Dan Lea

Last night, I watched the Teaching awards and I was thrilled to see Dan Lea, from Gearies Infants, receive the Next Generation learning award.

Dan is not one to shout about his work, he is too busy planning the next lesson or pondering his next creative idea and therefore many people won’t have heard of him. He is not on Twitter but he does share all his ideas and tried and tested projects on his blog.

To prove that Dan’s work is a cut above, take a look at his entry to last years Redbridge Film Awards, which was based on a project on refugees:

 

Dan has been an AST in Redbridge for some time and I am pleased to say he will be working with Redbridge Primary ICT to help us in NQT and Subject Leader events over the next few weeks.In preparation for these events and because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, I went to see him teach last term.

I have to say I was quite blown away by what I saw. For one, Dan never seems to set an ICT ceiling on his learners, they have long since given up following neat QCA units or working in a one size fits all environment. What struck me about this learning environment was that there was a good deal of autonomy and choice. Children were given clear input on how to edit and customise their blogs and edit with Movie Maker, but then they worked in teams to bring their projects to completion, tutoring each other along the way.And while this went on their teacher would intervene sensitively and where necessary with questions and challenges in order to push the groups on further. I must also point out that this cross-curricular work is backed up by weekly ICT lessons from the school ICT Coordinator Val Barker, who is equally dynamic and keen to be at the forefront of new tech.

In one 90 minute session, I saw a group editing their blogs, and lets be clear the blogs here were not substitute school websites they were journals of enquiry around science and environmental themes. These seven year olds knew how to blog too, they could quite happily lead blogging workshops for adults if they were asked. The girls I talked to didn’t need any help or advice from this professional blogger thank you.

Also taking place were groups of children transferring video clips from Flip cameras to Windows Movie Maker, and then editing down their film and beginning to consider their audience.

In an area outside of the classroom a group of children had created a cardboard city called New Paris, which a customised Beebot (it had a a Flip camera taped to it) was being programmed to film a virtual tour.

I managed to film these children explaining what they were doing, along with some other pupil attempting to explain how they had been using green SMART USB wristbands. These devices, which were kindly loaned by TAG Learning, store a copy of SMART Notebook student edition and allow children to create notebooks at home, which can then be shared in school on the board.

 

 

Links

 

Read more about Dan on the Teaching Awards Site- click here

Get the latest from Dan’s Blog -here

Watch the awards on Iplayer – for a limited time – click on the link

Google books now embed

I have just discovered that you can embed a google book in the same way you'd embed a Youtube video. From my searching around it seems that there are limits and you certainly can not get the whole book embedded, but it does allow readers to get a flavour of the text.

I have yet to try posting/embedding anything on Fronter/London MLE just yet, but if this works and enough texts are available, then this could be a really great tool for teachers.

Update - the code is in iframe and this usually a no-go for Fronter-but that is only the case at the moment- it could change of course..

Here is an excellent text for any new ICT Coordinator and should be on the required reading of NAACE ICT Coordinator course. Have a scan through, to try before you buy

Another Teachmeet Upload

Here is the next in my brief series of video uploads from the recent Havering and Redbridge: Teachmeet Event.


This clip was taken in one of the break-out sessions in one of the side rooms at the CEME Centre. Though these smaller sessions meant you had a more cosy experience with your speaker, it did mean that you might have missed out on hearing something inspiring, which was happening in the room next door. But without these parallel sessions it would have been difficult to fit in all of our contributors.

On the whole I was glad I was in Breakout Room 2, I have already shared one presentation form here, which was Daniel Needlestone's Revision Songs, and following this one I have one more to share.

This clip shows colleagues from Cleveland Junior, a Redbridge school, sharing in more detail about how blogging and forums have really taken off at their school. It seems to me that pupils and some teachers at the school are using free and cheap tools to ac hive some of the outcomes that we'd expect from a more packaged VLE.

2 Deaths

Over the last week, two death knells have sounded very hollow for two of my most loved technologies. On Sunday Andy's blog directed me to a blog about a blog that said the blog is dead. I was pointed to an interview on the BBC today programme where Robin Haman of Wired Magazine discuss his article on the subject,which asserts that Twitter is taking over from blogging.

John Humphries begins by saying have you started a blog yet, if not don't bother. The reason you shouldn't bother is because blogging has been taken over by journalists and the corporates. The other barrier to current blogging, which Haman apparently claims is so 2004, is that attention spans are shorter and Twitter feeds this as we only have to read and write 140 characters.

I like Kate Bevan's point about why she blogs - she 'writes things down to process things', this is one of the reasons why I blog too. You can not process things in 140 characters, Twitter as Drew Buddie tweeted to me this morning is 'an entirely different beast'. It is if you like a different genre, hey wouldn't it be great if the literacy strategy helped kids analyses the register and grammar of blogs versus twittering, hmm someday.

As a keen covert to Twitter for many months and a blogger of some two and a half years, I have been reflecting on these issues and wondered, should I close my blog? My blog has been many things at different times, it has been:

• An exciting meeting place and a way of meeting others who have read and commented on my work, I have even bagged some friends out of it

• A way of gaining professional credibility - I once found myself quoted at a conference by a speaker who had I had never met before, but who like what I had written

• As mentioned it is a way of clarifying and sorting through the many thoughts in my head, blogging them helps me formulate ideas and opinions and sometimes direction, but then this is the same process I went through as a teenager back in the 90s with my numerous volumes of diaries and scrap books

• It has also served as a voice for someone who is naturally quite shy- therefore this tool allows me to get my ideas out there, without the worry of getting it wrong

• My blog has also been a chore at times- I have found there has been that guilty feeling when I haven't blogged for a while and my fellow bloggers have been more prolific, I have felt I really should get something out

• My Subject Leaders Blog has become my corporate website, because the readers now trust and expect it to be updated weekly with relevant news, something that was impossible to do when I ran a Dream Weaver site, in my schools where teachers blog , some parents are now complaining that the blog for their child's class has not been updated for a week, gone are the days of the static school website, or at least they should be gone!

As a reader of blogs, I find the content is now as rich and stimulating as ever, take a look at the sidebar to see those who I read regularly. I believe what Tom Barret, John Sutton, Ewan, Terry, Simon and Danah Boyd have to say is fresh and personal, its a different feeling reading a blog entry to a newspaper article.

Twittering is extremely important for me as it provides a way of being connected to the EDtech and ICT world. Just today I was taking part in a conference in Birmingham by contributing to the Twitter discussion. With Twitter news is picked up and shared incredibly quickly, those that read the newspapers or scan BBC news post links and others read and comment, but those who have more to say on the matter will blog. I find that Twitter is a great place to gain answers from anyone or any seventeen of the hundred or so people on my Twitter network and this is very exciting. A few weeks ago I was writing some course notes on Google docs, I asked for hello via Twitter, which also synched with my Facebook status, all I wanted was some guinea pigs to fill in my book survey form. Within 5 minutes, I had all the responses I needed.

I don't believe Blogging is dead,it has just been augmented by a another form of writing. In the same way that TV has not been replaced by Youtube, though clearly it has been challenged by it and we would not write off emails or phone calls in place of text messages.

I am not sure if these ramblings answer the question, perhaps you could look @ Rory Cellan-Jones's response to the original article and make up your own mind.

But if you want to see blogs that are very much alive then check the link list in my sidebar.

________________________________________________________________

But are Whiteboards Dead?

Today on Twitter, Media Snackers posted a link to this article on the 'Demise of the Whiteboard', by awarding winning teacher Phil Beadle. It caught my eye and intrigued me, as I was expecting a reasoned discussion on why the novelty of the board, maybe wearing off for some teachers and how we need to inject some new life into the IWB.

However what I found, infuriated me, others that shared my frustration ranted a similar 140 character vitriol via Twitter throughout the morning.

Before I pick apart this article let me say that the whiteboard is perhaps not as fashionable as it used to be, but I believe that it is still used extremely well by many teachers to engage and excite children, simulate process and demonstrate new concepts. All teachers could do with regular input on how to make their board teaching more interactive and teachers also need the chance to share and learn about successful and simple applications of the IWB.

Beadle's article comes from someone who has perhaps never really embraced ICT, an earlier article in 2006 hints at his Luddite stance, describing himself in a sort of 'hinterland' away from integrated technology use, and worried about getting caught in a cupboard sniffing books. He believed then that ICT was replacing books and human contact. Though this 2006 article did make a very valid point about the over use of Powerpoint and I would agree that bad PowerPoint in any LEA training session is a heinous crime and we should scrap bullet pointed slide decks along with KS3 SATs. But in his most recent essay Mr Beadle hasn't really moved on in his understanding of the potential and use of a SMART or Promethean board, he still sees these devices as just being associated with PowerPoint. For goodness sake man go and visit a Primary classroom and watch kids on a SMART Board!

I include below the most annoying and inaccurate paragraphs from today's article:

Like the blackboard, the Smart Board has its uses, although they are more limited than any headteacher would have you believe. They are great for showing photos, bringing a visual stimulus into lessons; and they show a mean DVD.

But their place at the front of the class means every lesson must have a PowerPoint presentation, and a teacher's key tool is the memory stick on which they store their presentations. The Smart Board's central positioning destroys a teacher's ability to be spontaneous.

You cannot come in any more with a couple of board markers and a handful of good ideas. "Why have you not turned me on?" screams the board. "Why have you not sat up all evening downloading pictures that would make me look as if I had some vital use? You are lazy and should be sacked."

Why can't you be spontaneous with a SMART BOARD ?- of course you can come come in with markers and write all over the thing, they just have to be the four markers that the board is supplied with though better still you can use your finger. The reason teachers don't launch into spontaneity often is fear of deviation away from a planning sheet they have to deliver, or of they are in Year Six , then they are under pressure to prepare their kids for the test. This sucks out spontaneity, not the large plastic Interactive window to the world, the whiteboard, that is screwed to the wall at the front of the class.

And no you are not doomed to always show Powerpoint on a whiteboard, it will project any application including Google Earth, versatile Paint packages and tools that let you connect with others both in the class and beyond. What's more with a boards connection to the Internet I can spontaneously research an idea that comes up in our class discussion instantly by googling or Youtubing. Rather than waiting until our library session next THURSDAY.

In his opening paragraph he describes with nostalgia the blackboard and its associated chalk dust, as if this were the good old days. It wasn't for me when I started teaching and had to learn chalkmanship!. But, I digress, it is within this nostalgic framework that he places a Mathematician in action, the image he gives points to a sort of Dead Poets Society view of teaching:

He (Alexandre Borovik, speaks as a blackboard mathematician, but his points resonate with this whiteboard English teacher: "A mathematics teacher is not just conveying information; he or she teaches to think mathematically, and teaches by example, in real time. It is crucially important to be in full control of timing and tempo of the narrative. If a lecture involves calculations, it is crucially important to let students feel the subtle play of rhythms, emphasise switches and branch points in the procedure, highlight recursion and reduction to simpler cases."

If I am modelling sentence construction or the semicolon, drawing a map illustrating colonialism in Africa, or scribing arrows outlining connections between ideas, I want to be able to do it quickly: as quick as I think; as quick as I talk. I want to be able to teach with my whole body, use gesture, employ pause to illustrate nuance, become as one with the board; become, in those rare moments of flow, both dancer and dance. Now the board dictates that, rather than pirouette, twist and enthuse, I click a frigid button.

Absoloutely agree Phil, this is the mark of a good teacher, he is first and foremost a showman, whose job it is to help students to think, whatever the subject matter. But if we have tools that allow the children to visualise concepts like 90 degree turns, bar charts, regular and irregular polygons, symmetry etc why shouldn't we use them? Drawing such things on a blackboard would slow me and the pace of the lesson down and would frankly be out of kilter with the screen bred generation that I am teaching in 2008!

What is actually stopping a teacher using their whole body when they have a whiteboard behind them? If you are clicking a frigid button, then you obviously need some work on using all the tools in whiteboard software , as when you learn these to good effect you can draw in children's attention by zooming them into parts of map, if you are teaching 'colonialism'. You can also drag words easily and madly around to create and change sentence with ease, a task which would be slowed dramatically if you employed chalk or a marker pen.Clicking on one frigid button means a very poorly designed linear presntation - probably Powerpoint - Phil you should use a range of appliactions!

I hope this article stirs up debate again about what is good whiteboard use, but I just wish it had come form someone who had used and evaluated a SMART Board properly for a while.

Dumped below is an image from Twitter of some of the discussions taking place around the article, earlier today:

Podcasting and Blogging Resources Training @Chadwell

Podcasting

A good example of a school that Podcasts
Fairlop Primary Redbridge and
Redbridge Primary Redbridge scroll down to the Redbridge area of the LGFL and find these two schools and the growing number of channels

Safe music and short clips to Podcast with

Flashkit- recommended to me by the great Joe Dale- an easy to navigate site with lots of cool loops,many of which sound fresh and urban, therefore great for the Radio Show style Podcast

LGFL Audio Site- a large bank of audio tracks-these come in a range of lengths and as it is provided by LGFL there is no danger of meeting any inappropriate text.

Soundsnap.com- an extensive site of soundclips- a bit like flickr for sounds effects- It might be an idea to find what you want first and download into a shared file on the school network, rather than letting children search, this is because the site has such a vats collection and entering bodily functions or synonyms of these will provide the user with some quite un podcastable sounds.

Hosting for your Podcasts:

Podcast.lgfl.org.uk- you do not need to use any other service- this is free and comes with an easy to use site and huge storage

Blogging





A good example of a school that Blogs:

Sandaig Primary Glasgow

Blogging Tools

Blogger.com- easy to use blogging tool- you will need a Google account but this is easily done. The downside with Blogger is the Next blog button at the top of the page, clicking on this could take you to a blog on any subject.

Blogmeister- Favoured by Paul Harrington, this tool allows you to show your pupils blogs on the same page as the teacher's blog comments. You will need to email the author of the excellent 2$ worth blog, Dave Warlick, in order to get a school pass code.

Blogging and Podcasting Best Practice

I am working on a lot of training and promoting of both Blogging and Podcasting over the next few weeks, indeed months. I would like to grab thoughts from readers of this blog, and also gain further insights into best practice.

If you would like to contribute to this presentation then please leave a comment/contact me.

Democratising Knowledge

I was really excited by our Subject Leaders event last week. These are always energising and exciting times, not just for me but also for all those who take the time out to turn up. The day was the usual mix of hands-on with new software, news, advice and web links, but today we added an unconference element. This meant that anybody could stand up and share what had been going on at their school, with or without Powerpoint.

For me this was one of those wow/hair back of the neck moments. It was one of those times when you just step back and get excited by what is happening in some of our schools. It also proves to me that democracy of knowledge is worthwhile and that when we share our ICT knowledge in this way we do not reflect Huxley's typewriter apes in our blogs and thoughts, as Andrew Keen would have us believe. There are still those who say to me, 'so you're the expert'. No I have knowledge and skills, and expertise, I am not the expert. If ICT was guided and inspired and directed just by me, then what a narrow vision we as a borough, and I as a consultant would have.

Below is a selection of some of the things that were shared. Maybe next meeting we should turn the event into an evening with food and drink, a la TeachMeet @ BETT.

Dancing Lego Robots @ South Park Primary :




Thanks to Hermina De Wet


Proper Podcasting- the work of the Redbridge Podcasting Network and the impact of Podcasting @ Redbridge Primary



Thanks to Rob Spriddle @ Redbridge Primary

Anca Pauwells @ Highlands Primary , who showed us how to embed ICT into school, simply by having an appointed ICT advocate in each year group,and thus the applications and innovations are spread far quicker than the lone coordinator/expert. It seems when and if OFSTED comment negatively about ICT in a school, they are more likely to use the comment bank statement,

'use ICT to support teaching and learning in other subjects'

They are doing this in Highlands, without the need to shout about it, what's more through the advocates system many more of the staff are on board.


Thank you Anca

Sue Bell from Churchfields Infants talked to us about the Talk Time photo albums. It was thrilling to hear how these had been used with less able children to promote speaking and listening. A simple tool with a powerful outcome.



Thank you Sue

Lucy at Manford showed us how her school had been using blogs to showcase the schools activity week and visit to Glasbury Outdoor Education Centre centre.





Click here to see the blogs

A further tool for sharing and collaborating is of course GOOGLE docs- and here I have taken my inspiration from Tom Barrett and the wonderful joint presentation on SMART BOARD tips and the more recent GOOGLE Earth presentation. I created a sharing presentation and invited everyone present to create a slide to reflect what is going on at their school. It was very exciting for Nicholas and I to see this slide show update throughout the day and though the finished product is a bit rough around the edges, it does show what can be done.




Here's hoping that next time the finished collaboration is even sharper!! and that I can build on Tom's work with schools in Redbridge that I work in. I am also using a Google Spreadsheet to collect information on dates and preferences for a Video conferenicng project, it is proving a far more versatile data collection tool than survey monkey or a member of my admin team and a phone.

Another week in ICT

Blogging and Podcasting-

Its all happening!
During Subject Leaders, I often nag (or as I like to call it inspire) people to make use of Web 2.0 applications. It is my opinion that all ICT subject leaders should be bloggers and I think we should not underestimate the power of the blog as both a communication and collaboration tool.Used regularly this could act as a direct link between home and school, pupil and pupil and pupils and teachers. What's more this tool allows the true application of the 'wisdom of crowds', or two heads are better than one. And all that aside, it is just so easy to blog, whereas the Dream weaver or digital brain made site is just a big hassle! For me the blog allow me to record my ICT journey and day to day experiences, while taking on board the encouragement, criticism or questions of others.

We have been talking about Blogging and Podcasting fro some time over the last few meetings. Many teachers had set up their Google home page to read my blog, or those of my favourites such as Simon Mills Inspirations site.

But this week I have begun to discover little fires of blogging and podcasting are beginning to be fanned into flame, and I hope that the success of these can be shared beyond the ICT rooms of those involved.

The first success comes from Val Barker @ Gearies Infants and all the other teachers who appear to have taken up the blogging challenge. Here Val has acted as a trainer and a pioneer, beginning the blogging process and showing others how to do it. Val is using the main blog as a sort of easy to publish website, while other teachers are using a blog to keep the choir up to date, while another rather visionary teacher is using a blog to carry out research with the children around poetry.

The author of the blog- who I believe is Dan ( one of our ASTS) hopes to work with the children to answer the following through his blogging.

Will a focus on increased first hand experiences of poetry and performances improve overall literacy attainment?

Can this idea be developed through a child autonomous research project?

In a nutshell, can we as adults scaffold a research process that allows children to unveil possible answers to the questions we would like to try and solve?

Readers of the Podcasting blog will know that this has also been an exciting week for Podcasting. We had the Podcasting network meeting, which allowed us to showcase the work and the plans for further work in: Manford, Fairlop and Redbridge. I was really struck by the work of the Year Two class at Fairlop, these children performed an interview with Samuel Pepys along with a song. They were clear, audible, engaged and using the correct vocabulary, all within an appropriate curriculum context. I also visited Hatton school this week, to look at (among other things) the podcasting work done by Dan Plane. Dan's work on Podcasting with children from a range of abilities has been picked up by Podium and is featured on their blog. When sitting in on a session I was taken with how pleased the children were to hear their compositions played back, surely a boost to their self esteem.

When thinking about Podcasting in the primary school, I think there are some important considerations and questions. Some of these I have the answers to, or at least bits of answers to in my head. I have listed these questions below and maybe other readers/bloggers may have some thoughts:

1. Why not just use a Tape Recorder? ( As first mentioned on Linda's blog)
2. Scripted or unscripted?
3. How do you organise a group of 30 children to create a set of podcasts and avoid background noise from each other?
4. Why bother- does it raise standards?
   

1. A tape recorder does not allow the easy manipulation of sound and editing of tracks that you get with Audacity or Podium. In ICT and Literacy children are supposed to review, modify and evaluate. When using a tape recorder then I am only able to review, in order to modify I need to erase the whole thing and rerecord.
2. Scripted or unscripted- From watching children (and adults) struggle to know what to say when placed in front of a mic it seems clear to me that children need a focus, otherwise they wonder why they're being asked to 'say something'. Rob from Redbridge raised the point that on real radio shows there are a team of researchers who compile show notes and questions for intervie, the show does not just happen! And though I can see that most schools begin with the experimental stage of podcasting. This may manifest itself as the test podcast or as an imitation urban style radio show. The challenge to teachers is how to take the medium form the club and into the classroom .
3. The key to managing 30 children creating podcasts is classroom management. This means not allowing the children to begin by selecting music as this can take too long and will mean they will quickly run out of time. As for having a class of 30 in and ICT suite with up to 15 microphones, yes this is hard and seems a recipe for failure, but it has worked in some schools. What do you think?
4. Why bother two reasons - The first was the look on the child's face i saw last Friday when she listened back to her podcast, clearly a boost to her self esteem. The other reason is a motivation to write. In Redbridge primary, the Podcast club have been given notebooks to create their scripts. They are told that these will not be marked and that they belong to the children. Remarkably these books are filling up very quickly with legible and detailed show notes and scripts.
   

SMARTBOARD WORK


This week I have worked with teachers on effective use of the IWB, or to put it more precisely the SMARTBOARD. I have been encouraged by those teachers who have been excited by the power and potential of the IWB. For some teachers it is a neglected resource, something that they may only know how to write on and run websites like Education City on. For others it is hard to consider life without it.

Among other things I have been promoting the key message around relevance and connection in what we display on the board. I elaborated under each of the slides below:


I have used Keepvid.com to download Youtube videos of fire engines form Ilford and Dagenham. Displaying one or all of these on the IWB will provide a powerful stimulus for writing, and as each clip does not actually show what happened next. Then we have a good platform to ask a range of higher order inference questions. Furthermore Literacy units in Year 2 and 3 often mention using films as texts.




The slide above shows a good context for shared writing. It combines a local image of Barking allotments along with the very cheap ( but essential) Oxford Reading tree clipart. It would be a good idea to create a notebook gallery file, in order to quickly access the resources. The same idea could be applied to the slide below.




The idea presented in this slide is that the IWB allows us to easily display images that are relevant to and within a child's everyday experience. So, rather than demonstrating counting with on-screen counters or flat clipart circles, why not also use objects like cola bottles or write word problems involving a WII or a number 25 bendy bus.

I am ( as always) keen to know your thoughts on the above

Vokis

Isn't this a great tool- you can create an avatar and then record upto a minutes worth of speech. There are implications and applications here for speaking and listening, ICT and MFL.



Get a Voki now!

Conference - After Thoughts

It has been a couple of weeks since the conference and I have had chance to listen to the analogue feedback of others. ( You mean you haven't heard of analogue feedback- it's like lo-fi video conferencing - or to put it simply it's talking to someone face to face). Anyway I digress, the conference has had an effect on me, or rather Alan November's talk has left me with a number of things to chew over and I'll attempt to list them below:

Collaboration-

Photo credit: Logo II pt 2 by Stabilo-Boss

Don't you get it!-

I have been thinking about this point for some time now; that the whole blogging thing can be a bit of a drag, as you can be out there alone, but this is missing the point. The excitement comes when you get a comment, and this could be an encouragement, a challenge a question or a link suggestion. The point is blogging and the like should be about "The wisdom of Crowds", the idea that 1000 or more heads are better than 2. My wife, who is not a massive blogger, got this ages ago. She is part of a web group for autistic parents and messages from these mums are posted daily, weekly or even hourly. She can keep up to date and she can also respond quickly, if she knows the answer to a question, if not another mum with a similar experience may post an answer. The point is their group works because they share knowledge and support and they can post at a time that is convenient.



In a Primary ICT context, I'd like to be able to blog more collaboratively, with a blog containing several authors. It seems a bit crazy that I am reading Nic's blog about the course I provided last week on animation, when the ideal would be to have a place where we can share what we learned together. This collaborative blogging feels quite exciting and has been a bit of slap in the face as both a revelation and a reminder.

What has been inspiring to see since the conference, is that some teachers have picked up the whole blog idea and anonymous publishing phenomenon. One or two teachers have started their own blog and one has even tried to use his as a space to publish work. The children can then see the feedback they get from others online who might read their poems. This feedback may be accepted far more than the the overnight scrawling of the teacher, though it is not a substitute for good target setting and marking from the teacher. It does though, provide that elusive concept that we have been trying to trick kids into believing, the idea of the audience. Kids know that you are the audience, when you mark their work, even though you might pretend otherwise, but if they post their work on the web, then the audience is real and unknown!


I had written other points here, but I think I'll return to them later. The problem with a blog that lacks anonymity is that I spend too long striving for it to read well. When in actual fact I am now past caring, because I just want to get posting.

More on Blogging

John Sutton is a bit of an authority on blogging, having already delivered a training day on these @ Redbridge last year. His latest blog post provides some interesting points to consider when beginning to blog.
Visit his blog here.

Blogger in Beta Works

It works!!
I have upgraded to Blogger in Beta and it is fantastic, though Windows live writer has a slight issue with it - in that it can not download the template.

But.. the drag and drop page editing and the ease of adding html objects, feed and images is just fantastic- no longer any playing about with the code and the publishing is instant- keep on blogging its fantastic!!
Still not blogging- come on!!! get it on @
http://beta.blogger.com/home
A fine tool to aid you in your blogging, while your offline is Windos Live Writer. This eneables you to use a wisiwig editor, that looks very much like Word, to type up your blog entry.
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!...