14/03/08
GOING PRO!
Good news today. Received two free copies of Google Earth Pro worth $800 in light of the work I am doing in promoting GE. This means I can record movies on GE to show my work on this site. It also means a whole lot of other stuff but that is for another day.

10/03/08
The earlier problems regarding my website access through schools have been fixed. The NCTE were surprisingly helpful and my thanks goes to them. Tomorrow I will attempt my first case study of virtual fieldwork using the pupils from St. Michael's Special Needs School in Dublin (my school). The full lesson can be viewed on the virtual fieldwork page here. It is aimed at primary level and the subject is 'creating a virtual tour of Brazil'.

My GPS arrived at the weekend so advanced virtual fieldwork is on the way. Keep an eye out for that over Easter.



29/02/08
CONTOL FREAKS!
First contact with NCTE today. An informal phone call as I
realised while showing a colleague my site that none of the attachments can be download by schools. The dangers of being bored by a Google Earth file are too great it appears. They were nice on the phone mind you and I await a call from the superior on Monday but this does not exactly enamour teachers to create content in Ireland. While waiting for the NTCE to decide how they will deal with the 'real' world you can read what Jerome Morrissey, director of the NCTE had to say on the matter last year. From what I gather he is resigned in a positive way to web 2.0 in schools but still believes they can control the content by selecting relevant material. At the end of the day this is impossible. They are proud of the fact they have sanctioned 27 million websites, but what about the 7 billion web-pages they intend to control? Even if this was possible they are still intent on blocking priceless shareware sites. What they need to look at are ways of blocking key word searches on sites such as youtube as they do at present on search engines. Blocked sites can be annoying but restrictions are lifted within 24 hours, so at least the control is not totally restrictive as I am finding at present.

27/02/08

AD FREE!
Well tonight was a good night for the site. I got rid of the ads thanks to wikipaint recognising ad free in education. I have added some more to the GE layer and word pages and got an email from Amazon saying the GPS is in the post. Watch this space!
25/02/08

At present I am in a process of communication with The National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) to try and change their short-term attitudes to web 2.0 and sites such as youtube and google videos. Why do they not realise the value media-sharing sites and web 2.0 can give in engaging children with other communities around the world and in providing up to date and hugely relevant lesson material for educators? I for one cannot post virtual fieldwork properly without the use of youtube to en-bed video on GE. Instead we must use teachertube that Jamie points out is slow and contains a constant stream of inappropriate advertising. Are they saying children cannot access just as much junk elsewhere by blocking certain web 2.0 sites. We have waited long enough to get broadband into schools so why can't we access it before it all goes out of date and we are left behind on ICT matters even more.
Watch this space!