I read with interest Michael Barber’s assertion (The future is now on the Internet, TES, October 2) that the purpose of his department’s new website is “to provide practical guidance and examples of good practice on raising standards in a format that is attractive, accessible and useful to busy teachers”.
He also asserts that “the standards site will be ready for you when you are ready for it”.
It certainly is now a wonderful site but the trouble is Professor Barber,I have been ready for it since January when nothing much was happening on it - and quite a waste of my time it was logging in month after month to see no content.
Since that time I have been lobbying the website’s designers to put up a simple management system whereby teachers who e-mail the site will be notified of any new changes by an automatic piece of software called a listserver.
This technology has been around for years, decades even. Quite simply all anyone has to do is e-mail the site saying they want to join its notification list and an automatic message sends out any updates in response, hopefully, on a regular basis.
As yet there is no listserver and no notification software.
It really isn’t hard to do - our little one form entry primary school has one and we make weekly updates - why can’t the standards site?
So some of us are more than ready Professor Barber, so to quote your leader, I challenge you to open up access in this way...
Leon Cych, 23 Park Hall Road. London