UK to shut down BECTA

juz learnt about this piece of (old >1 mth) news when i was going through my long unread list of feeds. din realise the rich history of becta until i saw prof graham davies’ post (where i got the news). my first encounter with becta was 5 years ago when i was with the r&d section. as mentioned in the report, becta’s publications were many and they served as useful references for us. it’s a pity becta is going into history. but i believe some other agency will soon be born to fill this gap left by becta, especially when economy picks up (:

MS Mouse Mischief

learnt about this tool developed by microsoft via tucksoon’s post (:

it’s probably a cheap way (relative to some other classroom interaction setup) to engage students in individual or group responses in the classroom. it however doesnt work on my work laptop (*duh*) cos you’ll need minimally XP SP3 (ours’ SP2) and the no. of mouses supported will increase from 5 to 20-25 with Vista/Win7. you’ll need office2007 n above installed too (cost is probably not the major concern here, familiarisation with the new ribbon style probably is).

you can also tap (and contribute later) on the communities’ expertise and resources if you’re keen to explore mouse mischief. templates created and shared by the community goes here, and the developer’s blog has a continual string of tips as well (: