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Way back in July/August 2014, David Hopkins ( @hopkinsdavid ) approached a number of people involved in EdTech, myself included, about an idea he had to collaboratively write a Really Useful EdTech Book. The book is now available for download and will be published on proper paper within the next couple of days. To find out more about it, and to download your copy, visit David's blog . It's a fabulous collection of chapters from practitioners, researchers and professionals in the area of EdTech, and has a foreword by our own Catherine Cronin. There are some very positive reviews already on this site, including one from Steve Wheeler. David has done an amazing job in bringing this all together. I don't know about the other authors but I don't think I met a single deadline. His patience is beyond belief, and he still seems to be talking to me! For me, it was a great opportunity to be part of such a collaboration, which includes some people that I know quite well from twitt...

St Leonard's Hall The EduWiki 2014 event was held on Friday 31st October in the stunning St Leonard's Hall at the University of Edinburgh. Ever since I heard Toni Sant (Education Organiser with wikimedia UK) speak at the International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference ( see previous post ), which led me to join the Wikimedia Ireland Community working group, I have been fascinated at the potential of using Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) to support student development in higher education. So, I was thrilled to be at the one day event in Edinburgh to find out more about the Wikimedia UK education projects. This was always going to be a different crowd from my usual conference network, and there wasn't much tweeting in advance of the event, so I was a little nervous when I turned up at the social event on the evening before the conference. I needn't have worried, the small group that had gathered were as welcoming as could be, including a nacho-eating dog, an...

My son will be 14 next month. He starts his second year at secondary school on Friday. He'll do his first state examination, the Junior Certificate, in summer 2015. Pictured is a selection of just some of the textbooks he is required to have. This is about 60% of the total set, not counting copybooks, homework journal etc. This lot alone weighs more than 10 kilos. Luckily, his school runs a book loan scheme, so we've only had to pay a fraction of the total cost of these books. So, I'm not complaining about the cost. My son gets quite a lot of homework. Each evening he has homework for between 6 and 8 of his subjects. That means he is carrying at least one textbook and one copybook per subject home in his bag. Some mornings last year I could not physically lift his schoolbag. He's a little bit taller than me, but fairly skinny. I watch him staggering down the road to the bus stop with a heavy weight on his back. David Hopkins wrote last week about digital textbooks and ...