Today I realised how long the road is ahead of us. I also realised how few there are of us to undertake the tasks.

The ICT Steering Group meeting today was in Oban, where we had a presentation from the RM/LTS/SSDN team. I feel reassured that our LA link is Neil Stewart, who was formerly with Edinburgh City. ICT & Education really is a small world.

Every time I attend a SSDN meeting I am so enthused by the scope of the project but alarmed by the scale of it. I only hope we are able to do it justice, but the cynic in me is worried. When NGfL was implemented in the Authority, there was practically a dedicated team of 6. Now we face a project of much greater magnitude, but with staff with already full remits.

My apologies to the few Masterclass who joined us for the VC at 4 as I really wasn’t worth a button. Could you tell John and I had had a meeting before it that raised more questions than answers? The philosopher in me used to prefer it that way!

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This afternoon I visited the RE Subject Development day. It was quite a strange experience as I don’t teach RE anymore, but it was nice to see familiar faces.

The reason for the visit was to publicise the use of the NQ online website. We have had Development Officers from LTS attend some of our subject development days but RE was one that they couldn’t manage to attend, so Elliot Morrison invited me along to talk about the resources that are available online. Great opportunity, so thanks for this Elliot.

Two points of note – 1. In a small subject area, your local network is so important. When you teach a subject in a school and often you are the only teacher of that subject, it is great to have a day when you meet with your colleagues from neighbouring schools to talk through how they teach certain things, or just to bounce ideas off. 2. Breeze is going to potentially change everything.

But do you know what? Unless we start becoming more comfortable with sharing, then we will never move forwards. By being comfortable in our close circle of colleagues, perhaps we will be more inclined to share. It is quicker to change something for our own purposes, than to start from scratch. How we break down the Scottish attitude of ‘not being good enough’ I have no idea however.

If you are teaching any subject in secondary you need to use the NQ online website. Sign up for the email bulletin – then you don’t even have to keep visiting the site to check for updates – you are automatically informed of them by email – could this be any easier? What are you waiting for?

My apologies to Lorna for the journey on the way up – I know I talk far too much about education – I guess that means I really care about it?

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Today was one of those marathon days that no-one in their right mind would realistically contemplate. I had high hopes of making it to three schools today, but those hopes faded as I watched the 10am ferry from Tayinloan head out for Gigha without me on it. This set my timings off for the day. My apologies to the staff at Drumlemble for not making it to see them before the twilight in St. Kierans – but as they were there for the twilight, hopefully I was able to answer the questions?

The twilight concerned using an interactive whiteboard. This was third time lucky for this one, as I had to move the first one because of a ‘yufty’, and the second attempt I had to cancel owing to the whole frozen shoulder incident.

About 20 staff representing almost every school in the area were present. I’m told that everyone found it a most useful experience. I often worry about the ‘show and tell’ nature of these events, and I know that I talk far too much.

Great to have Marlyn there at the session. She is the local Masterclass member, and has recently started using a Promethean board, which she brought with her for the session. I know I speak from being one step removed from the classroom, but Marlyn speaks with direct knowledge, which is so valuable.

So today started at 7am, and finished at 9pm. Despite how encouraging speaking with staff from so many schools today has been, it was still a long, tiring day.

For those of you that are following the pictures (except those of you in East Renfrewshire!), this one is an interactive overlay for a plasma screen. Haven’t had the chance to try one (yet!), so if anyone is feeling generous…? I’d only like to try it…? You’d get it right back…?

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Day two of Macromedia.

Today was spent with Dreamweaver, designing a website for a client. For this task we were split into pairs, each having to design a 4 page portfolio site for the other, according to their design brief. Very early on in the day I remembered why I had not pursued a mediocre career in design! Most of the day was spent on this task, with various tutorials throughout the day on aspects on Dreamweaver. Eternally grateful for the guidance on CSS, as up until today, I don’t think I’d really understood it.

At the end of the day we had to report back, and I was last – which I hate with a passion. I suppose someone has to be last however. As with everything digital, you always wished you had had more time.

We were given to take away with us a huge folder full of notes that Anuja and two of her colleagues had quite clearly spent an incredible amount of time creating. Wonderful curriculum based activities to learn some of the skills of Studio 8. How do schools get access to these resources? – By getting a school site license for Studio 8. I now have a mission.

I ask myself again why so much time in education is spent in repetition? Macromedia have obviously produced top quality teaching resources, yet there must be numerous teachers around the world writing their own – myself included. When will we ever learn to stop re-inventing the wheel?

Totally unrelated, but Ian Sorenson gave me a DVD of ‘Lucas Back In Anger’ today to watch. Ian is undoubtedly one of the funniest people on the planet, and it was very amusing to see their take on Star Wars. Just where does a production company go after the Clyde Auditorium?

For those of you who follow the pictures, then the wheel comes from the accompanying training materials some of us were sad enough to work through to learn how to use Flash – now aren’t you glad you now know that?

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You think you are doing quite well, you have almost come to terms with applications that at first glance you were nearly sick with worry over and then everything gets put back into perspective.

Today was day one of a two day course in Scotsys with Macromedia looking at Digital Design. First of all, my heartfelt thanks to Anne Forrest at Scotsys for inviting me to this course. I know that I am quite comfortable with the basics of Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash, but as all of this is self taught, it is great to have this confirmed by an expert from the company.

Our tutor was Anuja Dharkar, Education Curriculum Manager for Macromedia. She had come to Scotland from California to have discussions with the SQA about closer ties between Macromedia and Scottish education. Whilst here, she was working with centres involved in the DIVA project and representatives from local authorities. Islay High school are taking part in the DIVA project with Macromedia this session. In my humble opinion, this has got to be the way forward. What it offers is the chance for students to get SQA qualifications and at the same time receive industry standard certification, and few could doubt Macromedia’s currency in this market.

It was good to have such an able tutor, who on the one hand conveyed the ease of use of the applications, whilst on the other calmly hinting at the size, scope and scale of these hugely powerful web production tools.

At dinner in the evening, discussion came around to our plans here for the use of Breeze which I am sure will be discussed further – watch this space!
Today’s title stems from discussion at dinner – whilst in Scotland our course tutor is going to visit some of the sites of our great land with friends who are joining her from the states. As you would expect, all research was done online, and where else would you visit in this beautiful land beyond Glasgow and Edinburgh… Elgin? You’ve got to wonder about the web presence of our country!

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Made the mistake of going into the office before setting off for today’s meeting in Inveraray. Whilst this meant I was up to date with correspondence, it did mean I was cutting it fine for getting to the meeting on time.

I arrived at the Secondary ICT Coordinators Meeting with only moments to spare, and walked into ‘the stables’ only to find that it wasn’t my meeting in progress. After asking hotel staff where my meeting was in fact taking place I was re-directed to one of the bedrooms in the hotel, where sure enough, our meeting was taking place. Quite a surreal experience, and I can’t help but wonder what they did with the beds?

Anyway, we had a huge discussion on SEEMIS, an even bigger discussion on the ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ and then a very quick fill-in by me on curricular activities. At each meeting I am more and more convinced that I am not spending enough of my time out in schools, with teachers, looking at ICT in teaching and learning. I am also more and more convinced that we have far too many meetings where this very subject ought to be the absolute focus of events, but gets buried under a mountain of bureaucracy. One of our HTs once said to me that we are chronically over-managed – I know exactly what they mean. We seem to spend more time generating and completing forms than actually educating.

I suppose the problem is that the bureaucracy is important, as it is how we reach consensus and develop new ideas for progress. Oh well…

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I spent almost all of today in Rhu Primary school. Rhu have been taking part in a project with Learning & Teaching Scotland called ‘Scottish Schools Get Online’. On Friday of this week, there is a national conference at which the school are speaking, so I was spending some time with them today to offer some assistance in whatever way I could.

First of all, the staff deserve a huge round of applause. They have already achieved a great deal in such a short period of time. It is refreshing to see the classes offering ideas and material to go online, and the work Doreen and others have done is to be commended – I know it has been a lot of work.

They have been using a product called ‘Take to the web’ to create their site. I must admit, when I first saw this, I was really concerned at how much it might stifle creativity, and I balk at any web authoring tool that forces the uninitiated to write in html, but if I have learnt anything today, it is that give people the tools they will get on with the job.

Getting online will be difficult for many. No matter which way you look at it, it is really time consuming.

The hardest thing of all for our staff to come to terms with regarding the web is the change in focus having a website will create in school. All of a sudden, there is another means of displaying the work undertaken by pupils.

From what I have seen and heard, the pupils love working on this project. We need to have the pupils involved. I have seen far too many school websites where the pupils have hardly even been consulted. Pupils need to take ownership of the school website.

Want to see what they have achieved? Click here to visit the site. Don’t forget, it’s a work in progress, as all websites should be.

This evening was a twilight session on using the web – I’ve now given myself a deadline to have the ‘Web Literacy’ section of my site finished. Roll on Christmas!

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Three times now over the last two years I have lost control momentarily of my car – all three of which owing to terrible, adverse weather conditions. It is a very disconcerting experience, as the dashboard springs to life with warning lights once the onboard computer realises it is no longer in control of the motion of the vehicle. The car manufacturer calls this the ‘Dynamic Stability Control’ which if you stop and think about it is quite a worrying inclusion – as in actual fact, you are never really in control of the vehicle at all. All you are doing is steering. I drive the car in blissful ignorance however, as I unwittingly trust the constant calculations of the onboard computer.

Today I had a great conversation with Graham Dickie, one of the Masterclass members in Argyll & Bute. One of the topics of discussion was how to engage with members of staff that are fearful of technology. I know Graham is very interested in methodology that may help to tackle this situation.

How do we cure the fear of so many to use technology in the classroom? How do we make some teachers leap the digital divide between those that use technology and those that don’t?

Alan November describes a digital divide very well – the students that we teach have always grown up in a world of digital technology – he calls them digital natives. Those that remember a time before digital technology he calls digital immigrants. How do digital immigrants cross the divide? By being fearless learners. It is easy to say this, but let’s think about it – what’s the worst thing that could happen? We make a mistake? In these instances, there is an ‘undo’ button.

How we become fearless learners, and how we learn how to trust are the real questions. Every so often, there will be moments when the computer will cause us to worry – it is in these moments that we need the confidence to know how to make the right decisions.

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Today I joined an S1 class in Hermitage Academy for a maths lesson. Margaret Ferguson has been trying out an ACTIVote set for me with some of her classes, and today I got to see it in action. Or almost in action.

The class were brilliant, and Margaret is an excellent teacher. A good thing too, as now seems to be a recurring issue with Promethean technology in this blog it didn’t work as seamlessly as I would have hoped. Quite an admin task to get the class assigned to devices in the first place as some pupils were off, but once this was sorted out the pupils worked really well with them – what let things down was the Promethean software. The flipchart with the questions in it wouldn’t stop advancing at one point, and the pre-prepared content for Maths was inaccurate.

Aside from the problems, what did I think? The voting devices are a great idea, but I worry about whether they are a gimmick or not. The ability to see how pupils have answered immediately is fantastic, and you would otherwise never have access to this data, but creating questions is a very time consuming task for teachers that are far too busy already. Bearing in mind their price, I’m not sure at the moment they are what our schools need – unless it is a school that is already well served with technology anyway. That said, the pupils loved them, so the impact on their motivation is significant.

I keep struggling with this issue though – the Promethean software is brilliant, and when the technology works it is first class. You’ve got to wonder how many ‘second’ chances I give this though – plug in a SMART Board and it works first time.

Thanks Margaret – strange though it was being back in my old school, and even more nerve-wracking to be answering maths questions, today was a good day.

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I was right to be concerned. Having a website is a huge commitment for any school. Managing and updating a website is a time consuming activity. Gathering resources is an activity for everyone in the school, but the hardest thing about having a website will be changing attitudes.

At the moment, aside from the obvious intellectual development of our students, the majority of work undertaken by pupils in school will either end up marked by the teacher, assessed by their peers, or on display on the classroom (or corridor) walls. Having a website adds another tier onto this list, but it is a broad tier. Displaying pupils work on a website shares achievement far beyond the classroom walls. Using blogs, people can comment on the work. Whilst that may be a scary or problematic issue, it opens up a whole chapter on motivation – were I a pupil today, I would be far more motivated to work for the web than I would be to work for the teacher. Not all pupils would be like this, but as teachers it is our job to utilise as many means as possible to assist the intellectual and social development of our pupils.

In all of this we should never forget there is still a digital divide – not everyone has a computer, let alone internet access.

The folks who attended the Dreamweaver course today really enjoyed it – BUT – it is far too much to achieve on one day. Most of the day was spent thinking about what a website is, why a school would want one, who would be involved in its production and maintenance and how it would be structured. Without addressing these fundamental questions, it isn’t even worth switching the computer on in the first place. Only then did we sit down in the afternoon to look at Dreamweaver, which meant little time to look at what is a huge program. Next year, it clearly needs to be run over two days – day one being ‘what is a website’ and ‘what would I put in it’, and day two being ‘how do I make it’.

You live and learn.

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