1. LTScotland’s games design course was excellent. Everyone there was excited and learning. I think games design is going to be well supported in schools over the next few years. Hurrah! Thanks to Derek for organising an excellent 3 days and to Judy and Cathrin for the excellent training in Neverwinter Nights. I am looking forward to getting this on the go with S1 classes next term.

2. Scratch made it onto the main page of BBC news’s tech section! This is great news - it’s an excellent piece of software that I hope will be adopted by many teachers. If you’ve not seen it yet, download and use it - you’ll enjoy yourself and see instantly how kids could use it as a way to learn programming, increase problem solving ability, create interactive art, and make presentations that go beyond PowerPoint!

3. Through the same story, I found out that Ruby legend _why has created a teenager’s programming environment. It allows kids to learn Ruby through interactive tutorials, and gives them access to easy to understand methods. And the best thing is the name: it’s called Hackety Hack! Well worth a look. I can see this also developing into a popular tool.

It helps that the tutorials are funny too! There’s definitely something to be said about making programming fun again - it can be fun but it’s not, for the vast majority of kids sitting Computing..  but that can change.

4. S1 should also be doing podcasting next year. And the school is celebrating reaching the final of the XFM schoolwave competition! Well done to the pupils involved.