laurencejames.co.uk
Life of a 'Digital' Teacher
My Brother’s Wedding
3 months ago
in Lifestyle
Alex and Simin’s Wedding
OK, not a great photo…I was too busy being ‘Best Man’ for most of the day. The “official” photos were left to the pro.
Fortunately all went smoothly, particularly the Best Man’s Speech! Thank you Daniel – I did “borrow” one piece of inspiration from you!
All ended up going smoothly for the couple’s Big Day!
100 Events for 100 Years Logo
3 months ago
in Design
A colleague is planning to complete 100 events. Each of which is to celebrate the passing of 100 years. She commissioned a logo (one of the ‘events’) and here is her preferred draft.
See her blog: www.100events.co.uk
Planning On Going Somewhere (Travel Insurance)
Finding the right travel insurance policy can be tedious. Travel companies tend to have excessive prices whilst cheap quotes from comparison web sites leave you asking the question “is this cover adequate?”. Phrases from comparison web sites including ‘lite’, ‘economy’ and ‘cheaper’ suggest that the level of cover may not be as it should.
The answer is simple. Head over to Martin Lewsis’ web site: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/cheap-travel-insurance where all is explained. If only I looked at this web site first! Another site suggests making sure that you also include legal cover: http://www.moneymagpie.com/article/travel-insurance.
Happy travelling.
UTF8 Encoding
4 months ago
I’ve often thought about methods for encoding text between web browser input form (or even Flash/AJAX) through to PHP and then a MySQL database and back again (also avoiding injection attacks). I really should have taken better note of UTF encoding:
Netbooks consigned to history
4 months ago
in Technology
According to Computer Weekly, both Acer and Asus have recently stopped netbook production. Both were major players. Dell finished with netbooks some time ago. Lenovo were too early, predicting demise of netbooks during the end of 2010. The demand for the newer generation of more powerful and affordable tablet computers appears to have now blown netbooks out of the water. So what’s next?!
I still think netbooks will still be around for a little while longer. They certainly appear to be a little more robust. One year 7 student that received a tablet compute for Christmas is yet to discover its capabilities after accidentally sitting on it. Perhaps some rugged tablets will appear in the not so distant future to totally wipe out netbooks.
Bradgate park and The Griffin Inn
4 months ago
in Leisure
Two wonderful places to visit in Leicestershire:
http://www.bradgatepark.org
http://www.griffininnswithland.co.uk/
Walk from The Griffin towards Bradgate park.
Boys’ Achievement and Team-Teach
4 months ago
in Education
Today’s training day was filled with positivity and fresh faces.
I went to an interesting mini-lecture about raising boys’ attainments – covering the fundamental differences between boys and girls (see John Gray’s theories “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”) and strategies that focus on the differences. The main message was about boys tend to be goal orientated whereas girls tend to focus more on processes.
John and Penny from Team-Teach gave a group of us some training about promoting and protecting positive relationships with students.
I’ve also finished and shared a series of worksheets (over 110 pages in total) primarily for KS4 students to help them develop skills in order to tackle GCSE ICT. The resources are also suitable for teaching KS3, DiDA and The Nationals. They are based around planning a Car Boot Sale (spreadsheet modelling, databases, audio recording, digital adverts, animated banner, word processing and evaluating) http://www.clickschool.co.uk/
Pinnacle Climbing Centre
4 months ago
Northampton’s Pinnacle Climbing Centre opened over two years ago. Only yesterday, I finally popped in to see what it was like. I was inspired to go along as a result of having a conversation with someone else who also wishes to get back into climbing. I also thought back to my enjoyment of climbing over several weeks in 2007. As soon as I walked in, I was impressed with the set up and warm atmosphere. There are many climbing routes as well as a bouldering room. Tom (duty manager) was very welcoming and gave me a quick tour. After impressing on me about a course, I decided “why not?” and went back later in the day to be shown the ropes by Tom (another instructor). He was incredibly knowledgeable and a great teacher.
I can see that it is a great place to go to for group outings, team building, training, fun… and to be sociable. So, if you’ve thought about going, why not? http://www.thepinnaclecentre.co.uk/
Christmas Activities
5 months ago
in Education
These are the kind of results my students have been getting over the last few days…
Christmas Cards with Serif PagePlus
Christmas Trees with Flash
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – my piano arrangement – I don’t think this is too bad considering I haven’t played for a while!
Drawing can be very time consuming… I’ll give Mike the credit for the “Facepalm” idea
