News & Views
Where have I been?
By Terry Freedman
Mon, 5 May 2008, 21:48

As you may have noticed, this website has been uncharacteristically dormant since a week last Friday, until today. Unfortunately, a malignant Fate decreed that I succumbed to some horrible cold virus that is doing the rounds. So here is a brief synopsis of what I did, and failed to do, and what's coming up.

I won't bore you with the sordid details of waking up with a sore throat, which turned into a hacking cough, which led to (or was a symptom of) a chest infection, which my doctor said could not be treated because it was a virus rather than a bacteria that had caused it. (What I don't understand is that we can put people on the moon but we can't sort out viruses!)

I also won't bore you with the details of how, even now, I have had to bury my head in a bowl of steam at least twice a day, or have to drink honey and ginger. Suffice it to say that having to rest a lot in order to fight this thing meant that I wasn't able to write and try to meet my other commitments.

Still, not everything was doom and gloom. I was recently commissioned to bid for some money on behalf of a school and Local Authority, and was told last week that mine was one of only 49 successful bids (and out of only 6 in London), selected by a panel comprising a total of 16 people looking at close on 200 bids all together. I'm really pleased because it means that we will now be able take teachers out of school in order to generate resources for the Diplomas starting in September 2008. The biggest problem facing teachers is lack of time, and this funding will, in effect, buy a fair bit of that. Now the hard work begins!

During the week I had a good example of how technology can benefit us, and an example of where it is irrelevant. One of the appointments in my diary was a meeting with a potential client on the other side of London. Now, London is a sprawling city, and the total journey, believe it or not, would have taken over two hours each way door to door. I thought that it wouldn't be sensible to travel for around 5 hours and have a meeting and then go on to another appointment in the evening (also 2 hours each way). So I made my apologies, and a conference call was set up instead. Much more sensible.

It was the evening appointment that technology couldn't have helped with: a leaving party for two people, in a pub. I really wanted to attend, in order to personally offer my best wishes, but alas, it was more sensible to make my apologies.

The next couple of days are rather packed, but the one I'm looking forward to the most is a visit to a school that wishes to be considered for the ICT Mark (I'm an ICT Mark assessor). This is a quality assurance badge that is based on the Self-Review Framework. If a school is awarded this then it means not that it is perfect, but that it's achieved a particular benchmark standard in each of 8 areas. The good thing about it is that even if a school is not quite there yet, the process itself is a means of improvement.

So why am I looking forward to it? Well, I really enjoy hearing people talk about their successes, I like meeting students, and I like giving advice!

I'm finishing the week with a meeting of a board of another project I obtained funding for, by successfully bidding for £400,000. This is an absolutely brilliant project that involves children in primary schools making podcasts and doing other creative things. The teachers, who are not "techies" by any means, are highly enthused and making great strides in learning how to use some quite sophisticated recording and mixing equipment. I am hoping great things will come from it.

In the meantime, I shall be catching up with other work and (hopefully) writing more too. So, watch this space.

© Terry Freedman Mon, 5 May 2008