The fourth wall is a hypothetical barrier between actors and audience. This barrier is broken when an actor interacts with the audience through an aside. There were three rules in my classroom in 2001: Mr Ford must have fun! You (the children) must have fun! We need to get learning done! The pupils owned this mantra and we used it as the basis for evaluating and improving our daily experiences in school. They often reminded me when I broke the rules. We generally enjoyed a convivial atmosphere and even the mundane drudgery of spelling tests and multiplication tables or my uncreative SATs revision...

As a class blog its appearance was definitely unremarkable. There is no engaging design-flashiness to draw anyone to read it, let alone a Year Six class made up of children of eight different nationalities and languages. On 7th January 2001, however, Mr Ford’s Class Weblog accidentally found itself at the bleeding edge of edublogging. It marked for me the beginning of an experience that continues to define my career today. Over the years, it has also had an impact, directly or otherwise, on a fair few others too. Ten years on and after re-discovering – with the help of the Wayback...

Craig Charteris, head at Trinity Lower School in Aldwicle, came up with an idea for a Monopoly-style, techno-challenge around London after watching an episode of the Gadget Show one weekend. I was minding my own business but was run over by Craig’s ideas bandwagon. This collision of creativity and chaos has resulted in the Northants BLT Monopoly Challenge 2011. The Northants BLT Monopoly Challenge is designed for teachers and pupils to explore the opportunities offered by mobile and internet technologies to enhance learning before, during and after an educational visit. It should hopefully...

…I feel that right now we’re going through some of the most exciting and innovative changes in the use of technology in schools. I know where I want our school to be – it’s the journey that is the challenge. Chris Dicken You may or may not have heard of Chris Dicken (@chrisdicken) outside Northamptonshire. Within the county borders – or in our office at least – he is a living legend. He’s a great teacher and has been an ICT Coordinator in the county for 21 years. He has seen the mandated initiatives come and go and has probably seen the ‘wheel’ reinvented...

The Northants BLT – or Better learning using Technologies – officially launched in September 2010 without bacon, lettuce or tomato. Preparations and pilots of various varieties had taken place in the months leading up to the launch. However, it would be the last quarter of 2010 when we would find out whether there was actually any appetite among educators in Northamptonshire for sharing their ideas and experiences of using technologies to make learning better. I’ve written here about why I think a network with sharing attitude is crucial to educators in Northamptonshire (and...

A memory from the Summer 2010… Nothing extraordinary about the task or attendees. A regional group of ICT advisors and school ICT folks asked to work in groups, come up with ideas about learning and ICT and feed back to the other delegates. I decided to open up the meeting to the world by posting the same task on Twitter. On receiving a brilliant tweet response from a head, I fed it back to the room. Were the audience receptive to a twitter-sourced idea? I never got to find out because they seized the opportunity to discuss how a ‘real’ head teacher could or would want to find...