If paying for something that you can get for free seems far too altruistic, then perhaps you can consider using the services of a theme designer to make a school website or blog look presentable. Even in this day and age, many websites look crap. This is as true of school sites as it is of those set up by ICT folk.

I’m in the middle of sorting out my company site for a relaunch and as a starting-point, I’m using a great theme designed and made freely available by Brian Gardner. However, he will create you a simple custom theme for about $200. This seems like incredible value. I’m going to get in touch with him.

Static school websites cost anything between £500 and £1000s and often look static and cheap. Brian and others like him will save you money and produce a school or personal site that looks good. You’ll be supporting the community in return. You might even turn some of these part-time designers into pompous yuppies! That everyone’s goal in life isn’t it;-)

Suffering from a sort of design hyperactivity, I’ve changed the look of this blog yet again. The designer of this WordPress theme, Fredrik Fahlstad, offers this and other cool designs to the community to use for free. It must have cost him a fair bit of time though to design this template and I think it only fair that I should throw a financial ‘thank-you’ his way. I found a donate button on his blog and sent him 20 quid via paypal. I had never done that before for a free theme design. This particular theme has been downloaded 1308 times so far. If everyone contributed something to their favourite designer (or plugin creator) then that person would probably be even more inclined to continue producing (and supporting) themes and plugins. It seems to go against the grain in education though, paying for something that you can get for free. Shame really…

BETT is the world’s leading educational information & communications technologies (ICT) event, attracting 600 educational suppliers and over 28000 visitors, and bringing together the global teaching and learning community for four days of innovations and inspirations.

The quest for educational freebies will be in full swing next week when swarms of educators will descend on London’s Olympia for the annual BETT Show. The suppliers’ stands will be stripped bare of all promotional merchandise and only the very best salespeople will be able to break the concentration of those hellbent on filling their promotional carrier-bags with as much promotional tat as can feasibly be transported on the London Underground during the rush hour. This is the hidden agenda of the BETT Show – at least it is was for me;-)

I’ve heard that there are a number of podcasting opportunities happening at the show. I’m going to be producing the Promotional TatCast, that will document the best (and worst) corporate promotional merchandise and investigate its relationship to the quality of any products for sale. Has anyone got any pointers? – or highlighters or USB-memory sticks for that matter?;-)

Photo: www.pie.org.uk

Dave Winer writing about Google:

I stopped believing in Google fairplay when they added a Blog-This feature to their toolbar, and didn’t use open APIs so users could post with any blogging tool, not just Google’s.

Google is becoming an all-embracing, accepted part of our societal furniture. It buys up companies for fun. Only the other week, I went to access my JotSpot account, only to find that it has joined the Google family. I am assured that this is good for me as the consumer. I’m not convinced.

In 2002, I was concerned that using only Microsoft products with my students would not serve them well. I now have the same worry about Google.