Good evening ladies and gentleman. It's great to see so many of you here for our curriculum evening again this year. I hope that those of you with children in years 1 to 6 have appreciated the chance to meet your child's new class teacher, and I'd like to express my thanks to my colleagues for setting aside time for this, and for the super displays you see around the hall: I'd encourage you to have a glance at the ones for other years before you head home, as they do give a real sense of the progression that happens as children make their way up through the school.

A year and a half ago, as part of my interview for this job, Mrs Kirkham and the governors asked me to present on my vision for the school in 2010. Not knowing the school at all well back then, I based much of what I had to say on three aims for what I thought education at a place like the Convent School should be about. I thought it might be interesting this evening to have a look at those aims, and see how well we're doing in meeting them.

First off, was the idea of a school where people learn to think for themselves.
We remain resolutely committed to the idea of discovering and developing our children's God given potential in every aspect of their lives. The care, the dedication shown by my colleagues in their work with the children is evident to anyone who spends any time at the school, our inspectors included. Thanks to this, and our small classes, I think it's very clear that we do 'count in ones', that we go such a long way to meeting each of our children where they are, nurturing them, challenging them, and helping them, step by step, along their own educational journey.

The help varies, from child to child, from subject to subject, from year to year, and from day to day: for some there'll be lots of support: and I must say how grateful I am to Ms Swindells in managing our 'special needs' provision, with our three tier approach of in-class support, focus support groups and one to one support from Mrs Spence. On other occasions, the best help we can give a child is to really challenge them to strive for excellence. From time to time, my colleagues will send children to my study with pieces of work - the sense of pride, of achievement that the children have in these splendid examples of what they've done invariably brightens my day and is, I believe, something which all our pupils have. The foundations of a lifelong love of learning are laid early on.

We're experimenting more with providing time on the curriculum for the children to think: from Year 1 up we're setting aside an hour a week for what we've labelled ‘critical skills' - a chance in the week to look beyond the knowledge, skills and understanding of the separate subjects to things that sit across and go beyond traditional boundaries. It's early days for us with this, but we're hoping to give time for puzzles, problems, philosophy, space for reflection on the week's lessons, a chance to think about thinking, and learn about learning.

One of the ways we do all we can to encourage pupils to think for themselves is through an emphasis on independent learning. The idea of a personalised education is one the maintained sector is coming round to, but for us here there's more to this than everyone working at their own pace, there's an acknowledgement that education as a person means not only provision tailored to a child's ability, but also tailored to their enthusiasms and aspirations.

Our ever expanding co-curricular provision is one way we seek to meet this: I'm delighted that our list of after-school clubs now includes things for Key Stage 1 and Reception, as well as more choice than ever for the upper prep.

The opportunities for independent work within the curriculum are important too: seeing the enthusiasm with which the children set about the task of English Speaking Board preparation was an undoubted highlight of my first year - yes they were hugely polished performances, but I was even more impressed by the quality of the independent research that went into choosing prose, learning poetry and putting together their presentations.

Our facilities for independent learning are good here - Val Wilding's sterling work in the prep school library gives us a much loved room with a superbly chosen stock catering for all subjects and all tastes in children's literature, and our recent expansion of the prep ICT room opens up lots more opportunities for us to use computers as a tool for learning: witness yesterday's launch of our pilot online maths homework for Years 5 and 6.

The notion of our independence is key here. Yes we do pay attention to all that happens in the maintained sector, but there's a heavy responsibility to think these innovations through for ourselves, with a view to seeing how well they fit into our own, very special, context. Take as an example our maths curriculum. For the maintained sector, a lot of time has been spent over the last couple of years reviewing and revising the Numeracy Framework - giving a greater sense of pace, putting slightly less emphasis on using calculators, putting slightly more on written calculations: all things which we here feel very positive about, and so this year we're moving our maths programme up to Year 4 over to the new framework. And yet, for Year 5 and Year 6, the new framework doesn't suit us so well, so we're ploughing our own furrow, focussing more on the imperative of getting all our pupils to the standard needed for entrance exams in January of Year 6, in which, I'm quietly confident we'll match last year's 100% success rate in placing everyone at their chosen schools, and then providing a broader, enriching mathematical education, and not, I'm delighted to say, worrying about the SATs the following May.

The second aim I shared back at my interview, was for a school where people care about and support one another.

The school's faith, of course, underpins all that we do, and I think one of the things that sets the Convent School apart from other schools is the extent to which our faith is worked out in practice; in the care, the concern, the love that exists in the relationships which make up the community of our school. The pupils are so good at looking after one another, at helping each other in class, in the playground, on the games field, and beyond school. I don't think it coincidental that this happens in the context of a school where each day starts and ends with prayer, where assemblies are acts of collective worship and where all, nursery through sixth form and staff, come together for Mass. Another of the highlights of my last year, was the chance to take a day out with Year 6 at their reflective, inspiring, affirming retreat at St Lucy's convent.

It was no surprise that the inspectorate recognised our provision for spiritual, moral and cultural development as outstanding. Gratifying as this was, even here we look for further improvements - this year we're integrating previous provision for RE, PHSME and Circle Time within a single subject area of Religious and Moral Education, exploring what elsewhere can be an all to secular emphasis on personal and social development from the particular perspective of a Catholic school, and holding true to our founder's ideal of a school where "knowledge of the world is seen in the light of faith".

The care the pupils show one another is, I think, nowhere more evident than on the sports field. Our emphasis on developing noble personal qualities, courage, commitment, concentration and the rest, through our sports provision, and the encouragement for all to take part is not at the expense of striving after excellence here. Our fixtures programme continues to expand, for both boys and girls, and the sense of working together as a team, and our sense of fair play, have, I'm sure, played no small part in our improving record of success in matches against other schools. Again, the co-curricular programme illustrates how enthusiastic our pupils are to take part in sport with one another - this term alone, we're offering football, rugby, fun run, netball, basketball, karate and short tennis, as well as lunchtime coaching for the U10 and U11 teams.

This sense of care, of concern is further developed through time away from school. Our range of educational visits does so much to broaden our pupils' horizons, to make the things they're learning far more real that we could in our well resourced classrooms - Year 3 head off to Liss on Thursday to help with the Roman excavations, and Year 5 are soon off up to the British Museum to see Egyptian artefacts for themselves.

It's our residential programme though where the relationships between the pupils are really strengthened - Year 3 have a sleepover here at school to look forward to, Year 4's trip to Marchant's Hill does much to bond theses classes together as they tackle a lot of outdoor challenges, Year 5 have a wonderful week living together on the Isle of Wight, and Year 6 are thoroughly immersed in French culture on their residential visit to Picardie.

In this, as in every area, the children's first teachers are you yourselves: the values, the sense of self-discipline, the sense of honour that they have, does you great credit, and the support they give to one another mirrors the support you give to us, for which we here are all grateful. We couldn't do what we do without you.

The care and concern we have for one another though is not, nor should it be, limited to the school community. My third aim, was for a school where people are equipped and inspired to ‘make a difference'.

Our ongoing commitment to maintaining a central place in our curriculum for creativity and the arts is one of the ways in which we do this. The sheer quality of our children's work in art is quite breath taking, thanks I'm sure to the inspiration they receive from their teachers in this, as so many other, subjects. They love their art lessons. More wonderful still, is the joy that their work brings to others - to you, their parents, I know, but also to the other children - the number of times I see children from other classes taking a real delight in the art work displayed around the school, something which so many of my visitors also comment on very favourably. The prep school work on show at the summer arts festival was excellent. Creative arts week was, I know, a highlight for children and staff alike.

Drama continues to be a great strength, and will, I know, develop yet further when the arts centre is eventually opened. Alongside the showpieces of the Christmas productions, are the wonderful lower and upper prep assemblies which children and class teachers put together week after week - done for their fellow pupils and the greater glory of God.

Music too goes from strength to strength - over half of your sons and daughters are learning instruments, and their standard continues to improve. It's been a great treat to hear the prep school orchestra entertaining folk at PTFA events, we continue to sing and play in the wider community, and worship at prep school assemblies is now led by our outstanding Chanteurs chamber choir.

We make a difference in other ways too. We have a sense of responsibility towards the wider community and the world. It's been great to welcome into school people from a range of charities. I was hugely impressed by the enthusiasm with which prep children set about raising money for comic relief and the Good Shepherd Appeal, and I know the visit from the Indian Sisters made a lasting impression on us and on them - closer links with other schools within the community of Our Lady of Providence is something Mrs Kirkham and I are keen to pursue.

We have a growing concern for the environment. We're ever conscious of the drain we put on our world's finite resources and of our carbon footprint. Classrooms have recycling boxes and our new ICT facility has been implemented with a close eye on sustainability and reducing power consumption - our 18 workstations now use less electricity than the previous ten. The children's awareness of these issues is quite acute. We have a ‘save the Earth' environment theme day later this term, which you'll hear more about before long, and we have a week long focus on science, technology and the environment later on in the year. I'd encourage any of you who can to explore car-sharing for the school run or the use of our school coaches.

So, we are a school that comes ever closer to the ideal of a learning community. Not only are we a school where the children's learning is what matters, where it is at the core of what we do, but we're also a place where we teachers and the other staff continue to learn and develop as professionals. I am so impressed by how willing those I work with are to embrace change. Furthermore, we're a school where we continually review what we do and seek to develop, to improve: it would be all to easy to rest on the laurels of our outstanding inspection report, but rather we continue to move forward: integrated religious and moral education, critical skills, ICT and maths developments, extended co-curricular provision, as well as things like German for Year 6, a more integrated approach to Early Years provision, and a restructuring of our timetable. Our willingness as a school to reflect, to review, to improve, is a willingness we see everyday in your sons and daughters - they are wonderful, they're each a credit to you, and thank you for continuing to trust us with their education.

an effective presentation is one in which the audience finds the information useful and interesting and where fonts, colours, images and sound are used in ways that catch their attention and help to get the information across.

Which, I suspect, folks like Edward Tufte and Garr Reynolds might take some issue with. So, in setting a presentation as an activity, what is important? There seem to be a number of bases to cover here:

• Research - exploring the subject, discerning what matters and being selective, analyzing, making comparisons, telling stories, organizing things into a structure. And, of course, the content itself does matter, and having 11 year olds spend the first six lessons of senior school ICT on producing a presentation to introduce themselves to their classmates seems a wasted opportunity, when so many aspects of other subject could be explored here.
• Use of the software - there are skills to be learnt here, no matter how quickly learners pick up an interface: the example of PowerPoint's outlining tool springs to mind, and yet, this is relatively low level stuff, we're not, after all writing code here
• Design - there's a potential conflict here with the software skills, as it's all too easy to focus on adding complexity and distractions when, I suspect, a really effective presentation, one that stands out from the crowd, has an elegant simplicity to its design. It's possible that folk over in the art department might be better at teaching this than the ICT staff.
• The actual presenting bit - again, something which ICT teachers might not be the best folk to teach: I'm thinking cross-curricular projects with drama, English, history whatever, might have some real value here, and this is one aspect which the ESB presentation element has certainly helped my pupils towards.
• Reflection - feedback from the audience, including the teacher(s), time to reflect on how the presentation went and what's been learnt.

Of course, PowerPoint, when used well, isn't going to stand in the way of achieving these objectives. That said, my ongoing exploration of ubuntu/edubuntu has provided some interesting insights into the world of presentation software that exists beyond PowerPoint.

The most obvious alternative is OpenOffice Impress, which is, I'd say, a pretty good substitute for PowerPoint. It's a pretty good substitute for the MS product, without quite so many transition, animation and clipart effects, which given my views above, may be no bad thing. The outline tool is good, although it doesn't have the interoperability with Writer that Word/PowerPoint have. One of the best things about Impress is its export capabilities, with native support for Flash and PDF.

Impress's PDF export capabilities are particularly good when used alongside KeyJNote as a tool for viewing presentations. In the best traditions of Open Source, we have here a small program that does a single task very well, the task in this case being showing presentation slides - lots of command line or sidecar file based options, but in essence it provides eye-candy transitions, text and mouse highlighting, and a quick overview feature to use whilst running the presentation. Really nice software, which will work with directories of image files too. The Windows and Linux versions don't even need installing (although the Linux one needs Python to work), making them ideal for storing on a USB stick alongside the presentation slides themselves.

The PDF export from Impress is also useful in conjunction with  SuperShow, which will combine the slides from the pdf with audio recorded  alongside and output a .swf file  of the whole presentation.

I have a lot of admiration for LyX's WYSIWYM approach to document creation, although I've not yet managed to give up the bad habits of messing with formats acquired through using Word. Using the LaTeX Beamer class, LyX is quite capable of producing some rather elegant presentation slides, which again feed beautifully into KeyJNote. I'm not convinced that this quite has the ease of use I'm looking for for primary work, but it does keep the focus very much on the content and the structure.

Elgg itself now has a presentation module, and whilst it's not a bad way to share presentation content online, I can't imagine many folk using it live with an audience: it's probably best used as an e-portfolio tool, as Helen Barrett is. Something like slideshare or GoogleApps's long expected presentation tool is, I suspect, a more transparent way of publishing traditional slides. The social network dimension of these web-based applications has much going for it in terms of my reflection objective above: slideshare do seem to have got this right. Indeed, just as Flickr is a great resource for teaching photography, Slideshare would be a pretty good tool for teaching about presentation design. Alas, unlike gallery2 as an alternative to Flickr, I'm not aware of any open-source version which one could run inside a walled garden...

There are other interesting ways of using the web for presentations though. Eric Meyer's S5 is particularly impressive, although I'd be hesitant before going down the route of teaching the mark-up needed to primary children. S5 integration into Moodle and Elgg would be avenues worth exploring. Another cool idea is the XUL based tool that bright-green developed for Takahashi style minimalist presentations.

The research aspect that is a key part of presentation work in school as I see it is perhaps best achieved outside of the presentation software itself. Google notebook might be a starting point here, but of course, it's not open source. For web-based research, del.icio.us has much to be said, and clever use of tagging would allow for some content organization on the fly, together with some interesting possibilities for collaborative research. There is a whole host of open source applications which replicate del.icou.us's functionality, and in some cases API, such as scuttle. A wiki would also provide a way to collect source material together, and with a little organization, editing, and design work, could also be used for the presentation itself. An alternative approach, and one I've used successfully in the past, is to use mind mapping software such as freemind or semantik for this, and I think this provides a visual, accessible route in to the crucial sifting and organization dimension. There are interesting interoperabilities here: semantik (nee kdissert) is designed as an authoring / outlining tool, and will happily produce Beamer formatted LaTeX, Freemind, on the other hand, has mediawiki and del.icio.us integration, both of which are very cool, although the wiki browser doesn't appear to be GPLed :-(.

In fact, Freemind's non-linear, strongly visual format would, if we weren't so wedded to the linear format of the PowerPoint presentation, make it a very appealing tool for illustrating a presentation - certainly worth experimenting with, I think. Alternative approaches to presentations are undoubtedly of value. Much could be done using images alone, such as in iphoto or photostory: linux has SlideshowCreator, but the interface is a bit OTT; there may be others out there! I have a vivid recollection of Stephen Heppell presenting by just talking us through a number of pictures, documents, webpages etc that he'd gathered together in a folder on his PowerBook. There's also something to be said for dispensing with the slideware entirely, and just talking to and interacting with the audience.

Anyone who's ever done any maths on a computer involving concepts as advanced as fractions will be familiar with the difficulty in inputting or outputting mathematical expressions, hence such notions as Donald Knuth's T_EX and MathML. Although maths should lend itself to computer based assessment (Gödel's incompleteness theorem notwithstanding, things are generally right or wrong), these input/output issues soon get in the way. Moodle's splendid T_EX filter does much to help with the output side of things, although even this doesn't have the same WYSIWYG functionality teachers or students today perhaps expect. Chris has co-authored a paper which explores some of the input issues in more detail.

To help with this, Chris and Alex Billingsley have produced DragMath, a rather nice little Java applet which lets you drag and drop a whole host of mathematical symbols around, and then produces code in a format which computer algebra systems like Maxima and Maple, or L^AT_EX or MathML can interpret correctly. Very nice work, and better still, Open Source, with the project over on Sourceforge.

Chris's STACK project also continues development. STACK is an online assessment tool for mathematics, with a computer algebra system, in this case the open source, and very splendid, Maxima, running in the background. Thus, Chris has an assessment system which understands matematics, and so questions like "Give a fraction equivalent to 1/4", and "Factorise x²+5x+6" become things which can be marked automatically without having to type in semi-infinite lists of alternative expressions.

There's been attempts at getting Moodle and Stack to talk since, I think, Moodle 1.5 in Spring 2005, but whilst I played with this I never managed to get it working. The future of STACK looks like being as a fully integrated Moodle module, together with some support for more intuitive, interactive interfaces such as DragMath above, and the java based open-source interactive geometry tool GeoGebra.

We have in fact had an Edubuntu server up and running since last October, doing stirling service as our webserver, providing our public website via drupal, together with a photo gallery through gallery2, as well as Moodle, which we're about to start using with the pupils. All this has, of course, been running like a dream on fairly bog-standard desktop hardware.

The new lab though is going to be running as a thin-client network, using some decidedly past their best machines from the senior school as LTSP clients providing 18 pupils at a time with access to edubuntu desktops from a very nice dual quad-core server. Early days yet, but the server installation went like a dream. I was expecting all sorts of complications with config files to get the clients working, but, after resetting a long forgotten bios password and burning the appropriate rom-o-matic boot disk, our first client machine network booted up straight away. Very cool indeed!

OK, we've a way to go before term starts, and it'll be interesting to see how the lab functions under load, but first impressions are very positive. We're particularly impressed by the Thin Client Manager running on the server, which lets the teacher start and stop processes on the clients, blank screens, send messages and view activity on the client screens - very useful.

So, this weekend I've been spending some time exploring the available software, on a six year-old laptop, on which gnome, all the following, and some wobbly windows screen candy work perfectly. Installing programs really couldn't be easier than with synaptic - search for what you're trying to do, read throught the descriptions and click on the programs you want to try - this is so much easier than Windows, particularly as there's none of that spending money inconvenience involved! A few applications I've been playing with:

• GCompris: very nice collection of educational activities and games, of variable quality, but very accessible for our younger pupils
• KTouch: touch typing tutor, providing fairly detailed statistics on progress and levels of increasing difficulty. Still not sure what I feel about teaching typing in school - still an important skill, many parents think it a great idea, and makes it easier to use the machines for text based work later, but somehow it doesn't really feel like teaching.
• LinCity-NG: not dissimilar to Simcity - I'm fairly convinced on the whole learning through games issue, at least with those involving creativity and problem solving, but I've no intention of installing any first-person shooters!
• On a similar theme, Gnu Backgammon, which is very strong and feature rich - don't know if we'll install it at school, and Clare was most intrigued by the sound effects!
• Inkscape, vector graphics, which I really like, and will be using for some Bridget Riley inspired work
• The GIMP: which, despite what any open source advocates may tell you, is no where near photoshop :-(
• Freemind, for mind-mapping, which has been the only thing I've had trouble with installing, as it prefers a different java run-time from the one that comes as standard, however it was worth the hassle, as makes it too difficult to move nodes around the tree.
• BloGTK, a blogging client from which I'm posting this!

Amusingly, BESA's director comments

Besa's members are responding to the government's agenda with innovative and market-leading learning platforms

When, in fact, the market leading, and probably most innovative, learning platform is being produced by a community which would not be allowed to join BESA.

Although the report does identify one of the challenges for schools as

an understanding by teachers and pupils of the changes which are required of them and pupils’ responsibilities in their progress and achievement,

It's not clear whether such changes encompass the development of a culture of collaboration, social learning and creativity. There does seem some discrepancy between the primary and secondary sectors, with secondaries forging ahead: perhaps not too great a surprise given that the way "learning platforms" have been promoted by BECTA has focused on content delivery rather than a more social approach that would fit better with primary practice: indeed the report identifies key components as

1. "content management,
2. curriculum mapping and planning,
3. learner engagement and administration and
4. tools and services" (in that order).

The 'key attributes of personalisation' that the National Education Research Panel (who conducted the research for BESA) identify seem to have little to do with the choice and voice dimensions of learner autonomy that I would look for, but then these get little mention in the Gilbert Report either.

There are, though, occasions when something a little more authoritative or detailed is required, or at least of interest, but whilst much is online, not all is on open access. Of course, for those in HE there's access to any number of high quality resources via institutional subscriptions. I've only recently discovered though that the UK public libraries are now providing free home access for all their readers to quite a number of premium resources, through a two year deal through the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council, which I sincerely hope will be extended beyond March 2008. The list of online resources varies from county to county. Here in Surrey, we get a pretty good range, including the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) and ODNB (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), which I really value, and which would set me back £460 a year if I were to subscribe to both as an individual: suddenly my Council Tax doesn't seem quite so bad! We also get Grove Music and Grove Art, Britannica, the splendid NewsUK archive (a close match to LexisNexis for UK newspapers) and KnowUK, which includes a whole host of reference works such as Who's Who and the Which guides. Hampshire replaces KnowUK with the less comprehensive Credo Reference, but also adds the Times Digital Archive.

It really is brilliant that the MLA has had the vision to secure a deal like this for our libraries and their readers. What a shame though that this splendid service provided through the county libraries isn't integrated into the national educational network - of course all school children can access these resources through joining the library, but why not provide automatic access through the RBC and LA portals too?

Upstairs in the Sackler Galleries they have a wonderful exhibition of Impressionist Sea Paintings. The show focuses on paintings of just one section of the Normandy coast, and kicks off with pre-impressionist work to provide some context for what comes later. They have a number of rather lovely, almost minimalist, Whistlers, together with a few very early Monets - the transition into impressionism seeming far closer to evolution than revolution. The highlights had to be Monets and Renoirs in the final room, the former particularly, but much else to enjoy here too, and interesting to compare the way that a number of artists of the late 19th century dealt with both nascent seaside tourism and coastal landscapes. Well worth a visit.

Then downstairs to the main galleries for this year's Summer Exhibition, which, I think, is one of the better ones. Our favourite rooms were much as always, with some lovely prints in the large Weston Room, including a number of fun pieces such as a hand drawn tourist map of the British Isles and a couple of Baxter cartoons, slightly more substantial works than normal in the Small Weston Room, and a perhaps slightly sparser than normal collection of models and drawings in the architecture room, including Foster's redesign of the Clarence Hotel in Dublin. There were other good rooms too though this year, particularly a new room for photography, including an amazingly detailed photograph of the sculpture gallery at the Louvre, brilliantly hung on the central axis of the galleries, a room of figurative art hung by Ben Levene, a second room of prints, and some fun installation pieces in the last room before the shop. There were also some nice coloured-in Penrose tilings in the Lecture Room, and it was interesting to see that rapid prototypes and inkjet printouts are now firmly established as media.

All this was the prelude though to our first visit to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall this seasons for the final part of their four year long Ring cycle, each part performed by different cast and orchestra as concert performances. This was a wonderful performance of Götterdämmerung. The BBC SO under up and coming Wagnerian. Donald Runnicles were on top form, and undoubtedly won the battle with the singers for supremacy in the RAH's not unchallenging acoustic, which they actually used quite creatively by positioning horn players up in the top choir balconies. The singers though put up a good fight, improving act by act up to an overwhelmingly moving final solo from Christine Brewer's Brünnhilde. Sir John Tomlinson's Hagen was particularly well sung, with much of Hagen's character conveyed through the singing alone, and Stig Andersen's Siegfried had lots of fun with gestures and expressions. Katherine Broderick, Anna Stephany and Liora Grodnikaite made a stunning set of relatively youthful Rhinemaidens. The fact that it wasn't a staged performance meant that one concentrated far more on the music and the text (we were helpfully provided with full librettos and translations with the excellent Proms progamme), and on balance I think this was a good thing, at least on this occasion. That said without any acting it was, for me, less emotionally involving than the last time I saw the work staged at Covent Garden. The lighting effects they use at the RAH for the proms these days were put to particularly good effect in the final immolation scene, with lots of flickering flames in evidence. Huge admiration for the prommers some of whom managed to stay standing from 4.00 through to 10.00, apart, I assume, from the intervals. The concert's available via the BBC's Listen Again facility for the next week.

On the plus side, there's a highly intuitive interface, fun stuff included alongside the more educationally focussed content, a suitably rugged case and keyboard and a good browser.

SG was less positive about the speed of the machine in general, memory management, battery life and the reliability of the network connection.

The more I read about these machines, the more appealing they seem for school use in the developed world, although OLPC have no plans to extend distribution here. However, the manufacturers, Quanta, may yet make a not dissimilar machine available on the open market.

• Wifi: which certainly helps cut down the data charges, and coupled with the great web-browser is excellent for quick net access
• The browser: I was expecting to have to install Opera, but the built in browser is brilliant, easy navigation around a normal site, support for flash and very comfortable in landscape mode when the phone is on its side. Google's mobile gateway is particularly nice, and (as an option) renders linked pages in a mobile friendly format. Google's mobile services are getting better all the time: I'm particularly impressed by how easy Google Reader is to use via the phone. It's interesting seeing how mobile access to web2.0 is taking off: Wapedia provide a mobile portal to wikipedia, which I find very useful, flickr has a lovely mobile friendly interface, as do vitalist, which I'm using to manage my to-do list these days. Not really got into mobile social networking / micro-blogging through the likes of twitter, but it'd be really interesting to see something like this tried inside a walled-garden for schools.
• There's a reasonable music player, although the audio isn't up to ipod standard, however there are built in speakers, which also work well for the radio (although you need to plug headphones in to act as an antenna). It comes with realplayer too, which integrates with the browser to make the BBC's Listen Again and live streamed radio content available, although I'd dread to think what the data charges would be outside of a wifi hotspot.
• 5MP Camera with autofocus, which whilst not up to the standard of a standalone digital camera is not at all bad. There are times when I really don't want to lug my EOS30D around when walking, and having a fairly good quality camera built in to the phone is great for these occasions. It also records VGA video, but I've not done much with this myself. It can do audio too, but the quality here isn't really good enough for podcasts.

I've also installed a few extra bits to make even better use of the phone's great connectivity:

• An early purchase was Nokia's bluetooth keyboard, which connects beautifully and makes the phone far more viable as a ultra-portable replacement for a laptop - much easier to compose or respond to emails, or to type up notes at the library than even predictive text on the phone key-pad.
• I upgraded the quickoffice reader to the full version, so I could type up notes in word format, but the spreadsheet that comes with this is useful too.
• The built in GPS application is OK, but not a replacement for Tomtom, however, Viewranger have a full set of OS 1:50K maps for Great Britain which you can instal and integrate with the GPS, which is great for country walking and also, as you can export the tracklog in GPX format, is ideal for geotagging pictures. It also does labeled panoramas, which is quite fun when out and about. There are also 1:25K maps for national parks or whatever area you want. Jolly useful for school trips.
• GMail have a mobile application which works well for dealing with email, although the phone's own email client is good, and there's always the mobile version of the web interface. There's also a lovely mobile application for Google Maps, but alas this doesn't (yet) integrate with the GPS on the N95.
• The built-in calendar application is great, but its worth signing up for goosync, to provide synchronization with Google's calendar. Goosync are also about to start beta testing for contacts synchronization with google too.
• Salling Clicker allows you to use the phone as a wireless (wifi or bluetooth) remote control for various Windows applications - notably PowerPoint and ITunes, although it needs an app running on the computer.
• Open source SSH client Putty is available for the the S60v3 Operating System of the N95, which, with keyboard and connectivity, provides shell access to our webserver.
• Telexy have a very nice SMB client, which together with the wifi connection allows access to files on Samba and Windows servers via the phone - there's no support integrated into the other phone applications, so it's a case of copying the file across and then working on it / listening to it / whatever. Wifi is certainly quicker for this than bluetooth though.
• Despite my nobbled firmware, Skype still works via fring.
• Finally, I have a java version of Gnu Backgammon, which looks really good in landscape mode - I don't know that this is still available for download though.

The use of the devices to support teaching and learning seems vary in its scope and effectiveness from class to class, which is perhaps entirely surprising. CPD seems to be an issue here, with teachers' confidence with the devices, their willingness to take risks and the opportunity to play with the devices being seen as important factors. Letting teachers have some say on what's installed on the devices seemed to help here, although McFarlane et al nevertheless indicate that the "management of expectations has proved important", and that some schools have got used to free trial versions of software only to find that they couldn't afford to continue use when the trial expired - this, of course, wouldn't have been an issue with an open source software or content.

It's interesting that, while McFarlane et al highlight the importance of setting up carefully thought out activities, a lot of the emphasis here seems to be about selecting software and content, rather than providing the tools for teachers to create activities that would really exploit the potential of these devices, with little use being made of the websites that have been set up to support the integration of the devices. The secondary science teachers expected "a bank of materials and schemes of work that they could use".

The use of the PDA's appears to go some way to empower pupils and increase their autonomy, which I see as crucial to personalised learning, but McFarlane et al identify a need to ensure that pupils have the skills they thus need in locating and evaluating resources, critical thinking and reflection. This is interesting: The relatively restrictive "point and click" interface that seems to be used in most of the activities and content accessed via a PDA (McFarlane et al hint at "the shortcomings of resources installed on the devices"), the small screen size and the difficulties of text entry here (although secondary pupils have apparently used flexible keyboards with their PDAs), to my mind at least, would do little to facilitate the development of the skills which it appears are needed to use the devices well. I might be missing something, but I suspect these are the wrong tools. Indeed, whilst this interim report doesn't include much by way of quantitative data, the fact that McFarlane et al need to advocate a minimum frequency of use if pupils are to bother bringing their fully charged PDAs in with them suggests that they might not be used as extensively as one would have hoped.

The authors report:

There appears to have been some increase in out-of-school learner-directed activity related to the school curriculum, using the mobile devices; perhaps more than has been evident with other less-mobile technologies.

The authors cite a few examples of autonomous "school-based" learning activity using the PDAs, and acknowledge that they were also used for games. However, despite the PDAs being owned by the pupils,

Staff at the primary school feel responsible, as providers of the devices, to protect pupils and have tried to limit internet access to in-school time.

Which, to my mind, rather limits the opportunities for autonomous learning and collaborative working. All of the primary pupils had access to a computer at home, and almost all had access to the net, and yet they were expected to do homework via the PDA. The power and potential of the home computer thus appeared to be limited to games and instant messaging.

Marking seems to be an issue for many of the teachers in the study - with no real equivalent of a 'pile of books', or perhaps even the evidence of process which pencil and paper work makes apparent. It is, I guess, not dissimilar from the desire of many ICT teachers to produce printed portfolios of work for marking, without regard to the potential of the technology here or indeed ink costs! Even MS/Open Office can provide very rich support for inline corrections and feedback through change tracking/recording and comments, and Moodle's developers have done some brilliant work in providing very rich assessment tools online - automatic feedback in quizzes, inline comments on assignments and peer review tools such as wikis and the brilliant workshop module. I suspect that the potential of PDAs as a medium for pupils' work can more easily be reached when they're integrated into the VLE rather than relying on their in-built programs. Furthermore,  this would solve the problem the authors identify of providing storage of and access to work online.

For anyone contemplating introducing technology like this, the authors provide an extensive list of the problems that have arisen in the implementations studied, some of which are about relationship and change management, but many seem to be about the technology itself, perhaps particularly because of the devolved ownership, although "Work done on personally owned devices ... appears to be valued more by learners."

Having read the report, I think there is much to be said for providing 1:1 access to ICT for learning, but I'm not convinced these projects, focusing as they have on the content and tools that can be installed on PDAs, have gone about it the right way. The most impressive aspects of the way the PDAs have been used are photos (of apparatus in science experiments, or stages in DT work), and audio/video recording:

Children made video/audio recordings in PE and literacy in order to review and evaluate performance; they took still images throughout sequences of work in design and technology and science to reconstruct the processes and to support recording, analysis and evaluation. This ‘authentic’ use has been positively received by learners.

A hand-held device for this aspect seems crucial, and one could imagine all kinds of opportunities here, from the foundation stage up. That said, this could be achieved just as easily using the mobile phones which half the primary pupils and, I suspect, all the secondary pupils already owned.

For researching via the net, for word-processing, for authoring presentations or creating spreadsheets, this is the wrong tool. Yes, I can do this via my smartphone or a PDA, but I wouldn't choose to. The screen's the wrong size and data entry is painful, although less so if you add on a bluetooth keyboard. Neither do you need something handheld for this, although portable is good.

• A home computer isn't bad for this actually, and VLEs and PLEs via the web means that this can be used far more effectively for learning, yet it's no use in school, and PCs on all desktops are pretty unlikely, even using clever stuff like thin-clients.
• A laptop is good for both home and school, although battery life is a problem still, and actually it provides more than you need.
• I'm really impressed by the notion of the web-tablet, such as the Nokia N800 - add in a keyboard via bluetooth and you have pretty much what you need as a tool for research, for writing stuff and for collaboration, as long as you have connectivity and the right VLE and PLE to connect into - the full width screen avoids the need for re-writing content or user-interfaces. What's more, this is an open-source platform.
• The vision of the OLPC project, and the XO-1 laptop comes pretty close to what I'd like to see - built as it has been with a real understanding of children and education, rather than a manager's PIM repurposed:
  "Children program the machine, not the other way around."
  "XO has a user interface that graphically embraces the spirit of the network. It is all about community and collaboration"
  The unit costs are way lower than for PDAs, too. Of course, their priority is the developing world, but I live in hope that we in the affluent West will be able to buy these too. 
• Until then, the Asus Eee-pc, due for release later this year, comes pretty close to what I'd go with - 800x480 screen, built-in keyboard, USB ports, wifi, Linux, and I suspect not much more than £100 per box.

The key to all the above though is connectivity - it's not the software on the box that matters, it's what you can connect to with it - in school this means wifi, at home it's likely to mean broadband and wifi too. In terms of addressing the digital/cultural divide, bringing the Net into folks' homes is likely to have far more impact than providing one child in a family with a PDA.