting section and one that the students find challenging. Teaching databases can be done by a theory session – this tends to be dry or by practical activities. My students have been constructing a multi table relation database using [...]