Today I had the privilege of attending the Scottish Education Awards in Glasgow City Halls. There I joined with hundreds of hopefuls, judges and invited guests to see who would scoop the top prizes. Quite an event, with finalists drawn from all 32 of the local authorities in Scotland.

What amazed me about the schools represented there were how many of them I recognised. I’ve only been working other local authorities for the past year and half, but there were a significant number of schools that I have already come into contact with. Reassuring to know that people therefore do talk about good schools.

For my sins this year I was a judge in the category of ICT Learning Award sponsored by Adventi. The competition was fierce, as the finalists we visited displayed great use of ICT throughout the school, but the eventual winner we decided upon was Elrick Primary school in Aberdeenshire.

I’ve visited a large number of schools to see how they were making use of ICT and the majority would fall into the category of ‘integrating’ ICT into their practice. What impressed me most about the winning school was that they seemed to have moved beyond that – ICT was used as an effective tool in it’s own right, not as an add-on or as a replacement. Staff seemed genuinely keen to try new things, and most importantly, to support each other in learning new things.

Congratulations to all those who took part, and thanks for allowing us to come into your classroom to see such great things.

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I’ve been thinking about what may help the smooth running of un-conferences in the future -

An independent host. Whilst I take my hat off to @islayian and @andywallis for the hosting of the #edu2020 un-conference, I think an independent host makes a huge difference. They wouldn’t have to worry about loud voices, as they could state some simple ‘wait your turn’ or ‘7 minute’/'2 minute’ rules.

A neutral venue. To ensure that no one person or group has ‘control’ or ownership of the un-conference, a neutral venue is vital. I’d be hugely wary of corporate educational sponsorship on this one too. Much better to have somewhere that people can relax and shre their thoughts with the other attendees – physical or virtual. The distillery for the #edu2020 was ideal in this regard.

Choice of topics. If I attend the un-conference physically or virtually, I may not want to take part in all the discussions. Better to have a variety to choose from, and ensure that there is good feedback for all to hear.

Just a few things that I think would help. What about anyone else? What do you think would help an un-conference?

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On Friday I joined about 50 people in ‘warehouse 4′ of Bowmore distillery for the #edu2020 un-conference. If you want to find out more about the un-conference, then it’s well worth having a look at the wiki that hosted the discussion leading up to the event, or check out the discussion on twitter.

It was a great event, and the discussion both riled me and provoked my thinking. We discussed three things in particular – what skills would be necessary, and what would learning spaces and assessment look like in the year 2020. I’ve always been one to shy away from giving my opinion on assessment, as I don’t feel I can ever articulate it well. I’ll try by sharing a story:

My ‘friend’ has recently moved to a new village. In his house, he needs some plumbing work done, and discovers in discussion with his new neighbours that there are two plumbers in the locale. It turns out one is qualified to the hilt – their advert seems to display the crest of every plumbing organisation known to man, yet the other plumber seems to advertise by only saying ‘friendly and reliable’. Which to choose? Still unsure from their marketing, my friend asks around. It seems both get a lot of work, but more people are happy with the work of the ‘friendly and reliable’ plumber.

How many of our decisions are reached based on attributes other than qualifications? How many employers report that the first thing they do is ‘re-train’  their new staff? It seems that in the world of work, the most valuable qualities that people have are not the result of assessment. In which case, are we assessing entirely the wrong thing?

I no longer work in the field of my undergraduate degree. Numerous people have said to me that my degree serves as a ticket to other jobs – it merely states that I have the ability to study and apply myself. I often wonder of a more appropriate qualification for our young people (or any learner, frankly) would be along the lines of a ‘leavers certificate’ – aquiring the core learning skills, and then able to move onto a variety of occupations in the 21st century.

I’m not the best person to speak about assessment. What I can say with some degree of certainty however, is that life in the 21st century has an increasing element of it that’s online. We ignore that at our peril.

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Today I’m taking part in a CPD Challenge session in Optima for around 30 colleagues from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

The format of the day will see people selecting from 10 challenges to develop their presentation and networking skills.

You can find out more by viewing the prezi Con has set up for the day.

If you’re not actually here, why not consider taking part in the development opportunity anyway? If you have access to Glow, there is a Glow group created especially for this event.

UPDATE: I’ve added a couple of links for those starting out on finding creative commons images – creative commons, flickr, and Cooliris, a great tool to help people navigate through search results. Also, well worth a look for sound advice about presentations, have a look at Presentation Zen.

Any other suggestions that people should look at?

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Just added an awesome plugin to my blog – TweetSuite is an absolute must for anyone that blogs and uses twitter.

How often have you read a blog post and thought – I’d love other people to read this! You may have added it to your social bookmarks or even gone to the lengths of making a tiny URL out of it to tweet.

Well, TweetSuite takes all the hard work out of that activity for you – all you need to do is click the ”Tweet This’ button at the end of each post on blogs that have the plugin installed.

UPDATE: Now installed another one called ‘tweet this’ which seems to give better buttons as options on the bottom of each post?

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Last week was a bit of a milestone for me, as today’s image shows. Two events really added to this. I had a meeting with a member of staff from TalentNation, who had a very interesting proposal for getting young people to display the things they are proud of in a sporting arena. A really interesting idea, I look forward to seeing how it progresses as it develops into a live service. What stuck in my mind was probably a throwaway remark relating to people publishing online, as the gentleman in question said the big draw for people publishing is that “it’s all about vanity”.

The second event related to twitter. Last week I crossed the 200 mark – I know this is relatively small change in relation to some, but a milestone for me nonetheless. For those that don’t know much about twitter, that means that when I post a message (tweet) on twitter, 200+ people will receive it. I’ve spoken about the power of twitter as a learning network, and I tried to demonstrate this a couple of weeks ago at the #windmills09 event, but this can mean that a lot of people can help me out with information when I need it.

It got me thinking seriously about the numbers though. Can you ever follow, or be followed by to many people? At what point does it become unmanageable, or counter-productive? I can see the benefit for an individual in being followed by a large number of people, as you can then ask a lot of people for advice. But when you follow a lot of people it becomes very difficult to follow their narrative – it really does become ambitent conversation.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘The Tipping Point‘ illustrated a point when looking into the working practices of W. L. Gore (the people that make GoreTex). Each site, office or workspace never grows larger that 150 people – this is called the (wait for it) ‘150 rule‘. Basically, workspaces reach an optimum level at around 150 people. These 150 people can work well as a unit, and achieve a high level of productivity. Does this extend onto the online environment? Can you have too many people joined together? I suspect I have a long way to go before this becomes a problem.

What about in education though? I used to teach in a school of 120 staff, and 1,500 pupils. Were I in school just now, I would definitely be encouraging people to use twitter. Could this make the school perform better? Would this make me able to support my students more effectively? Would I worry about ‘following’ my students?

Is it all just about vanity? I hope not. I would like to think that growing a personal learning network helps me better myself, and better the work I do for others.

Food for thought.

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With less than a fortnight to go, I got a reminder this morning about Teachmeet XI taking place in Galashiels – and I’d completely forgotten all about it!

If you haven’t already, then check out the wiki and sign up if you can make it – if you can’t make it in person, then why not sign up for the flashmeeting? The last teachmeet I was at, Ian Stuart from Islay presented to those assembled in London via the Flashmeeting, so being there in person isn’t quite as necessary as I’d previously thought!

Described by Ollie Bray as the “best CPD he’s ever done”, this is a must attend for anyone that can manage.

Hopefully see you there (in person, or remotely!)

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This month, you have a chance a winning one of two iPod Nano’s courtesy of Learning and Teaching Scotland. Until the 23rd of January you have the opportunity to take part in an online survey which aims to collate information and opinions to help improve the offerings of the LTS Online Service.

With two Nano’s up for prizes, why not head over there and give it a go?

Does that read like a spam post from a sponsor? – normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

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Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit Mind Candy with two of my colleagues. For those of you that don’t know, Mind Candy are the people behind the hugely successful ‘Moshi Monsters‘. We were there to have a look at the environment they have created as a learning space, and the stats they showed us of the numbers of young people (and those over 40!) regularly logging in and looking after their monster, decking out it’s room and playing the games is very impressive indeed. I like the whole idea of almost ‘learning by stealth’ – a variety of problem solving techniques are needed for the hugely addictive games.

In the evening, we journeyed to Channel 4 for a panel session on ‘narrative in games’, where my ‘internationally renowned’ colleague Derek Robertson (he’s just back from Australia, after all!) was on the panel. Great to catch up with Ewan McIntosh too, and hear about some of the exciting things afoot at 4iP. A good discussion on the role of narrative in games, but it strayed from this point on various occasions to the territory of games in learning, or even the level of engagement in games.

I’m a firm believer in the importance of grabbing a learners attention, which I think some games and online learning environments do well. How far away are we from this in education at the moment though? Are we too reliant on the office applications many schools have grown comfortable with as a means of engaging our students? On the panel at channel 4 were a couple of guys in their late teens. It was quite clear listening to them that they knew they were learning in a games environment. Food for thought, and a great couple of days out of the office.

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Early September I got my hands on Daniel Pink’s most recent book ‘The Adventures of Johnny Bunko‘, and then promptly gave it away at TeachMeet. I then found myself wanting to talk about it to so many different people, and have mentioned it in about every presentation I’ve given since.

A twitter conversation a few weeks ago with Neil Winton and Mark Pentleton brought up the idea of running a ‘Bunko breakfast’ at some point near the end of term in Glasgow, but in the meantime I want to make sure that as many people as possible that I’m in contact with in education get to read this book.

So I hatched a cunning plan. What if I bought a couple of copies of the book and asked people to pass them on in a kind of chain read? What if I wrote the URL of this blog post in the inside of the book cover and asked that whoever read it merely came back here and left a comment, telling us what they thought of it, and who they passed it on to?

So lets kick things off – I’ve bought two copies – one I’ve promised to give to my colleague Bruce Murray at RM – the other one I’ll stick in the post to the first person that asks for it (email me your address, or dm me on twitter @whereisab). All that I ask is that you read it, make a comment here and then pass it on?

let the Bunko fun begin!

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