When it goes this quiet, there has to be a reason, so my apologies to my regular readers for the lack of info. I have been very busy and then ill – hence the lack of posting.

These have all been posted at the same time, but I have split them up into their respective elements for those that like to be so ordered in life (and before anyone [Nicola] comments about OCD…)

Today was a couple of meetings in Stirling. I am on a CPD working group for the SSDN Mentor remit, but before this meeting began I had the opportunity to discuss the work Con Morris and the CPD team at LT Scotland have been doing, and are planning, or considering. I love meetings like this. It is great to hear peoples’ ideas, and it is always encouraging to hear people thinking holistically about the benefits technology can bring to our profession. Con did send me the concept maps he has been developing, and I’m still mulling them over. CPD is of huge interest to me, and it is definitely something I will be returning to discuss further.

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The day before the Samsung Q1 is released in the UK I find this – I know I get criticised for not being able to see past Sony, but in my opinion that’s because they know how to design.

If this is their first serious attempt at the UMPC market, then I for one can’t wait to see v2.

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Today was our annual Masterclass conference in Argyll & Bute. This one was tinged with a bit of sadness for me, as it was our last Masterclass conference. We have decided that from next session we will only be supporting one ICT team, and that will be the SSDN Mentors.

John opened the day by recapping on the activities of Masterclass over the years. We then asked the Masterclass members in groups to think about the ‘good points’ and ‘bad points’ about Masterclass. In no particular order, here goes:

Good Points

• Personal networking – making good personal links between primary & secondary staff in the Masterclass group
• Exchanging ideas – great having like-minded people to share things with
• New technology – a good opportunity to try new software and hardware
• It has been a great impetus to learn new skills
• Meeting others
• Support from others
• Attending SETT in Glasgow
• Resources given to Masterclass members and gained through folio submissions
• Tutoring ICT courses both locally and centrally
• ‘Eolas’ forum (for readers outside A&B, Eolas is our public folder system where Masterclass have a private discussion area.)
• Gained in confidence and given confidence to others
• Created good links in places between primary/secondary
• SETT in Argyll & Bute

Bad Points

• Finding time to go on courses & take training etc
• Trying to encourage colleagues in using ICT is often really difficult
• Microsoft Academy – difficult to encourage folk especially sitting exams
• Lack of understanding/info from SMT
• Difference between remits in SMT – CPD coordinator is not often the ICT coordinator resulting in difficulties
• Lack of SMT support/interest in some cases – can have a knock-on effect to other staff in the school
• CPD has not been standard across the authority and between Masterclass members experiences – payment issue
• Eolas is not great as it is at the moment
• Lack of opportunity to go to national Masterclass events
• Initiatives started but not continued – for example Macromedia Breeze
• Time
• Communication with Head Teachers – more push needed from above in the authority?
• SSDN CPD on top of ‘normal’ ICT CPD? – this could be a lot to ask of Mentors
• Central training & technical support – software not on machines
• Masterclass online community – same people all the time contributing

One comment fitted in to both good and bad areas – Support – from Head Teacher level & centrally from ICT staff

It was a great opportunity to hear all of these comments. I’m a firm believer in trying to ensure that everyone is as informed as possible, so it is always good to be given feedback where we have done well, and also where we need to try harder – I think we have all learned today.

The rest of the morning was a presentation from Neil Stewart of RM. Neil is our Educationalist, and gave us all an update on progress on the SSDN. It is very easy to forget that the last time most Masterclass members saw anything SSDN was at SETT in September – so much has developed since then so thanks to Neil for this input today – I think the questions asked showed how enthusiastic about the SSDN we are and how keen we are to see it’s potential realised.

After lunch, the focus of the day was on what a SSDN Mentor will be. We had a look at the online Mentor pack (sorry everyone!), and then split into groups to examine four questions – the results are shown in mind maps – 1. What should the residential training consist of? 2. Which models of training do we find most effective? 3. How would we support colleagues? 4. How would we roll out training?

My thanks to everyone for their contribution today, and for all your hard work over the last 3-4 years. It’s been quite a journey.

It seems strange to think of moving on from Masterclass – I’d love to hear what people think?

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To be honest, if you’d have asked me in October if I would have ever made it to 100 posts, I would probably have said “I doubt it”.

But here I am today, typing number 100.

Thanks to all of you that read, and all of you that have commented. I really do appreciate it.

As a token of my appreciation, here is a wee surprise – http://ssdn.ea.argyll-bute.sch.uk

What good is a blog if you can’t blow a launch early? This goes live next Monday.

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The following is an extract from Andy Watson’s blog in Aberdeen. If you haven’t read it already (and you really should have!) read on…

Can you help?

Some primary 7 pupils in Aberdeen have been posting stories and poems on their blog. They would like to have more comments from other schools.

If you go to http://www.abernet.org.uk/wp/ you’ll see the Primary 7 blogs.

As you’ll see, some stories don’t have any comments at all so if your pupils can spare the time to add comments they’d be much appreciated.

If you would like our children to comment on your blogs, just ask.

Looking forward to reading your comments.

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Having now had a train journey to think about some of the things I have learned over the last three days, I have decided to create for myself a stretch-goal. This really comes out of my thoughts after leaving the Scotedublogs meet-up last night. It is quite a simple stretch-goal in concept, and I’m going to give it my best shot. It is also in a really small way inspired by the ‘one red paperclip’ idea we all heard about from Will yesterday.

There are 118 days from now until the next Scotedublogs meet-up at SETT ‘06. My stretch–goal is therefore to have encouraged 118 different people to start a blog before then. Bearing in mind there are weekends and holidays in there too, I may have my work cut out for me.

To track this stretch-goal in some way, I’ve created a ‘118′ wiki.

Here goes.

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This is conference season for this traveller form the west coast, so today I spent my third day in a row in the capital going to the SCHOLAR conference in Herriot Watt University.

When I got on the bus this morning, who walked on but Iain McLean, whose wedding Nicola and I are going to on Saturday – talk about a strange coincidence! It’s a small world.

Other than that, today hasn’t really started out all that well. To my disgust, you have to pay for wifi at Herriot Watt University – compare this to the last two free, open access days in Murrayfield, and you wonder where progress is being made… obviously I won’t be blogging this live then.
Also, I was handed a 128MB flash disc upon registration – sitting here waiting for the conference to begin, I have put it in my computer to see what is on it – nothing. I don’t know about you, but if I was going to the expense of giving every delegate this type of device, then I would make sure there was some promotional material on it. How to inspire confidence, eh? (Note: After just having a wee chat with the folk at registration, it now turns out that it is possible to put all the material produced by SCHOLAR on a 128MB key – what a wasted opportunity!)

Welcome – Prof Cliff Beavers
(What happened to Prof John Simmons?)
6th annual conference – “a good example to true educational collaboration”
Emphasis on ‘e’ for excellence and ‘e’ for electronic. Yesterday Will Richardson remarked that there already is an ‘e’ in ‘learning’ – I can’t help but think about this.

Introduction – Prof Philip John
Importance of staff development – therefore feedback from all of us is vital.
Development of SCHOLAR costs £100K per annum
What do you get for your money? 24/7 delivery of content, e-assessment etc
This year the site gets 4 million hits – I wonder how many of them have been from Argyll & Bute? Are we getting value for money?
Delivers content to over 50% of the students nationally that are taking courses.
This year development is business management, skills of work courses and languages – Higher French, Higher/Advanced Higher Spanish, German, Gaelic
2006 – 7 Advanced Highers, 8 Highers, 2007 – 7Advanced Highers, 10 Highers, 2 Intermediate 2
Affecting performance – the information given for this was a bit sceptical – number of hits? What about quality of experience/length of visit – click throughs – what about plagiarism?

Recent Developments – Mr Gerry Toner
Biology, Chemistry, Computing, Information Systems, Mathematics, development of the Virtual Learning Environment – an e-portfolio, Assessment is for Learning, Personal Learning Planning, Management Issues

Workshop 1 – Jim McGill – Management issues in e-learning
The purpose of this session is to introduce the management pack – had I known this I would possibly have chosen a different session. After all, I could read the pack myself, and it was published in 2004.
There can be a 2-3 year lead in to change in pedagogy
Why am I sitting here troubled by the fact that they give out ppt files as exemplar lessons to teachers! AARRGGH!
Is it a real change moving from an OHP to a data projector? “Well, not really” – God help us – a data projector can change everything in the way we present information in the classroom!
“They know quite a lot, our pupils” – I would argue that some of our pupils know way more than that – and that’s not a bad thing. How often do we encourage them to share this in the classroom?
“There couldn’t be a better way to use ICT in the classroom in my opinion – it has formative assessment built in right from the beginning” – great that it has formative assessment, but there are plenty of better things out there…
Is this good value for money? Are pupils using this well?

I’m now losing the will to live, as he is talking through a pdf document on screen to us – he did say some other things after this, but this involved talking through a ppt. Cutting edge, eh?
(I’ve now read through this prior to posting, and although I could tone this down, and make it more flattering or pleasing, I have left it as I wrote it – this costs 32 local authorities a lot of money – personally, I expect value)

Workshop 2 – Brian Dickson – e-portfolio – in development
Simplified e-portfolio – they wanted one to be as simple as possible. This is a work in progress, so in no way complete yet.
Access is through a pupil interface or a teacher interface.
Each kid has what’s called ‘My Own Space’ – files, folders – whatever they want. Further to this, they have a ‘Subject’ area – this contains any assigned homework, ‘revision’ notes/tools that they have found and effectively bookmarked and their ‘workspace’ – where the teacher can assign work to the kids
This is all powered by product called ‘openkast’
Good integration with the revision planner, discussion board and the results database already present in SCHOLAR.
My thoughts? The first gentleman who asked a question summed it up in my mind – his question was “Why? SSDN is going to provide much of this functionality”
I asked whether a teacher could see what they kids have bookmarked as useful resources to help them study – the answer was no. I also asked whether the kids could give out their e-portfolio url to people to go and look at – the answer was no – it exists beyond the password protected login.
What a colossal waste of time and money – SSDN will be giving many of these facilities, and what is the point of a portfolio if you can’t show it to anyone?
(is my cynicism growing throughout the day???)

Workshop 3 – Visions of the future – Mark Pendleton
(Mark, one of your own quotes sums up your presentation – Et la lumière fut – and then there was light – well done!)
Mark started out by saying to us all “Make sure your mobile phone is switched on!”

And now for a quick Japanese lesson -
Hajimemashite – nice to meet you
watashi wa Andrew des – my name is Andrew
yoroshiku onegaishimasu – please be nice to me from now on
douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu – please, please be nice to be from now on

Look how much technology has changed
Mark spoke about the divide between adults and kids – digital natives/immigrants
One question – what are the students like that we were taught to teach?
Language zone – password protected safe environment
Mark is learning how to speak Mandarin by only using online materials – he is keeping a blog of this here.
Also, as a breath of fresh air, Mark had brought a pupil with him today to give us her opinion on all of this. Despite being doubtful at first, “I think that anything’s possible using technology” – Lesley, Kilmarnock Academy.
Mark finsihed with a wonderful quote: “We have to engage the learner, value their tools and be open to their world”
A brief discussion was then had about making use of mobile phones to send txt messages to pupils.
‘textanywhere.net’ – facility to send group texts.
(That was a fabulous session – go Mark! – great also to put a face to a name)

So my thoughts – SCHOLAR is stuck in the past. The best thing about the day was something that didn’t actually refer to SCHOLAR at all – it was the work being done by the PiE project.

I don’t think it holds water as an argument to be happy that people are using pre-prepared PowerPoint presentations, before they begin to try other technologies. If we followed that one through, then we would all still be learning ‘BBC Basic’ before we move on to other things. The most important thing here is how engaging are we making our subject? In the secondary context, we all have degrees in our specific subject area – what is it about our subject that ignites our intellectual passion? If we can’t convey this, then please don’t look to SCHOLAR for inspiration – try the blogosphere and see what people are saying about your subject.

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Tonight we had the ‘Scotedublogs Meet-up’ after eLive ‘06 had finished. It was a brilliant experience putting faces and personalities to names, so thanks everyone for a great evening. Here’s looking forward to the next one (which, I believe is to be at SETT)

Blog on!

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The read only web is 12 years old – read/write is 3 years old
www.technorati.com – the place to search what’s on blogs

The web is all about connections – rss – real simple syndication
This technology makes information much more accessible. Instead of you having to go and find the information, it brings the content to you

Feeds and aggregators
Feeds only bring you new content – the aggregator collects the feeds
Rss gives us more content and more control – will this take over email? Possibly – there is no spam with rss – you only subscribe to what you want to read, watch or hear.
Look for the xml button or type in a search engine ‘website + rss’
This will take you to an xml page, and then copy the link location. This means you have found the feed from the site.

With the feed found, you then need an aggregator – www.bloglines.com
Click the ‘sign up now its free’ button in the middle of the screen.
Limit the number of things you subscribe to! You can get overwhelmed – initially, it is a good idea to not go above subscribing to 25 feeds.
One thing you notice with this new technology is that conversations become very disparate – not the linear method of conversation that we have been used to. For example, the blog author can make a post. Someone may post a comment on that blog, and a conversation begins. Someone else may however ‘quote’ the blog in their own blog, and a second conversation thread emerges. Without an aggregator, it would be impossible to track these conversations, let alone follow them.
You can also create a search feed! For example, go to a news search engine – search for what you want – click the rss and you are subscribing to only what people are writing about – even if they haven’t written it already (wow! Think about it…)
In technorati, you can subscribe to what people have had to say – add to watchlist – at the bottom then click the rss feed link. By doing this, you can follow what other people are saying about you and your posts!

Social Bookmarking
(I’m afraid I’ve just left this as notes – sorry! I will come back to social bookmarking soon though, honest!)
Highlighting the information on the blog before clicking the delicious tag will use the highlighted text as the ‘notes’
Furl.net saves a picture of the page as well as the text
Students can subscribe to a folder that you categorise – then they automatically get told in their aggregator about things that you find specifically for them!
Usng Flickr.com I can subscribe to someone’s photos – and start a discussion with them if I want? I can subscribe to keywords as well.
‘Netvibes’ and ‘pageflakes’ are aggregators that create a homepage just out of rss feeds

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John talked us through what he has been doing with blogs & technology.

Great to hear that sometimes they sit around a whiteboard and blog their functional writing. Brilliant also to hear that he only has 2 computers in his classroom connected to the internet – he doesn’t have every kid sitting in front of a machine!

Reinforcement of learning. A sense of audience – it’s not just writing for their teacher.
When looking at their blog, you could see the pupils that had a comment ‘visibly growing’ – lovely image – doesn’t it just make you feel proud to be involved in education?

You don’t always need to have up-to-date technology – the Netherlands blog was written up on the bus by hand by the kids on paper and then typed up later on in the evening and posted – it doesn’t take long!

Twin Castles post – seeing the discussion that comments create.

Scobies – amazing to see that if you spell this incorrectly (as the kids did in this case), it comes 3rd in Google – the discussion this generated was incredible because of this.

A wee mention of the Travelling Teddies blog in Argyll & Bute! If you haven’t seen this, then check out what Morag MacDonald, Marlyn Moffat and the children of Castlehill and Tighnabruaich primaries have been doing.

The pupils are aware of the responsibility of blogging. They know not to write in txt language.

Just a wee plug – click the ‘record an audio comment button’ on the Radio Sandaig website – after listening to the podcast, you can leave a message for the pupils at Sandaig – no-one has yet – you could be the first!

John described this as ‘Stealth education’ – they don’t realise they are learning, as it is so much fun.

‘Word of the month’ – what a brilliant idea for a website – also, great to see the difference in Kimberley’s voice over the year – so much more confident and able.

A school in South Carolina writing a play based on the poems that the pupils in Sandaig wrote. They then made puppets and sent them in a big box to Sandaig. The kids in Sandaig now want to perform the play. How amazing is that!

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