Graham Davies

This forum still comes up in Google searches. I just tried keying in three words (all proper names) that I remember appearing in one of my earlier contributions. My message came up as No. 1 in Google's hit list. A long-lost cousin found me by keying in a similar combination of names in Google. However, I was a bit disturbed to find that messages I have written to another forum are reappearing all over the place. One location looked suspiciously like a splog.

Newsweek (21 Nov 2005) carries an article entitled "Here's one more thing to hate: splogs": http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10017786/site/newsweek/ Splogs, a contraction of spam blogs, are a crafty form of advertising or self-promotion: a blog that carries no useful content but serves merely to feed search engines. Citing the Newsweek article:

I began my career as a schoolteacher in 1965. I taught in secondary education until 1971 – which was on the whole an enjoyable and rewarding experience in those far-off days when teachers were trusted to do a good job without the interference of central or local government. Local government in my experience was generally helpful, offering friendly advisers (not inspectors) and other services that made our job easier. I moved into higher education in 1971. It was a lot easier and less stressful than teaching in secondary education, e.g. discipline was not a problem, and I had fewer teaching hours and lots of time for preparation and marking. I could teach without anyone looking over my shoulder. When the National Curriculum was introduced in 1988, I sympathised with the additional workload imposed on my secondary school colleagues and the interference of the Thatcher government that believed in control from the top – a philosophy that has continued and been developed further under Tony Blair. I considered myself very fortunate in still having considerable freedom. But then the same kind of top-down, control-freak mentality began to make its presence felt in higher education too. I found myself spending more and more time on admin and less and less time on preparation, teaching and marking. The new-style management was a disaster, culminating in the demise of the languages faculty in which I taught. Fortunately, I had been able to see the crunch coming and had taken an early retirement package in 1993, before the sh*t hit the fan. Andy’s contribution to this discussion summarises nicely the main causes of the problems that are causing our profession to bleed to death

The pen drive (aka flash drive and memory stick) is catching on in the conference world too. Five years ago I always took my laptop with me to conferences at which I was giving a presentation - and so did most other presenters. Now I just take my flash drive, which can contain everything I need to be able to run the presentation independently of what is installed on the local computers. One sees fewer and fewer laptops being lugged around by presenters these days. I can store the whole of the English language version of the ICT4LT website (which I manage) on my flash drive - which is a useful backup when the local Internet connection goes down or runs too slowly.

Jean writes: Aaah, the Goons! We drove our teachers mad with our renditions of "He's fallen in the water" and "I don't like this game" - and I suppose there was a touch of racism (although I guess none of us had heard of the word "racism" at the time) in the role in which Ray Ellington was cast. I still have a 33rpm LP of two Goon Show recordings. "Little Britain" is totally over the top and often very student-reviewish, but its catchphrases are as popular as the Goons' catchphrases were in the 1950s. I was waiting in the ski lift queue in Austria last January when the electronic turnstile failed to recognise the ski pass of the guy in front of me. With one voice all the Brits in his vicinity (including me) chorused "Computer says no". As for "Yeah but, no but...", bin there, bought the teeshirt in the mid-1980s when my two daughters were aged around 13-15. I could almost accept that Vicky Pollard was modelled on them - along with Catherine Tate's character: "Am I bothered? Look at my face".

It's not a new idea. When I was at primary school in the 1950s the brighter children would often be pushed up a year and might even take the 11-plus one year early. In Germany there is the term "sitzenbleiben", which is used to describe the process whereby a child that fails to reach a certain standard in the end of year exams "stays down" and repeats the year. I recall visiting a German grammar school in 1958 where some of the sixth-formers were nearly 20 years of age, having stayed down a couple of years in their secondary school education, and some of these would then go on to university. It's not such a daft idea. We all learn at different paces, and there are early developers and late developers. I can't see much point in automatically moving up to the next year and thereby having to tackle more demanding work if one is not ready for it. I can, of course, see some social problems arising, but looking back at my own experience at school these were more easily overcome than the problems of teaching high ability children alongside low ability children, both of which tend to become bored when the teacher is forced to aim at the middle ability range. It depends on the subject area too. Subjects such as modern languages and music - i.e. those that have a major skills component as opposed to a knowledge component - are taught more effectively to a narrow ability range.

I tend to agree with David. I have seen very, very few presentations (by teachers or by commercial companies) that make good use of the interactive aspects of the whiteboard. Most of what I have seen could be done with a laptop and a projector. It appears, however, that there is a new generation of teachers who believe that you have to have an interactive whiteboard if you wish to present something on a large screen. Bear in mind too that the size of the whiteboard screen can be a handicap if you are presenting in a long room, and reaching the top of the screen (e.g. in order to press buttons) is impossible if you are below a certain height.

One of the problems that teachers may experience if they offer free resources at their own or their school's website is that the increase in traffic may lock up the site - and the Education Forum knows all about this problem. The problem has also been mentioned by a contributor to the Linguanet Forum, who pointed out that it actually costs HIM more money - because of the increased traffic and the kind of agreement he has with his hosting service - if too many visitors access his site for free downloads of resources. I can cite two cases where teachers who offered free resources at their personal websites found some of the resources turning up in training packs produced by commercial training agencies. If you offer free resources at your website you should always include a copyright message indicating who owns them and that the resources are strictly for non-commercial use in an educational environment. It won't stop plagiarism and people exploiting your resources for financial gain, but at least it makes your position clear and may deter some people. Many teachers believe that "if its on the Web" then it is "in the public domain". This is not true, of course. The term "in the public domain" has a special meaning, i.e. that a work is out of copyright, for example because the author has relinquished copyright and made the work freely available to the public, or because the author has been dead for over 70 years.

Andy, it's obviously not relevant to your situation. I only made the point because a number of schools are putting up copyright material on their intranets and password-protected websites, believing that they are in the clear and protected under the definition of "fair dealing" that allows them, for example, to disseminate copyright material to their students within the terms of their CLA and ERA licences. It seems that the "communication to the public" right embodied in the 2003 regulations has tightened things up and that some schools are now laying themselves open to litigation. As Michael Caine used to say, "Not many people know that."

Technical security issues are one aspect of the problems that educational institutions have to face. Copyright issues regarding the materials to which students have access are another aspect. The term "communication to the public" right appears in a European Union Directive (2001), which was implemented in the UK under the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations (2003): http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2003/20032498.htm These regulations govern copyright works that are made accessible via the Internet. Essentially, this means that copyright law in the context of online learning has been tightened up, whereby only the copyright owner has the right to authorise the electronic transmission of the copyright owner's work to the public. Distribution of materials over the Internet or an intranet could infringe this new right if the materials include text, images, audio recordings and video recordings that are owned by a third party - i.e. if you have not created them yourself as original works. The term "communication to the public" should be understood in a broad sense, covering all communication to the public not present at the place where the communication originates. This means you must obtain the copyright owner's permission before posting the owner's work on the Internet, an intranet or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), including password-protected websites and VLEs. There is also a new obligation that sufficient acknowledgement (e.g. the author's name plus a bibliographic citation) is required. See the following document: Oppenheim C. (2004) Recent changes to copyright law and the implications for FE and HE: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/co...tcoppenheim.htm The definition of "the public" is understood to include small sub-sets of the public. Oppenheim's document states: What constitutes "the public"? Presumably a small sub-set of the public, such as staff and/or students in an educational institution, will be considered to be the public. That is certainly the view of the Department of Trade and Industry, which is the government department responsible for copyright law in the UK. Thus, an institution placing material on an intranet without the copyright owner's permission would be infringing this right, even if relatively few people had access to the intranet.

A site for language teachers that I maintain has logged around 1000 visits per day over the last two months: http://www.ict4lt.org It was initiated as an EC-funded project, but now I keep it going as a labour of love. I am not restricted in what I put up at the site. BECTA refuses to mention ICT4LT, and I have logged no referrals to the site from the NGfL or other DfES sites for around two years. CILT/ALL's Languages ICT site sends us quite a few visitors each month, as does the Education Forum, ByTeachers, Spartacus, the BBC Languages site and Wikipedia. The government is therefore doing us no favours and we don't need them anyway as the site shows up at the top of the list in the search engines that teachers are likely to use and it's already well established as a useful resource. A lively forum for language teachers is Linguanet. There has been an interestng discussion on blogs over the last few days: http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum Linguanet is managed by CILT (Centre for Information on Language Teaching), the National Centre for Languages - which is a government agency but is considered to be doing a good job by language teachers. BECTA has got too "techie" of late and is losing the plot, I feel. BECTA also tends to censor materials put up at its own site, which results in it being very bland and - dare I say it - boring.

Wow, what a mix! I can't compete with that! But my two daughters are a mix of English, Welsh and Irish, with a trace of Scottish from my wife's Ulster family, the Campbell clan.

Stephen writes: >Northern Ireland is part of Great Britain, Southern Ireland (Eire) is not. So rightly or wrongly, Georgie is a Brit. Plus he is Manchester's favorite Son.< Northern Ireland is NOT part of Great Britain. Northern Ireland is part of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" - as printed on the front of my passport. On the other hand, Protestants in Northern Ireland will often describe themselves as "British", whereas Catholics living in Northern Ireland are more likely to describe themselves as "Irish". My wife, a Protestant from Northern Ireland, can't make up her mind. If asked about her nationality, she will usually describe herself as "Irish", especially when talking to people from outside the UK, but "British" when it suits her, mainly for political reasons. Being half-Welsh, I am aware of such sensitivities. My father always described himself as "Welsh", not "British", and saw red if anyone referred to him as "English". There is no adjective derived from "United Kingdom". The whole of Ireland used to be part of the UK (as from 1801), but the 26 counties in the South became the Irish Free State in 1921. The six counties of Northern Ireland opted out and remained part of the UK. The concept of the UK/Great Britain can be confusing: The Channel Isles are "Peculiars of the Crown", owing allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II in her hereditary role of Duke (not Duchess) of Normandy. Therefore they are part of Great Britain, but not part of the UK, and they are not members of the European Union. The Isle of Man has a similar status. England, Wales and Scotland are part of Great Britain and of the UK.

Mark Pentleton, whom I have already mentioned in the context of the Partners in Excellence project elsewhere in this Forum, informs me that a 34-minute podcast can be reduced to no more than 1.9MB without a severe fall-off in quality. I downloaded one of the Partners in Excellence podcasts and I can vouch that the quality of the voice recordings is perfectly acceptable. If you record a human voice at 24kbps and 16.KHz mono it is completely intelligible and does not take up much space. You can even get away with 8kbps and 8KHz mono, which is no worse than medium wave radio. However, recording music is a different matter and nornally requires a higher bitrate for it to sound acceptable. See: Partners in Excellence (PiE): A Scottish secndary schools initiative for the promotion of language learning and teaching using ICT. PiE are creating their own series of PodCasts for languages learners, which they refer to as PiECasts: http://www.pie.org.uk An issue to bear in mind is copyright. Obviously, your texts have to be original, but if you use background music you may have to pay for it. There are so-called royalty-free sources of music - "so-called" because this often means that you may still have to pay a small fee if you use a music recording on a public website. Look out for Creative Commons licences, which allow you more leeway: http://creativecommons.org

Raymond writes: That's probably because Best was at his peak during the Dark Ages, i.e before any North American had heard of "soccer" ("football" to us Brits), the most popular ball game on earth - although Best did play in the USA for a few years in the 1970s. It's good to see the USA playing a respectable game of football now. The US team did very well in the 2002 World Cup, reaching the quarter finals. They have some good home-grown players. I don't know much about baseball. My experience is limited to watching one game at Enron Field, Houston, Texas, four years ago - a bit slow, I thought, although I recall some spectacular catches and two impressive home runs scored by the Astros. The name Mickey Mantle does ring a bell. Some of my Canadian relatives are baseball fans and there's a pub I often visit in Vancouver that attracts big crowds during major league games - although ice hockey is really THE game in the frozen north. Question - one that I read in a book by Bill Bryson (who IS American): Why does the USA talk about World Cup Baseball when only two nations play the game seriously? Only kidding - no offence intended.

In conjunction with a major forthcoming BBC2 series, the Oxford English Dictionary has extended an invitation to the public to document the origin of a number of neologisms: http://oed.com/bbcwordhunt/ Here are a few, together with my comments. The dates in brackets are those for which the first printed evidence has been found. full monty (1985): Certainly the expression was in existence long before the film came out. I clearly remember the "full monty" from the 1950s. In those days we smart young men bought our suits from Burton's, a reasonably priced high street chain of gentlemen's outfitters. One either bought a two-piece suit or a three-piece suit, which included a waistcoat, and was known as the "full monty". Why "monty"? The full name of the founder of the chain of shops was Montague Burton. I couldn't afford the "full monty", so I bought a charcoal grey two-piece (in 1958, if I remember correctly). Later on, we used the expression "full monty" for all kinds of things, e.g. a full English breakfast. One of our local greasy spoon cafes used to advertise "the full monty" on its blackboard - a real gut buster of a breakfast. jaffa (1993): Cricketing term for an unplayable delivery. We used this expression back in the 1960s to describe men who had had a vasectomy - like a jaffa orange, with no pips (i.e. seeds). Maybe there's a link here with the cricketing term. mushy peas (1975): I was eating mushy peas in the 1950s. I am sure I remember our loical chippy selling them. nit nurse (1985): I remember the nit nurse from my earliest school days (1947 onwards). She was the nurse who visited the school and went through your hair looking for nits. My wife also remembers the expression from her schooldays in Belfast. pass the parcel (1967): I remember this game from the earliest parties that I can recall: late 1940s, early 1950s. Layer after layer of the parcel had to be removed before the treasure within (usually an orange in the post-war years) was revealed. It's doubtless older than that as my parents played the game too. phwoar (1980): Kenneth Connor certainly used this expression in the "Carry On" films when ogling beautiful women - 1950s onwards. Surely, it's printed in the scripts. isn't it? ploughman's lunch (1970: I was eating ploughman's lunches in Devon in the 1960s. It was definitely on pub menus at that time. something for the weekend (1990): My recollection is of men's barber shops in the 1950s when the assistant would ask casually, "Something for the weekend, sir?" after cutting one's hair, and my wife recalls working in a chemist's shop in Belfast in the 1950s in the days when contraceptives were freely available in Belfast but not in Eire and she would receive letters emanating from down South, requesting (usually urgently) a list of items: aspirins, a comb, elastoplast, something for the weekend. See also Michael Quinion's World Wide Words: "Investigating international English from a British viewpoint" - a useful and amusing site that takes an oblique look at the English language: new words, weird words, fun words, slang, etc: http://www.worldwidewords.org

I am old enough (four years older than George) to remember his perfomance as a young man. What a footballer he was! My wife Sally (who is also from Belfast) and I raised a glass of Bushmill's 10 year-old Irish whiskey yesterday evening in his memory. I hope George's wish for an All-Ireland football team comes true. There is all All-Ireland rugby team, but the divisions in football are more deeply ingrained. It would be a fitting tribute to George if they could be overcome. Footnote: We are an All-Ireland family. My wife is a Protestant from the North (Belfast) and our sister-in-law is a Catholic from the South (Co Cork). Just to complicate matters, my brother and I are half-Welsh. We all get on very well!

David asks: Yes! In one of the threads in this Forum I mentioned the name of my grandfather and a part that he played during the General Strike in South Wales, specifically as one of the right-hand men of Arthur Horner, the militant miners’ leader who later became president of the NUM. A second cousin of mine, whom I didn’t know about, picked up my contribution via a search engine and wrote to me via the Forum’s mailing system. Since then, we have been regularly in touch by email and by telephone. It emerged that we have a common interest in tracing our family history and that we have both gathered a lot of information from public records, etc. I was able to introduce my second cousin to my only surviving aunt in Wales, who is now 95. He did not know that she was still alive, but now he has visited her and discovered what a wonderful memory she has and this has helped fill in a few blanks in our family history. By pooling our efforts we now have a clearer picture of who our common ancestors were, dating back to the late 1800s – and a huge family tree!

The Department of Modern Philology at the University of León, in association with EUROCALL, wishes to announce the following workshop for foreign language educators: “Telecollaboration: Integrating On-line Intercultural Exchanges into the Foreign Language Classroom” The workshop will take place between the 19th and 21st of May, 2006 at the University of León, Spain. Due to the international nature of the event, the working language of the workshop will be English. However, educators working with other foreign languages (e.g. French, German, Spanish as a Foreign Language) are welcome to attend and participate. Theme of the Workshop In our ‘networked society’ foreign languages educators are often expected by both their institutions and their students to find ways of effectively integrating on-line technologies into their classes. However, while the internet may offer an apparent endless array of possibilities for engaging students with the target language and culture, many teachers often feel unsure about how to use the internet and on-line communication tools in effective ways which are pedagogically relevant and, at the same time, motivating and interesting for their students. This workshop will look at one common on-line activity in foreign language education, on-line intercultural exchanges (commonly referred to today as telecollaboration), and will explore various aspects of this fascinating learning activity. Telecollaboration refers to the activity of engaging language learners in intercultural exchange with students from other cultures through the use of on-line communication tools such as e-mail and message boards in order to improve their communicative and cultural skills in the foreign language. The learning outcomes of these exchanges can be both powerful and enlightening with an amazing potential for both language and culture learning. However, for every example of success which is reported in journals and teacher magazines, teachers have usually heard about ‘failed exchanges’ from disenchanted colleagues. Organisational difficulties, misunderstandings and the reinforcement of stereotypes are often the order of the day. This workshop sets out from the premise that organising exchanges which produce positive language learning outcomes should not merely depend on luck. The participating researchers and educators will aim to introduce the skills and knowledge which teachers and students will need in order to ensure that their telecollaborative projects are rich learning experiences which provide ample opportunities for both language practice and intercultural learning. As the workshop will be dealing principally with how on-line exchanges can be effectively integrated into the foreign language classroom at both secondary- and university-level institutions, we believe that, apart from making a valid contribution in its own right, this event will provide a useful lead-up to the Eurocall 2006 conference which will take place in September 2006 in Granada Spain with its stated focus on the integration of CALL into study programmes. Location: University of León: Departamento de Filología Moderna Participants: Participants should ideally be involved in foreign language education at secondary or university level. No previous experience of using on-line technologies in education is necessary although a basic level of electronic literacy (i.e. knowledge of how to send e-mails and how to use a web browser etc.) is recommended. As the presentations and discussions will be in English, a good communicative level in this language is also advisable. Timetable: Friday (19 May): Morning: Registration and Welcome Address Friday (19 May): Afternoon: First two sessions Saturday (20 May): Four sessions and first roundtable event Sunday (21 May): Two sessions and second round table event Speakers: The speakers are all foreign language educators and are also experienced practitioners of telecollaboration. They are:  Jim Crapotta (Barnard College, New York, USA)  Paige Ware (Southern Methodist University, USA)  Andreas Mueller-Hartmann (Paedagogische Hochschule, Heidelberg, Germany)  Breffni O'Rourke (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland)  Markus Ritter (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)  Jesús Suarez (Barnard College, New York, USA)  Robert O’Dowd (University of León, Spain) The sessions will aim to have a balance between understanding research and developing good classroom practice. Participants will be encouraged to take part in discussions based on authentic extracts of on-line student interaction and examples of classroom practice. The themes and issues which the speakers will be covering will include the following: Different Models of On-line Exchange: Breffney O'Rourke: An introduction to the Tandem model of on-line exchange Jesús Suarez and Jim Crapotta: An introduction to the Cultura model of on-line exchange Dealing with the Problems and Challenges of On-line Exchange: Andreas Mueller-Hartmann: The roles of the teacher in telecollaboration: Setting up and managing exchanges Markus Ritter: Challenges in Telecollaboration: Problems of task design and 'failed communication' in online exchanges Understanding The Spanish Context: Paige Ware: Language Learning and Telecollaboration: Using on-line exchanges for linguistic development with learners from Spain Robert O’Dowd: Spanish ‘Cultures of Use’: How the socio-cultural context in Spain influences students and teachers on-line interaction. Voices from the classroom: Participants will have an opportunity on the final day of the workshop to present and discuss their own experiences with on-line exchanges and on-line learning in general. (Please inform the organisers well in advance if you would like to speak during this session!) Round table Events: There will be two ‘round table events’ on the second and final days of the workshop during which all speakers and participants will come together and discuss the questions and issues which have emerged during the individual sessions. Contact details: To find out more information about the workshop and to receive a registration form, please contact Robert O’Dowd at the University of León: By e-mail: robert.odowd@unileon.es By phone: (+34) 987 290184 By post: Robert O'Dowd Universidad de León Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Departamento de Filología Moderna 24071 León Spain Registration: The registration fee for participants is 30€. As places are limited, it is necessary to book and pay in advance. This event has been organised in collaboration with EUROCALL, the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning: http://www.eurocall-languages.org The event has been financed in part by the Junta de Castilla León Project: Telecollaboración en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras.

This blog page by Ewan McIntosh is relevant to this discussion: http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/social_softw...arch/index.html Ewan works for the Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching (SCILT). Ewan writes on the above page: "But why blog? Students can keep learnings logs on what they have learnt, what they would like to learn and what they think they have learnt, provided they know the teacher and a wide audience is reading it. I've written about 20,000 words on why students should blog, but the main aspect is audience."

This is very sad news. Ted Wragg was an inspiration. His great sense of humour, combined with his unique ability to be a throbbing thorn in the flesh of bureaucrats in education, will be sadly missed. I met him on several occasions when I was a teacher in Devon. He was a really nice guy.

John, I think you are being very unfair to Mike. I agree with what he said. Mike has made some excellent postings in this Forum. I have made several postings on a variety of topics and started several new threads, but they never get off the ground. You don't seem to appreciate how disillusioned Mike and I - and doubtless many other "lurkers" - are with the overall thrust of this Forum. To reiterate what I said in my previous posting, burning educational issues do not seem to be the most prominent feature of this Forum. This contrasts sharply with other educational fora to which I contribute, e.g. Languages ICT, Moodle for Language Teaching, Linguanet and EUROCALL. OK they are all specialist fora, but their members seem to be able to exchange ideas without being rude to one another.

Mike writes: I absolutely agree. I have recommended the Education Forum to colleagues in Modern Foreign Languages. I have had responses from about half a dozen colleagues whose first impression of the Forum was that was all about history, politics and JFK. You have to dig a bit more deeply to find postings that tackle burning issues in education across the curriculum. In other fora to which I contribute I have mentioned some of the interesting topics raised in this Forum. I have tried to raise burning issues in Modern Foreign Languages, e.g. the disastrous effect that UK government policies are having on language learning in schools. I just got back from a meeting in the North of England in an area where only 20% of state schools now offer Modern Foreign Languages to children aged over 14. But who cares? The JFK issue is obviously more important.

Podcasting has been mentioned several times in this forum. Here's a useful article on the topic: Godwin-Jones R. (2005) "Skype and podcasting: disruptive technologies for language learning", Language Learning & Technology 9, 3: 9-12. Available on the Web at: http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num3/emerging/default.html The term "disruptive technologies" in the title is interesting. It was coined by Clayton Christensen in 1997 and is defined as follows in Wikipedia: "A disruptive technology is a new technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology in the market, despite the fact that the disruptive technology is both radically different from the leading technology and that it often initially performs worse than the leading technology according to existing measures of performance." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology A point that I have often made in my writings is that innovative technologies often underperform in their early stages of development compared to their predecessors. For example, CD-ROMs were initially far worse in terms of performance than Philips-compatible interactive videodiscs (which offered very high-quality video compared to the tacky video on early CD-ROMs). Now CD-ROMs have caught up and DVDs outperform interactive videodiscs. Similarly, the Web still underperforms as an interactive medium compared to CD-ROMs and DVDs in terms of speed of access, reliability, flexibility and (again) video quality. As I have often pointed out, we are still waiting for the Web to deliver listen / respond / playback activities that compare favourably with those offered by the first AAC tape recorders in the 1960s. "Low-end disruption occurs when the rate at which products improve exceeds the rate at which customers can learn and adopt the new performance." (v. Wikipedia again). I understand this only too well. I am still learning to use my new mobile phone that was upgraded from an earlier model two months ago, and I am still not 100% familiar with my TV digi-box. See my article in which I cite the humourist Alan Coren, who used the term "dynamic obsolescence" to describe this phenomenon: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/coegdd1.htm However, the term "disruptive technology" is not necessarily negative. As new products settle down and as their users become familiar with them their impact is generally positive. It appears the best strategy - and one that is adopted by astute businesses and educational institutions - is to watch out for new technologies, to treat them in their early phases with caution and to continue improving the applications of established technologies. In other words, a "wait and see" approach works best. References: Christensen C. (1997) The innovator's dilemma, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press. Christensen C. & Raynor M. (2003) The innovator's solution, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

My daughter runs a graphic design business that has some prestigious clients, such as Fox, Virgin and Electronic Arts. The starting point for any new project is a chat with the client and a few sketches on paper. The electronically produced designs come much later in the process. Unfortunately, there is a trend these days for young people to go straight to the computer without sitting down and doing a bit of brainstorming and sketching first - and this is true of many areas of work, not only Design and Technology. The flashy presentation rather than a good idea becomes the starting point. I'm not a designer; I'm a linguist, but many of my thoughts that later turned into polished published articles began life as a few scribbled thoughts on the back of an envelope.