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After months and months of speculation September is rumoured to be the month of announcement! There has been much media hype in the techie world about the release of the Apple Tablet and even more speculation about its form, particularly is it a big ipod touch or a small PC?

The reality of the situation is that no one really knows but it is fun to speculate as is clearly shown by the great speculative designs shown below.

 

 

 

 

  

I love to look through university final projects centred around design. I found this one last week, a student in the USA has developed a USB flash drive entombed in concrete and promoted it as being a green product "so when the technology becomes obsolete and it is tossed, it will not leach its heavy metals into the landfill."

He goes on to say that:

"On a metaphorical level, its weight acts as a counter-mass to the obsessive miniaturization, quick convenience, disposable mentality of our electronic products. Things should be more convenient but not at the expensive of other more important things (like making us dumb or weak for example). Being harder to bring around with you and contradicting the promise of the pocketable jump drive, Harddrive is a functional reminder about the permanence that should be a part of the design thinking of our objects."

The idea was posted on a blog where comments could be made and it amused me greatly to read through them. I have listed a few below.

They range from:

• This one is so coooooooool!!!??? If you sell them, Igonna run to a shop! How heavy it is?

To:

• Counter-culture idiotic.
• You could always build a house with the old crashed drives.
• Well you cant do that to a HardDrive it will not work if you cover the holes that the drive clearly says DO NOT COVER ANY HOLES. This product is a fail FAIL
• One of the major wastes that is weighed for LEED certification is concrete. If you could create this product from the wasted concrete in building construction, then I could understand it being "green." But it still would just be recycled.

As you can see the majority were negative but my favourite was posted by someone called Jimmy

• Finally, a product that tells me I'm a bad person for buying it.

 

The critical nature of design! Do you dare to be different?

 

 

 

 

  

 

I came across this little porcine delight whilst looking for something completely different, the wonder of the internet!

Apparently it is a device designed to educate children in the actual cost of electronic devices and consequently their environmental impact. Simply you plug the "Power Hog" into the mains and then plug your TV, Playstation etc into the snout of the pig. By dropping coins into the piggy bank style slot on its back you can pay for up to half an hours worth of electricity. As it nears the end of the period the "Power Hog" flashes red to let you know that it is running out.

I think that for small children it could be a fun way to raise awareness of both environmental awareness and financial management. I doubt that it would have any impact upon teenagers, they would simply unplug it!

Still in prototype stage at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't hit the market soon.

 

The BBC reported this week that the market for mobile phone applications (Apps) will be as big as the internet with a projected 10 million apps available by 2020.

Is there money to be made? Oh yes!

"Firemint" an Australian gaming studio released "Flight Control" earlier this year, it topped the apps chart and stayed there. During March and April it was downloaded over 700,000 times. For each $1.19 purchase Apple take 30% leaving $0.83 to Firemint. This is an amazing $583,100.00 in just two months!

 

Obviously there will have been development costs (rumoured to have been $50,000) and tax to pay but this is still quite an incentive to start programming. Apple haven't made this easy though. I did a little research (not wanting to miss an opportunity) and discovered that the programming language used is called "objective C" which is used almost exclusively by Apple. I suspect that this is their way of making sure that the success of app store applications does not get utilised by their opposition who mostly use Java.

Whilst you are wondering if it is worth learning a new language, perhaps this will add further momentum to your thought processes, 02 have launched a £10,000 iphone app contest today.

Tempted? Well you needed something to do during the school holidays didn't you?

  

Google made an announcement this week that they were launching their own OS, an extension to Google Chrome. The reports indicate that they are starting from scratch "the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web" and that this OS was "our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be".

The new OS is reported to run on an open source licence which could have major cost savings for educational establishments.

Personally, I will be looking at this very carefully when it is eventually released!

 

This week I spent a couple of days in Hull, no it wasn't a jolly, it was related to work. I haven't been to Hull since 1989 and my memories were of a bleak and cold city. On Tuesday and Wednesday it was almost tropical, the hottest day for three years and temperatures of 33 degrees according to my car. The hotel I stayed in only had air conditioning in the bar . . . . . hmmmm!

The reason that I went to Hull was because I was asked (and they were paying travel, accommodation and food) to present to the Local Authority as well as Primary and Secondary Heads regarding the new OfSTED process. Two other Heads attended from Suffolk and we had all been through the OfSTED pilot inspections last term.

The new process is probably the best OfSTED inspection that I have ever been through and it was my fifth. You may find this rather difficult to believe as we were the first secondary school in the country to have a no notice inspection and we ended up in special measures but the process was much better.

As a headteacher I found that I was fully involved in the process at all levels including the decision making and debate. The emphasis is on pupil progress rather than the quality of teaching with much more lesson observations. It was initially data driven but they were honest enough to state this from the start with the lead inspector stating that "after considering your data, we have a hypothesis that this is a failing school. We have two days to either prove or disprove it."

As for the no notice inspection, I thought that it was a good idea, it was a realistic view of what actually happens on a day to day basis. I have heard people say that they have an "OfSTED lesson", the thought that it is acceptable to deliver one good lesson every three years when OfSTED come shocks me. Having two days notice to polish that lesson is even more unrealistic. The only down side is that we have been compared to schools that did have two days notice and that is unfair. I would be happy for all inspections to be no notice, at least then it would be a level playing field.

I hope that our colleagues in Hull found the information to be useful.

 

Those of you that are wondering what happened to the "Minibook" prize draw, it was won by a representative from a supplier company who have asked me to donate it to a worthy educational cause who can best make use of it.

I intend to explore possible recipients within my locality and will publish details and a photograph as soon as possible.

Recently I bought a new car, nothing flash, just a Ford Fiesta. I have never been tempted to spend money on cars as the depreciate at an alarming rate and I am a bit of a skinflint.

I have only recently been tempted to buy a new car rather than second hand and I have never had anything but the most basic of models but the credit crunch has made new car dealers desperate allowing me the opportunity to buy something with all of the whistles and bells.

Sadly, I was quite excited at the prospect of having numerous gadgets built in having only just progressed beyond wind up windows but I didn't anticipate becoming frustrated with them within a week.  Windscreen wipers that decide what speed they need to wipe, lights that turn themselves on when it gets dark, cruise control that catches me unawares at junctions and a Bluetooth phone connection that makes me jump when someone calls.

I appreciate that it is all in the name of safety but I do wonder if the driver is becoming unnecessary?

I really quite enjoy driving but I do like to make my own decisions, control things manually by twiddling knobs or flicking switches. There is something unnatural about shouting instructions at the dashboard.

Perhaps I am just getting old.

Those of you that are regulars will have noticed that it has been quite some time since I last posted a blog entry.

Circumstances at school have significantly increased the pressure on my time and as the title of this blog suggests we have been forced into a redundancy situation. I say forced because that is just what it has been.

As an inexperienced head I am very careful not to take risks outside of my areas of expertise, redundancy is just such a case. I have never been through this process and when you consider that if I take HR advice and things go wrong, they pick up the bill. If I choose not to take HR advice and things go wrong, I (the school) pick up the bill. It is a bit of a no brainer really.

This however, does not stop everyone thinking that you (me) are the perpetrator of all evil and as such have engineered this situation to remove undesirable staff.

I know, I am not paid to be popular but when everyone is pointing the finger it is really not a great place to be.

I really hope that not too many others are in the same situation, but if you are then my thoughts are with you.

  

I have spent some time playing with Google SketchUp. I have been playing around with house designs with the distant hope of one day building my own. Two dimensional drawings are one thing but getting them into three dimensions is quite difficult with any level of accuracy, particularly with a pencil. I searched for some free software that would allow me to play around with designs and it was then that I found Google SketchUp.

The basic version is available as a free download with Google SketchUp Pro available for £341.00. Obviously, being a skin flint I didn't pay £341.00 and had a go with the free version. I struggled a little at first but the wealth of You Tube demonstrations helped significantly.

 

If you haven't already had a play with SketchUp then I would suggest doing so, I would be surprised if after one evening you weren't impressed.