Jonathan Davies

I’ve always “wanted” an iPhone, but have never really come up with a reason that is strong enough to over-through what is a very hefty price tag. In fact, over 18 months, with the cheapest contract, costs you £900.

If you hadn’t noticed. That’s a lot of money for a phone.

But now it’s gotten to the point where I think (obviously, when the 3G iPhone is released) I am going to give in and say yes. But why, what has changed since the release of the iPhone to make me realize that I need one.

The biggest reason was the actual iPhone itself, before there was nothing to gauge a good and bad phone, they were all rubbish. But now you can see how good phones could be… It’s a lot harder to put up with them now.

The problem that I currently face is as to whether I am going to end up using the phone enough. Currently I don’t really use my phone very much. It’s a catch twenty-two situation. I want an iPhone because I don’t use my current phone, but I am hesitant in buying a new one because I don’t want to waste money on something that I may find out I don’t need.

But it’s not really the phone functionality that draws my towards it. I like the simplicity, the user interface, the iPod, the web browser. So even if I don’t find myself using the phone functionality, will the unlimited data plan balance things out?

I’m not sure yet, any thoughts?

My previous blog post was about the use of technology in schools at the moment and I didn’t really touch on how school’s could improve learning in the digital age as much as I could have, I had a lot of thoughts, more than what warranted a simple update to the post - so here is a brand new one here for your enjoyment

So we are at this point where there is a gap between accepting computers as a mainstream learning tool and those who still prefer the good old pen and paper. Of course writing is an incredibly important asset, but it is getting to a stage where typing is going to be just as, if not more important. So, I suggest the following pieces of action to be taken:

• Write everything on the computer - by doing this you are forcing kids, from a level where they are (hopefully) all the same. Therefore they can build up there skills and abilities with each other and learn things from each other. Of course, they should be pretty capable in writing before they move solely over to the computer for writing.
• Teaching online - my own school’s site has a source where they can enroll in online courses that work separately, or in union with a scheduled lesson. One of the advantages to this is that students can work at their own pace and don’t have to wait for others to catch up.
• School Bulletins - Imagine logging onto your school computer to find a page telling you your time table, preps that need doing and any other school related notifications. My school has this on a limited basis, but the possibilities that can be gained from this are amazing.
• Homework by email - Now there is no excuse to say you forgot. Send out a mass email to all your students giving them the work that is needed and the course on the learning site that they need to reference. All they simply do is, put the homework into a reply and send it off.

The problem that we have with these is that they require a few other steps that need to be made first before they could reach their potential:

• Educate students and teachers - on day one they should be given a demonstration of how to use everything and have a chance to ask questions. There should always be a support email that people can go and ask questions.
• A standard system - a lot of schools have hobbled together a system that uses a lot of different technologies that haven’t been designed to work with each other. Chose a system and stick to it!
• Make it mandatory - The one thing that is letting down the online learning site at my school is the fact that teachers don’t have to put up content for it - or even use it. Before it can be used properly it needs the whole school community behind it.

This is simply what I think a school would need to put into place before they can expect a fully functional, online learning experience. What would you like your school to do?

Technology plays a large roll in my daily activities at school. For some lessons I write my notes on my MacBook Pro, I do a lot of video recording and editing for school events. In fact I am going to be editing a whole load of footage over the next few weeks.

Why do I write a lot of my notes on my computer? To stay organized really. All my notes are arranged specifically to the subject and lesson that I am studying. Most importantly; I know where everything is. I am not very good at manually organizing things. I tend to loose pieces of paper and it can take a long time for me to find stuff. If I can’t find something on my Mac, then I simply use Spotlight and get to it in seconds.

The problem with schools and technology at the moment is simply that teachers don’t seem to trust them as a learning tool totally yet. In all the lessons that I do - only a handful am I allowed to take notes for on my computer.

Why are they like this? I think it is simply because of the situation that my school’s network used to be in. There was a point where files could go missing or magically become deleted. This caused a lot of mistrust about the school’s network that I believe is still present today.

Luckily, things are changing, slowly, for the better. Teachers are becoming more educated and IT is becoming a bigger part of learning at my school. Interactive white boards are in a lot of classrooms and projects are more commonly requested to be presented on a computer.

They are small steps, but it’s still progress non the least.

How is technology treated in your learning environment?

I have never been very good at making targets, big nor small, I just never seem to be able to accomplish them - or at least as well as I’d like to.

For instance, only spending a limited amount of time “browsing” the internet - a massive time waster, or reading a book for a few minutes a day. I can write them out and plan doing them - but when it comes down to it, all I am really good at is procrastinating.

So I’ve put in a few measures lately to try and curve this problem and so far it seems to be working fairly well. One of the biggest hurdles was admitting that I am not (though some believe me to be) a superhero - who can do anything. Once this boundary is overcome you can just accept that what you have managed to do is enough, and should be enough to satisfy you.

By setting myself, small, doable targets I am able to slowly complete a whole large tasks. Because, after all, one large tasks simply a lot of small ones.

Organizing my life through one quick small step has increased my productivity ten fold.

What do you do to be more productive?

Up until recently JonathanDavies.org.uk was the only place that you could really find content from me. Well, from now on, you can find me also creating content for Desktop Vibes, Glenn Wolsey’s new blog which I mentioned in a previous blog post. You can expect an article from me, in different forms about once per week.

I just want to make it clear that this new outlet will be an extra blog post that I write every week and will not affect the writing that you see here. In fact, I hope that the extra writing that I do will only strengthen my ability to create content.

My thanks go to Glenn for giving me this chance to increase the amount of people I will be able to reach on the web - this really is a fantastic opportunity.

My first blog post was published the other day and I covered the free app Dock Library. Check it out and leave a comment on Desktop Vibes telling me what you think!