Finally got around to uploading the Scottish version of ‘Did You Know: Shift Happens’ to Slideshare - please feel free to use/adapt/share!

Today I took part in a CPDCentral/CPDReflect workshop with CPD coordinators from some of the local authorities around Glasgow. This was the fourth of a series of workshops abley led by Con Morris of the National CPD Team.

So what was I doing there you might ask?

In order to answer that, I’ll need to tell you a bit more about CPD Central and the newly developed tool CPD Reflect.

CPD Central is a National Group inside Glow for anyone that is interested in CPD. It’s an area to share and make connections across local authorities. I had the pleasure of doing a demonstration of Glow and an introduction to this online community for those present at the session. What interests me most about this community however is not merely that it exists, but how it’s being developed. You see CPD Central is not being managed or administered from on high, but rather the members are deciding what they want to do with the space. To me, that screams collegiality and community.

I wonder if people are ready for that though? All too often in Scottish education we seem to have a ‘what can I get’ mentality when faced with using technology. Where does an online community begin? Does it start with ‘what can I give’ or ‘what’s in it for us’?

The second tool that we were looking at in the workshop sessions was CPD Reflect. I remember sitting down with Con a couple of years ago as he started to gather opinion and advice about what a reflective online CPD tool could be, and we spoke at length about how beneficial an reflective journal could be to a practitioner, and how valuable it would be to have a tool that allowed a practitioner to judge their own development against the standard for professional registration.Two years later, CPD Reflect is about to be launched on a unsuspecting nation of educators.

Off the bat I love the whole concept of CPD Reflect. I think it’s great that there is now a tool to help in the whole CPD/PRD process, and make it far more meaningful for those involved, instead of the ‘tick the box’ exercise I fear it is for so many in scottish education. I love the fact that using this tool, you can personally set targets an objectives for improvement in areas of your professional practice and let technology do what it does best - collate, track and share. How brilliant is it that this tool allows you to share what you want from your own area of CPD Reflect with others of your choosing?

Does this all sound too good to be true? I suspect there has to be a catch - I don’t know if teachers will have time to get the best out of this tool. It takes time to fill in sections of information. You’d have to commit to this tool to realise the benefits. Do teachers have time to do this in an already busy working day?

How often do we merely choose a CPD activity because we saw something we liked in a local authority calendar, or because it related to the school development plan? How closely do either of these factors relate to our own professional needs for development? CPD Reflect allows us to flip this model on it’s head, and focus instead on our needs for development. It allows us to recognise areas where we are merely beginning to adopt good practice, or integrate it into our working life. Perhaps the tools best strength lies in the ability to note not just where we are integrating, but where we are innovating in our work - connecting innovators with beginnners could work wonders on our profession.

CPD Reflect will be available soon through Glow - watch the CPD Scotland and Glow Scotland websites for further details.

I’m sitting in the ‘classroom’ in LTS attending the ‘Inspiration’ sessions that Ewan McIntosh organises for us. (I can see a few bloggers infront of me - John Johnston, Neil Winton, David Noble, Mike Coulter, Bill Boyd), David Gilmour, Tess Watson) Today we’re looking at Hans Rosling and how much your presentation style says about your content. He makes statistics seem sexy - if you haven’t seen the presentation, then watch it below:

How often have you seen someone presenting data or text in a presentation in a visually poor way? A picture says a thousand words.

The tool that Hans Rosling uses is gapminder - a collection of tools that makes presenting data visual.

Ewan has asked us to work in a groups to identify what makes his presentation good, and what could have been done more effectively - here are some of the suggestions from the room:

Good?

Enthusiasm, humour, passion, approachable rapport, software (use of graphics and animation), multimedia, leading up to a punchline, (free up your data), telling a story (health not wealth), we shouldn’t generalise about areas of the world, supported metaphor, software enhanced what he was saying, cultural metaphor (day at the races) - who’s in the lead, he knew his presentation (software and subject matter) expertly, few words or bullet points,

What could be done more effectively?

Very fast in his delivery (Ewan noted his pace a positive pace), too long, quite often had his back to the audience, quite political in points?

We then had a quick look at Steve Jobs presentation style. Why is Steve Jobs a good presenter? He tells stories really well. Fairy stories - triumvirate colons - repetition - using transitions at the right place (transitions are best used when you make a transition in the points you are making)

Are we good at admitting where we’re not doing well? Or are facing challenges?

We had a quick look at probably the most famous speech in history - ‘I have a dream‘ - did you know it’s 12 minutes before MLK utters his famous phrase?

Compare presentation styles - Steve Balmer - look how animated he is, and how often he says the same thing over and over again. He is a classic example of how not to present!

Ewan then asked us to spend time on a presentation that we give. He gave us a few tips to think about presentation styles - pecha kucha, 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font), Flickr for images, zamzar for grabbing video to use in a location where we cannot access video, splashr, or piclens to mix your presentation up. Bring along a real live example - Jill Bolte Taylor - her example is quite extreme!) - rehearse your key points if you are speaking, rehearse the entire thing if you are presenting, always ask to use your own laptop, get a roving mic. Numerous good points for us to consider!

Ewan has provided all the links used today over on the connected live site.

Just a quick note to say I’m away from the next couple of weeks - we’re going camping in the highlands, so fingers crossed for good weather!

I’m overjoyed to announce that the GlowScotland site changed to have a new look today - why not head over and check it out?

Big changes on the site - now it’s easy to keep up to date with what’s happening in each local authority, easy to get up to speed with how to use Glow, easy to find out what you need to do to prepare for Glow and easy to find out where to get help and support.

Anne, Rebecca and the rest of the team have moved mountains on this new site, so my personal thanks for all their incredible hard work. It’s brilliant to see us having integrated a huge variety of media/solutions into the one website - flash, camtasia, google maps, blog and… wait for it… RSS.

Yep - that’s right folks. You can now subscribe to the news being added on a regular basis to the glowscotland site. Better still, the ‘news’ and ‘glow in your area’ elements of the site are built on wordpress technology, so why not join in the conversation?

A little bit late in sharing this news with you all due to ill health, but I was recently interviewed for the post of Glow Development Manager at Learning & Teaching Scotland and was the successful candidate!

It’s a great time to be changing my role from Glow Development Officer to the manager of the team, as we now really begin to enter the most exciting phase of the development of Glow in my opinion. Beyond the initial phases (that others can speak of far more eloquently than I), the most recent phase that we have been focusing on could be categorised as ‘Rollout’, as we work with local authorities in the process of signing the customer agreement and planning the initial training of their central staff and their mentors. Whilst this phase continues for the remaining local authorities we are working with at this stage, our attention can now shift to the next phase, which is the one that arguably the team are most passionate about. Ask anyone involved in Glow why they do the job they do, invariably the answer will be something akin to ‘making significant change in the learning experience of our students’, or ‘providing greater opportunity for our learners using technology’ - the phase we enter now has this as its focus.

Two key points classify this next phase of Glow development - ‘uptake and usage’ and ‘benefits realisation’. These two key points are inextricably linked, and provide the answer to the question ‘why should I use Glow’. Both points are huge areas in themselves, but I’ll return to discuss them in the not too distant future.

photocredit - biology big brother.

Last night we watched the Imagine programme on BBC 1 all about Anthony Minghella. One quote stayed with me since the programme, as Alan Yentob sat in discussion with Ralph Fiennes - Fiennes said that the one thing that stood out for him about Minghella as a director was that he wasn’t afraid of saying “I’m not sure”. This phrase would be closely followed by “but let’s find out”.

How often in education do we as teachers shy away from this phrase? It’s all too easy to adopt the role of the teacher that is resolute in their certainty, but perhaps the best thing a student can learn is that we can all learn, irrespective of our role.

I think I like Minghella’s phrase, and I would certainly place myself in the camp of not being afraid of saying “I’m not sure”. In the ever changing world of ICT, I think that’s a good standpoint to take - especially when “but let’s find out” closely follows not being sure.

Certainty can be a hugely valuable asset, but on occasion admitting uncertainty and then collaborating with your peers could make a team stronger, and achieve an objective more expeditiously.

Imagecredit: robonline.

On Sunday I was introduced by my nephew to GoGo’s. (If you’re reading this and have no idea what a GoGo is, then check out this video)

Forgive a moment of negativity, but I suspect that a number of school teachers may start to clamp down on kids bringing them to school, playing with them or trading them. If you’re a teacher and are thinking about trying to win back your kids attention, then have a wee think about turning interest in GoGo’s to your advantage…

In the sticker album that goes with GoGo’s, there are a number of activities that you could use them for. One of the activities involved throwing 5 GoGo’s in the air, and depending upon how they land you got a certain score. A nice simple bit of mental maths that is guaranteed to get your GoGo addicted pupils paying attention!

UPDATE: Add to that times tables? GoGo’s come in packets of three, so my nephew is now well versed in his three times table.

Seriously, remember how we used to view images and videos from search results before PicLens?

(I know probably everyone knows about this already, but I just can’t contain myself about its brilliance!)

Is this the largest staffroom in Scotland? We think it just might be. The national staffroom in Glow potentially connects every member of staff in education in the country in one place.

Maybe you want to ask a colleague a question, but they work in another establishment. Or maybe you want somewhere to tell the best joke you’ve ever heard, or advertise to sell your caravan. Whatever.

At the moment, it’s a bit of a blank canvas. But we’d love you to shape it into whatever you want it to be - after all, it’s a national staffroom. Why not drop by and tell us all what you’d like to see?

Photocredit: staff only and crowd.