Part one: Screen your online profile

Businesses are becoming more social savvy and because of this candidates need to be concious of how their profiles appears to potential employers.

Social media monitoring service Reppler ran a study of 300 companies in October 2011. They “found that more than 90% of recruiters and hiring managers have visited a potential candidate’s profile on a social network as part of the screening process. And a whopping 69% of recruiters have rejected a candidate based on content found on his or her social networking profiles — an almost equal proportion of recruiters (68%), though, have hired a candidate based on his or her presence on those networks” (Mashable.com)

So what does your online profiles say about you? Here are five of things to consider and check.

Read more…

Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced a radical shake-up of the ICT curriculum, along with a focus on training for teachers to make sure they have the skills and knowledge needed to use technology confidently. So is it a long overdue change, or an unrealistic headline spinner? Are ICT lessons really ‘boring’ – and is the government simply ‘washing its hands of ICT’, as some have suggested? Read more, and share your views on the blog.

The government is opening a consultation on withdrawing the existing National Curriculum Programme of Study for ICT from September this year.

Open source curriculum

ICT will remain compulsory at all key stages of the curriculum, and the existing Programme of Study will remain available for reference, but schools will no longer be forced to follow it.

Speaking at the BETT education trade fair, which focuses on educational technology, he announced plans to embrace and capitalise on technological developments for learning, teaching and assessment.

“Technology is already bringing about a profound transformation in education, in ways that we can see before our very eyes and in others that we haven’t even dreamt of yet,” he said (taken from his speech as reported by the Guardian. “It’s clear that technology is going to bring profound changes to how and what we teach. But it’s equally clear that we have not yet managed to make the most of it.”

Read more…

The education secretary Michael Gove described those opposed to schools becoming academies as “the same old ideologues pushing the same old ideology of failure and mediocrity” in a speech last week. But opponents say academies are not about improvement, but part of an ideologically driven agenda to dismantle our current system of local accountability for education. Who’s right? Read more and have your say .

Michael Gove, who the Guardian points out is often described by his adversaries as an ideologue, entitled his speech ‘Who are the ideologues now?’ and opened by suggesting that academy opponents are “blighting futures and limiting horizons”:

“Last month, a headline appeared in the Hornsey Journal – a headline that would have been funny had its subtext not been so dispiriting. Stamped across the top of the page in stark, Nimrod Bold lettering were the words:

Read more…

Following on from our feature on St. George’s School in Switzerland, we speak to Hazel Hogg, who lives with her husband and her daughters Morven (11), Rowan (8) and Alexa (3) in France – practically on the border with Switzerland, where they enjoy stunning views of the Alps and Lake Geneva.  Her children attend the International School of Geneva. Here Hazel talks about living overseas, and tells us more about choosing this school for her children. Read more.

Could you explain how you came to be living in France, and why you chose an international school for your children?

Read more…

As we bid a fond farewell to 2011, what better time to take a look back over the serious, and not so serious education stories which hit the headlines during the last year. Here we pick out some of our favourites, along with those issues which really got people talking.

Read more…