Anyhow, I’ve had a cursory glance around the program I use the most – Word – and the changes are subtle, but potentially good news for ICT teachers. The UI remains pretty much the same; still based around the ribbon (which I like, I know some don’t). In fact, the biggest difference is that the circular Office logo is now the first tab in the ribbon… no big deal:

The first real difference I found was in the Insert menu. There’s now a Screenshot feature that allows the user to insert a screenshot of any open window directly into Word, without the need to to printscreen & paste. Alright, not a huge improvement, but what is is the fact that it will take screenshots of small windows without the need to crop them down. Anyone who’s ever taught GCSE ICT will know the royal pain in the ass that is screenshotting, so this is in my book an excellent addition.

The screenshot menu.

Inserting a screenshot of iTunes.

Inserting a small screenshot of the character menu from Photoshop.

The next new feature I found was the artistic effects menu for formatting pictures. It basically offers the default effects from Photoshop… I can see this becoming the new rainbow coloured WordArt as the bane of my life in KS3 lessons. On the topic of WordArt, though, my year 7s will be pleased to see the new WordArt available in PowerPoint 2007 is now available in Word 2010 – they never quite understood why it wasn’t in Word 2007.

Finally, the File menu now looks completely different, encompassing all the options it used to link to.

The best improvement here is in the print menu, which now combines print preview with the print options menu in a far more user friendly format:

So so far, after half an hour’s play, all seems well. More steps in the right direction when it comes to usability & a polished interface, and I’m not surprised there weren’t more changes as I can’t really think of much else that would be needed. I’m no card-carrying Microsoft fan, but I think they’ve got a lot right with both Windows 7 and what I’ve seen so far of Office 2010. Whether you love them or hate them, better software from the Microsoft camp encourages better software from their competitors, so it can’t be a bad thing.

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So, without little further ado, and in no particular order:

#5: Twitter (and Tweetdeck)

Ridiculous, isn’t it? Someone plugging Twitter a good eighteen months too late. “And the last horse finally crosses the finishing line,” they all say, but the hell with you. It’s great, and if you don’t know why, try it out. Once you get past the idea of people posting world-changing events like below, you’ll see the possibility for sharing ideas is enormous.

#4: Etherpad

Etherpad is a really handy website that allows up to 8 people to edit a document at once, and see their changes reflected in real time. To create a new pad, just type http://etherpad.com/makeupapadname, and it will automatically set up  a pad for you. Drawbacks: no rich formatting, no moderation control, needs direction or patience once two people start editing the same section, but very small cons for an awfully large pro. I used this on an Inset day for colleagues to get to grips with putting levels into pupil speak.

#3: Google Docs

I’m not one for hyperbole unless something is just so cool that it makes me want to whittle out a megaphone from a tree stump, but Google Docs really has changed the way I mark coursework and give kids feedback. Combined with our VLE for comments, I use a Google Docs spreadsheet to traffic light coursework, ensuring that everything has been done. Okay, we’re doing OCR Nationals, and it might not work so well for other courses/subjects, but it’s been a godsend for me this year.

Obviously it comes with the standard spreadsheet fare of conditional formatting & IF statements, which makes visualising progress much easier. Also, being able to publish as a webpage the kids can all access is a huge plus; it’s now common practice for early arrivals to start my lessons by checking their feedback & progress using the spreadsheet.

Doing this means we’re covering the inevitable joining of dots that comes with a course like the Nationals, and leaves me with plenty of time to do something radical like… teach.

These spreadsheets are available for use here.

#2: Wordpress

I decided when I felt the urge to get a personal website/blog going again that I’d use Joomla to power it, but there was far more to that than I needed, and stripping it down to the bare bones for a site as simple as this would have been more trouble than it was worth.

Wordpress on the other hand is eminently usable. From installation through to adding plugins, I actually don’t have to do anything. I’ve had Filezilla open maybe twice to FTP some images up, and that was mainly because the theme I chose was a bit slapdash. Since its early days as a bare bones blog engine, Wordpress is now a fully fledged CMS, capable of powering any number of sites. I tend not to gush about companies online, but sweet voodoo Jesus it’s good. With the number of addons also available, I’ve decided to use it to power my new model assignment website, Some Rights Reserved. The Flash video player & MP3 embedding addon make it a simple task of content creation, rather than having to wrangle the medium into shape first.

#1: Hmm… could only think of four

Anticlimactic, I know, but people expect a nice round number to start out… starting with four would have been disappointing for all concerned. Who knows, maybe I’ll stumble upon something else that everyone knows about and tell you about it later.

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My school has a site license (~100 computers) for Adobe CS3. In that, we get Acrobat, After Effects, Bridge, Contribute, Dreamweaver, Encore, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere & Soundbooth. Great. Except we’re missing Captivate and Presenter – possibly the two Adobe products best suited to education (screencasting & quiz presentation), and of the ones we have, we only use Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator & Photoshop in any significant way.

When a school is going to spend thousands of pounds on software, why should we have to fit with the standard packages released for personal & business use? What would make more sense is for Adobe to release an education Master Collection, including the most commonly-used Adobe products for education. Hell, what would be better would be a mix & match approach – it’s 2009, after all, why shouldn’t schools get to choose the products they want rather than simply what’s on offer?

Maybe it’s too much to hope that the “freemium” business model would spill over into education (okay, bad example – I don’t want adverts in my classroom), but I’d have hoped things would be more flexible than they appear to be right now.

Adobe Presenter is a nifty plugin for Microsoft PowerPoint that allows presentations to be exported as a Flash movie (iSpring does this for free – thanks to @twowhizzy for the link), but the big plus is that it allows for the creation of interactive quizzes, the answers to which can be exported into a spreadsheet for analysis & review. I know I could use it in my teaching to good effect.

Yet in January at the excellent BETT show at the London Olympia, we were wowed by a comprehensive, well-prepared, well-targeted presentation that showed off the features of this handy little app, then when we asked “how much?”, the otherwise very helpful Adobe staff were struck dumb. Nobody knew. After about 45 minutes of hanging around, we were told we could get it as a bundle with Acrobat 9 Pro Extended for £125 per computer (including education & bulk discount)- remember I said we have 100, earlier on… remember also that we have Acrobat 8 Pro.

Seriously, Adobe, get with it. I’d love to use this, and I’m the kind of person who would spread the word about it, but if I went to the bursar with a request for £12,500 for a really nifty little program, I’d get laughed out of the room. In fact, knowing The One Who Holds The Purse Strings as I do, I’d probably have a shoe thrown at me.

It’s time for a rethink of education licensing… in getting your software into schools you’re preparing a workforce to use them. I don’t particularly care whether I’m pumping yet more money into the hands of big corporations, I want my kids to be prepared to use industry-standard software. I want to know that I’m using the best possible tool for the job, and you want that tool to be yours – so stop making it so bloody difficult to get your software into the classroom.

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