Shut down all the privacy options. Do not respond to pupils, parents or colleagues' friends requests. Just allow your best, real world mates in as friends. And remember, even then, your status updates may come back to haunt you.

# Posted by steve hooker at 24/4/11; 10:57:34 PM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Keep private

This is an email from some grandparents to the school. I'm quite sure there are many more parents and grandparents who feel the same but haven't bothered emailing.

This make my day.

I remember asking my children, "what did you do at school today?" Dismayed at the inevitable reply, "dunno." If only their school had a blog and I could see what happened and thus be able to talk about what happened at school. # Posted by steve hooker at 17/2/11; 10:29:08 AM to the dept.
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Mail from some grandparents

I'm surprised at Facebook, such a big company doing it wrong. Here, if you were to delete a thumbnail via the Editors only: ==> Admin, we over-write the image with a 1 x 1 pixel white new image. Thus, crawlers, bots and everything else are also over-written. It's as secure as it gets.

# Posted by steve hooker at 13/10/10; 4:16:21 PM to the Your School's Website Sucks! dept.
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We over-write

Oh, dear. My blog is fast becoming Red Steve's Rant. Still, it ain't right! Up the proletariat! 

# Posted by steve hooker at 26/9/10; 8:54:50 AM to the Education news dept.
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More class warfare

Why is class still such a factor in education? It's a pet peeve on mine. Tsk! 

# Posted by steve hooker at 2/9/10; 11:09:09 AM to the Edu business dept.
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Schools must earn poor pupil payment

BBC News - Technology in schools: Is the clock being turned back?: "Mr Prince takes a similar view. He fears that without government support for ICT it will be like the 1970s when pupils only did science in primary school if their teacher happened to be a science enthusiast. "

Oh dear.

# Posted by steve hooker at 4/7/10; 11:11:03 AM to the Education news dept.
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Technology in schools: Is the clock being turned back?

BBC News: "Like many other government departments, education in England is facing a 25% cut over four years. Although the chancellor has raised hopes that it might be spared the full hit, there are no guarantees and any special treatment will be dependent on other areas taking bigger cuts"

# Posted by steve hooker at 25/6/10; 8:48:31 AM to the Edu business dept.
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Education sector in England braced for 25% cuts

BBC News: "Education spending in England could be cut by as much as 25% over the next four years, the Chancellor has said.

Teachers and lecturers also face a two-year pay freeze from 2011.

Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers said the Budget showed that public services would "bear the brunt of the brutal cost cutting".

The ATL teachers' union warned that "this level of funding reduction will inevitably include fairly savage staffing cuts". "

ICT is a big spender, we're going to have to make do and mend. But, that's one of the beauties of ICT, things get cheaper, there's always cheaper products, clamouring to fill the gap.

# Posted by steve hooker at 23/6/10; 10:57:37 AM to the Edu business dept.
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Budget: Education spending faces 25% cut

Boys' kits are even more expensive -- an average £155. Parents also have to spend more than £200 on the rest of a child's school uniform."

# Posted by steve hooker at 6/6/10; 7:59:10 AM to the Edu business dept.
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Waste money or look good

Glad BECTA is going. They screwed up with the learning platforms. Lots of money wasted. Lots of teachers digging holes for themselves. Not many children getting better marks as a result. And systems that will be 'de-lifed.'

# Posted by steve hooker at 24/5/10; 4:51:51 PM to the Education news dept.
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George Osborne's £6.5bn spending cuts

"Again this site is invaluable. Thank you for all the information."

# Posted by steve hooker at 22/2/10; 1:55:00 PM to the Community dept.
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I like nice feedback

The whole browser is available for download. Those who do not want the whole browser because they already have IE8 installed can simply grab one or more of the following CEOP tools for IE8:

• Add the 'Click CEOP' button to your toolbar,
• Add CEOP Search to your toolbar
• Add Internet Safety and Security Search to your toolbar.

# Posted by steve hooker at 10/2/10; 11:31:19 AM to the Psychology dept.
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Microsoft launches child-friendly IE8

"A generation of state-educated athletes should have been created for the London Olympics.

But a third of British medal hopefuls competing in 2012 will have gone to private schools, it emerged yesterday.

This is despite Government spending of more than £2billion on state physical education and the fact that fee-paying schools educate only 7 per cent of the population. "

# Posted by steve hooker at 3/2/10; 1:58:26 PM to the Education news dept.
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Takes money to train hard

PJ business

Last year, a headmaster was so sick of parents wearing pyjamas as they bought their kids to school, he sent home a note about it with pupils.
The Belfast headmaster was fed up of seeing up to 50 pyjama-wearing women leaving children off at school.

# Posted by steve hooker at 28/1/10; 3:19:38 PM to the Off topic dept.
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Warning! This may offend some Heads

The more people go onto the ice, the more unstable it becomes, he said. "I think parents have got a big part to play. They need to really stress to their children, when they go out, not to go onto the ice."

# Posted by steve hooker at 11/1/10; 10:53:03 AM to the Community dept.
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Don't walk on ice

2) Skype: Why force students to yawn over a textbook when a real-life native speaker is only a Skype call away?...
Perhaps the greatest benefit of using Skype is the radical increase in motivation. A whopping 85.3% of Janet’s students kept in touch with their digital pen-pals outside of the classroom through Facebook. “In the end, the best part of this exchange was gaining a friend who I still today talk with on Facebook” said one student.

This has more to do with secondary and further ed, but I think Skype could also be very useful for primary schools too.

# Posted by steve hooker at 11/1/10; 9:28:07 AM to the Edu blogging dept.
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Skype for languages

Hi Steve, 

Just wanted to compliment you and your set up. It has been an absolute lifeline during the last week and parents have really engaged with it. Looking at the hourly hits rate it is obvious how effective the site has been. 

The other advantage is that it has cut down immensely on the number of telephone calls! 

It has worked BRILLIANTLY!! 

Thanks 

Ian

Woodside Primary

# Posted by steve hooker at 11/1/10; 8:34:03 AM to the Community dept.
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Feedback

"So I guess a lot of people are in some doubt as to what the difference is between England, Great Britain, the British Isles and the United Kingdom. Here I present a handy-dandy Venn diagram to explain this."

# Posted by steve hooker at 8/1/10; 8:54:39 PM to the Ads for schoools dept.
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So that's clear, then

# Posted by steve hooker at 4/1/10; 11:55:20 PM to the Off topic dept.
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What if?

Still think schools should be knuckling down governors to monetize their social networks.

# Posted by steve hooker at 3/1/10; 10:26:14 AM to the Ads for schoools dept.
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Why Must Our Children Pay campaign