This year's winners with the very interersting Wal-Mart presentation were:Stuart AnnettsRyan BarnstapleCalum InnesThe class was judged by Miss Dunlop's S3 Administration class and Head Judge PC Jim Foy.Well done to the winners and to everyone who took part. The slides will be available on www.slideshare.net Read Full Story

Just a bit of prior warning to senior pupils!This year's AB test will take place on the following dates:Higher Business Management19th November 2009Higher Administration20th November 2009Remember these tests are designed to judge how you are performing. They are as important as prelims, make no mistake about it!Higher Business Management AB Test will be a 50 mark paper, made up of past paper questions. This is half a prelim since we will have only covered about half the course by then.Make no... Read Full Story

Tonight on BBC 1 at Midnight (great time for pupils to watch... NOT!) the best TV show in the world is back. Forget grumpy Alan Sugar and his UK version.The Apprentice with Donald Trump is the original and best show! We're finally getting to see Season Four after a lengthy gap of two years.So what makes Trump's version so good?Well it is actually pretty educational and of course it is entertaining. The characters on the show make some of the craziest decisions known to man!I normally don't ge... Read Full Story

TWhen you have been No. 1 in any industry, the only was is down. This happened to Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone giant.Nokia makes beautiful phones, but they needed to offer extra funtcions to keep up with Apple. To create a smartphone!The iPhone has become the gold standard by which all other mobiles are measured. Nokia has lost substantial ground in the North American cell phone market. Apple, according to Nokia, has gotten a free ride since the iPhone launched—a very fast ride. Apple comm... Read Full Story

I normally do not wade into politics, but tonight on Question Time the leader of a rather nasty party appeared. I do not wish to even name the person, who is an MEP(!) but it is important that in our modern and democratic society that everyone has a right to be heard.What I would point out is that any sensible person would distance themselves from the ideals of such a party based on hate and division. The MEP's party stands for subject matter that is distasteful in the extreme.I have often wo... Read Full Story

This week I attended a CPD course on Scratch Programming which is a fun way to introduce pupils to programming - a topic many students dread!The excellent course was run by Frank Frame, the Advisor for Computing, and it was very hands on. We got to create some programs from scratch (no pun intended) as well as following the excellent resources.Scratch is obviously going to fit in well with the aims of Curriculum for Excellence. An interesting piece of news was that apparently the uptake for C... Read Full Story

CHINESE ELECTRIC CARChinese firm BYD says that its new E6 electric car due out before the end of the year will do 250 miles (400km) on a single charge.This is a very big number. The Tesla electric sports car does almost as much, but has little room for anything else in the car but the battery.The E6 is roomy with space for five passengers and a good-sized boot. The battery tucks under the back seat.It needs 7-8 hours with a domestic plug to charge the car but BYD - it stands for Build Your Dr... Read Full Story

Childhood in the 1980s was so different to that of the modern schoolkids of the new millennium. Not only did we not have mobile phones, but all we had was the very basic Atari video game console and having to live with the very real threat of thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.However, there were some iconic TV moments that affected kids all over the world. I have already mentioned in a previous post the brilliance of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, but another TV event tha... Read Full Story

Pupils in Higher Administration this year have been set the task of creating an e-book on the Theory elements of the course.We were inspired by the Higher Still Revision Notes created by pupils some years ago. I have been wanting to do it for quite some time, but this year we have 6 periods and I think we can donate 1 a week to this revision task.I also think changing the order of the course is working. Moving Spreadsheet and Database skills up to the start of the course and moving Word Proce... Read Full Story

With Hamilton Grammar School working on our greenscreen it is quite appropriate that the next step in motion picture evolution is being pioneered at the same time by legendary Oscar winning director James Cameron. His movie Avatar is shot in 3-D and almost everything is computer generated.The heroes of the movie, the Na'vi are ten foot tall blue aliens who are not cartoons but an ever better generation of CGI from Gollum.The film is about the human colonisation and exploitation of a small pla... Read Full Story