This last week I've done a bit of travelling to London. I love London with its underground, fast pace, culture and buzz and I feel like I'm at home there when I get off the train from Birmingham.
On Monday night I was invited down to the Handheld Learning Awards where many education organisations won awards for their use of handheld devices in the classroom and at home. I would like to congratulate all those schools and universities who won and hope that other schools can get involved in these technology.
Staying on the subject of handheld/mobile learning I'm excited about a few projects I've heard of closer to home including my Mums school who have just brought 180 Asus EEEs for her Year 5 (9/10 year olds) to be used at school and at home. I'm looking forward to seeing these in action when I get to visit. At my own school my boss ordered 20 Playstation Portalables PSPs for use in lessons. The kids aren't playing games on the device but we have brought the PSP camera (GoCam) that fits top and you can take both stills and videos. The staff love taking these into lessons as it really gets the kids involved in e-learning making vidcasts and then uploading them to the Learning Gateway (SharePoint).
Thursday I was back in London for the SharePoint User Group UK meeting. I try and attend as many of these as I can as it really does boost my knowledge of the product but also gives me some great ideas for applications for education. There were well over 100 people there. Thanks to Riaz and Chris for their presentations and thanks to Nick and Steve who organise and run these events. The next one is in Birmingham - at last one in my home city - but I can't make it :-(
I would highly recommend you attend your local group. Find your local user group for this link.http://sharepointsearch.com/pages/spusergroups.aspx