Author Archives: Colin

HP Streams and BYOD

The Christmas Holidays have come upon us and that provides a little downtime to facilitate some thinking about new things.  This holiday I have been considering the implications of how bring your own device could ever work.  Of course this really means that I’ve been investigating the killer hardware and software which would allow this to work. New and favourite pieces of hardware include the new line of products from HP.

The new HP Stream products further demonstrate the cloud based nature of modern ICT.  The range includes a 7 inch (£99) tablet, 8 inch (£149) tablets, 11 inch (£169), 13 inch (£229) and 14 inch laptops (£229).  They have also just announced a HP Stream mini desktop (~£120).

HP Stream 7

HP Stream 7

The key thing with all of these devices is their low price point. I am writing this post on a HP Stream 7 signature edition which I bought from the Microsoft store at the sale price of £79 with free postage.  It’s terrific!  I have thoroughly enjoyed using it and as an avid fan of all things Apple I have been quite happy to put my other toys aside in favour of this budget device.  As a possible tool for pupils at school this little device can pack a punch and runs Microsoft Office (bundled for a year) with ease. When you consider the ability for Scottish Schools to use windows based devices like this with the national O365 SharePoint tenancy in GLOW then these little devices have the potential to change productivity in the classroom.  They also have a fairly parent friendly price compared to Apple devices whilst still allowing access to industry standard applications.

The only downsides which I have discovered are the battery life, as whilst I get a fair few hours from the device it’s not an all day battery, and the cameras are pretty poor. But what do you expect for this price?  These haven’t affected the usability of the device for most purposes.

Next, you need the killer apps… My research took me to a variety of applications including OneNote coupled with ClassCreator.  However, that is worthy of it’s own post and will come next.

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This article focuses on the HP Stream devices.  Other PC, Apple, ChromeOS and Android devices will also work with GLOW.

Oracle Java CPD for South Lanarkshire Computing Teachers

One of the good things to come out of this year’s CAS Scotland conference was the offer from Oracle to support the continuious professional development (CPD) of Scottish Computing Teacher’s.

We took up that offer and from the end of March till the middle of May, twenty-five Computing  Teachers and Lecturers mainly from South Lanarkshire worked through their Java Fundamentals Programming Course. This course consisted of materials covering Alice, Greenfoot and Java using Eclipse and had two examinations a mid-term and final. Both counted towards course completion. Finally, there were two project days where we worked in teams to create a working game.

In due course i’ll embed that here!

We all really enjoyed it and are looking forward to a similar experience through one of Oracle’s other offerings.

Computing At School Scotland Conference 2012

Today, I attended the first Computing at School’s Scotland Conference in Edinburgh.  This was a marvellous event on many levels.

  1. It was over subscribed, yet over 100 Computing Teachers paid £20 probably their own money plus travelling expenses to give up their Saturday to meet with each other to try and progress their own subject.
  2. There were a good range of speakers, all suitably qualified, well respected in their field who gave some of the best advice, guidance, thoughts or opinions about different challenges which face computing in Schools.
  3. This wasn’t a greeting meeting! Everything was positive and constructive, forward looking and being for the benefit of and with the focus of learners experiencing computer education in the next few years.
  4. It was a fantastic representation of support from the Government agencies, Universities in Scotland (and Kent), from Industry including Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Runrev and last but by no means teachers.
  5. It was supremely well organised! Friendly, relaxed and everyone talked to everyone else.

I think that computing teachers sometimes get a bad press as being geeky, unapproachable and moaning.  Well, certainly not those who were their today.  We were proud and professional and I was glad to be one of them.

What did I learn?  What will impact my learning and teaching? Lots! But that’s for a different post!

To all those who contributed, organised, presented or to those in the tweetisfere who I had the chance to meet in real life.

Thanks,

Colin

Raspberry Pi – First Boot

After registering with RS Components and Element 14/Farnell on the launch day of the Raspberry Pi way back in February I can finally report that the second of the Raspberry Pi’s have been delivered today. This was just in time as one of the those which I ordered I was giving to a friend of mine – Andreas Ronge (@ronge). Here is a wee photo of our excitement of the first boot up of our Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi first boot

I have been waiting for this moment for months and was worried that I wouldn’t receive the second Raspberry Pi in time. The best bit! Andreas didn’t even know he was getting one! It was a compete surprise! Wasn’t it!

Anyway we are both now enjoying our first foray into the world of Raspberry Pi. Although, thanks to the blogs, wiki’s and YouTube articles the downloaded Debian squeeze images onto the Level 4 San Disk SD cards worked first time without hitch.

I’ll give a full run down of the setups used at a future juncture.

For now! I’m just happy when a plan comes together.