OllieBray.com

#EduPIc11 - An Open Discussion on the Future Scottish Education?

 

As well as being an advocate for on-line CPD and personal learning I also get invited to a lot of face-to-face CPD Events and have the opportunity to contribute to a lot of events as well.  Increasing due to time pressure and other work commitments I have to turn a lot of things down but #EduPIc11 has certainly got my attention. Its taking place in Glasgow on Tuesday 20th September at Oran Mor.

Being organized by two people who I have a great deal of time and respect for Laurie O’Donnell and ‘The Real’ David Cameron and being billed as a fringe to the Scottish Learning Festival I think this will be an event not to be missed.

Laurie describes the event in more detail on his blog.

“The idea of the event is bring together around 100 people to share ideas and have a conversation about Scottish Education that goes beyond the details of how to implement Curriculum for Excellence."

 

The format of the event will be a conversation around three questions:

1) What could Scottish Education look like at its very best? (Re-imagining the future)

2) Where are we now? (Reflecting on the present)

3) What could we do to make it better? (Closing the gap)

 I like the idea of starting the conversation with “What could Scottish Education look like at its very best?” far to often we focus these discussions on what we could do better? Or What we have done wrong?

I’m also a big believer that “we are where we are” and after the Imagineering around the first question about what could Scottish Education look like I hope that the attendees of #EduPic11 will be willing to have an open and honest discussion about where we ‘actually are’ now?

As well as the topic up for discusion the format of #EDPIc11 is very appealing to me as well. It is different to most traditonal conferences and has been designed to maximize active participation from participants. There will be no keynote speakers or roundtable discussions from ‘education experts’ and everyone regardless status will be on an equal footing with all experiences and thoughts both valued and up for discussion.

Finally, I was delighted to see that Graham Ogilvie (the conference cartoonist) and creator of our successful Internet Safety and Responsible Use Cartoons will also be capturing the event - which means at the end of it we should have a Real Education Picture (EduPic) for people to take away and reflect on.

 

Anyway, More information about the event on Laurie’s Blog or you can sign up here on the EventBrite Page (tickets go up by £10 on Tuesday - so book fast!)

And if you are going to #EduPic11 - hope to see you there!

TakingIT Global

I finally got round to reading my August / Sepetember copy of the GTCS Teaching Scotland Magazine today. I was deligted to see a piture of my good friend Mandeep Atwel on the Microsoft feature on page 23 talking about TakingITGlobal (who she now works full time for).

TakingITGlobal.org is a social network that connects people (aged 13 - 30 and their teachers) to the global issues that affect us all. It enables a collaborative learning community which provides young people with access to global opportunities, cross-cultural connections and meaningful participation in decision-making.

If you have not heard of TakingITGlobal.org there website is worth checking out as it offers awide range of opertunities to support Global Citizenship Education.

You can read an online version of the GTCS article here on the Teaching Scotland website.

Digital Technology Children and Young People - Edinburgh University [presentation]

I recently spoke at Edinburgh University on the subject of Digital Technology Children and Young People.I promiced I would post the slides and notes - sorry its taken a bit longer than I expected!

The slides that I used during the presentation can be found here:

Digital Technology Children and Young People

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

Some of the points that I covered were:

1. The world is constantly evolving

The world is changing. We still do the same things but technology allows us to do thing in different ways. This is true in work play and education.

The two examples I used to illustrate this were:

i) Alice in Wonderland the book, Alice in wonderland available on the Nintendo DS and Alice in Wonderland for the Apple iPad.

The text is the same in all three versions so it still promotes literacy and reading but the delivery mechanism is different. Some will say the ‘text’ is more engaging on the iPad, some will say there is nothing like flicking through the pages of a paper novel and I would say it doesn’t make any difference at all it’s the same thing and we should allow choose how they want to engage with the ‘text’ if they want to engage with it at all.

ii) Scrabble the board game, scrabble for the Nintendo DS and Seek and Spell for the iPhone.

In all three versions of the above word game the principles are the same. Collect or be given letter to spell words to score points. The task is the same but technology may (or may not add value).

This led into the main theme of the presentation which was change.


2. Changing Young People

  We looked at the Platform 4 Research from Chanel 4 which suggested that in the group of 12 – 24 year olds surveyed:

• They personally own 8 devices (including MP3 player, PC, TV, DVD player, mobile phone, stereo, games console, and digital camera)
• They frequently conduct over 5 activities whilst watching TV
• 25% of them agree that “I’d rather stay at home than go on a holiday with no internet or phone access”
• A quarter of young people interviewed text or IM (instant message) friends they are physically with at the time
• They have on average 123 friends on their social network spaces
• And the first thing the majority of them do when they get home is turn on their PC

We also looked at some Ofcom research which suggests that:

•  84% of children ages between 5 – 15 live in a household with intent access.
• 35% of 11 – 16 year olds have internet access in their bedroom (75% have a games console in their bedroom)
• 66% of 12-15 year olds have a social networking site (19% of 8 – 11 year olds)
• 49% of 12 – 15 year olds use gaming sites at least once a week, 47% of 8 – 11 year olds and 30% of 5-7 year olds

and, finally, some Becta research that states that:

• 99% of 14 year olds use a computer at home, at school or somewhere else (97% of 12 year olds)

I looked at these statistics to try and illustrate and make the following points:

• Lots of young people are connected and have access to the Internet. When consulting with young people you should consider using their technology and ask your questions in the on-line spaces that they occupy. You need to know what and where these spaces are first – they constantly change. We need to gather data at a local, regional and national level.

• Technology is changing youth culture – whether we agree with it or not the mobile phone and the holiday statistic is a good example of this. If we asked the same question 5 years ago the percentage would be a lot less and ten years ago it would have been practically 0%.

• Technology has changed language. The ‘friends’ example is a good illustration of this. Young people do not have the same definition of a ‘friend’ as an adult does. The language that we use when we engage with young people is very important.

• The way that children interact with social networking spaces are changing. Most 5 year olds who currently take part in social networking sites will do so through 3D avatar based environments. They will never grow into ‘text driven’ social networking spaces – why would they want too? This is why safe and responsible use in 3D virtual worlds is one of the key messages that we need to be getting across to children (from the age of 3+)

• Social gaming is on the rise with nearly 73, 000, 000 people using FarmVille in April 2010. More thought needs to go in to how we use games to engage more with young people. The Learning and Teaching Scotland Consolarum is a good example of this.

3. Changing Markets

Next we spent a bit of time looking at changing markets in particular looking at Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon and how strategically they all continue to  move in on each others turf.

The main point of this part of the presentation was to flag up the importance of mobile in emerging markets and how increasingly this will play an important role in the future of socilety.

I also mentioned how young people often use their mobile phone credit as a credit card to buy goods on line. Working with parents and local communities is important to make sure they are aware of such technologies.

4. Changing Technology

  During this section of the presentation we looked at the changing technologies available in schools. In particularly we looked at the balance between the cost of technology and the end benefit to the learner (eg: Interactive whiteboards vs flip video camera).

I showed some examples from the recent RM Strategic Forums and some of the equipment that we now find in schools. In particular, we discussed the important if ICT infastructure to allow students to connect wireless devices to the Internet (phones, iPods, PSPs, netbooks etc…)

Finally, we discussed how technology like voice to text recognition and immersive gaming might have an impact how young people live, learn and play. More on this in a seperate post.

5. Key Skills

This section of the presentation focused on key skills that are required by young people in the 21st Century.

The skills I covered were:

i) Being digitally literate and the ability for young people to be able to evaluate electronic sources.

ii) Privacy and how it doesn’t really exist – I linked this to the importance of digital footprints.

iii) Intellectual property and how it is the oil of the 21st century.

6. Barriers

In the final section of the presentation I talked about barriers to the use of technology and young people.

The barriers I mentioned were:

i) Barrier: Children will misuse technology

Solution: accept that children have always misused technology the key now is (as always) to teach responsible use.

ii) Barrier: Professional development

Solution: Many ICT tools now have a low skills threshold we just need to help practitioners find them. We also need to move to a model of drip feed CPD.

iii) Barrier: Time

Solution: Accept that engaging pedagogy create class time because the classroom teacher is less likely to tied up with low level discipline.

iv) Barrier: It will never happen

Solution: accept that the technology revolution is already happening and has always been happening.

v) Barrier: The digital divide

Solution: Accept that the grass always looks greener and that also the real digital divide is global not local.

7. Feedback

If you were at the presentation please feel free to leave your feedback below or contact me by email (details top right)


 

Twit to woo: how to harness social media (TES article - January 2010)

The TES ICT Guide was published this week and I've got a piece included on social media in schools. It’s already got some positive feedback that I am really pleased about. I’ve copied the article below into this post or you can read it over on the TES web pages – as always any feedback is very welcome.

BETT 2010 - Twit to woo: how to harness social media

News | Published in The TES on 8 January, 2010

There's no time to waste in bringing the social media revolution into the classroom, argues Ollie Bray, a deputy headteacher and national adviser for emerging technologies at Learning and Teaching Scotland

Stephen Fry recently used Twitter to spark a backlash against Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on Stephen Gately's death. He has also used it to announce the demise of his TV programme Kingdom and reveal that he was stuck in a lift.

Barack Obama became the first US president to run a campaign with an integrated web and social-media element.

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media are shaping the daily news agenda for newspapers and news websites.

But can social media have a place in the classroom? You bet.

So what is it? Social media includes online tools such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, YouTube, Bebo and Facebook.

There are literally hundreds of social-media tools available on the web, and many of these are already being used by students at home to network, collaborate and learn. By their very nature, these resources are highly engaging for children and if used appropriately present powerful opportunities for teachers.

Why use social media in the classroom?

There are lots of ways that schools can use social media to enhance learning but perhaps the most obvious is how they can be used to share pupils' work.

All teachers know the impact of a good classroom display, yet how many people have a detailed look at children's work on the walls of a classroom or corridor? The people who really want to look at displays are those personally connected to the children - parents, family and family friends. Yet how often do we let these people into our schools? The web allows us to create a worldwide wall display to exhibit and showcase work to a huge audience.

Blog to provide audiences for students' work

East Lothian Council in Scotland was one of the first UK councils to install a WordPress multi-user blogging platform, making it available for all its 46 schools.

Blogs provide a very quick way to publish content to the web and are very easy to use. If you can send an email and add an attachment, you'll be happy writing a blog.

At Law Primary School, staff wanted to be more innovative in their use of ICT. They created a blog to provide information on school life and to encourage a regular dialogue between families, pupils and teachers. Pupils in the upper primary exhibit work and give an account of their achievements in activities in which they have participated.

The blog also helps parents keep in contact with children who take part in the P7 residential trip and let them know about their daily activities.

When the school was recently inspected, the report said:

"The development and use of the blog has helped to promote pupils' language, ICT and independent learning skills. It has also proved to be a highly effective way of highlighting and celebrating pupils' achievements."

Law also has a blog for its student council (edubuzz.org/blogs/lawschoolcouncil) and pupils upload a weekly audio file giving an update on school life. Such files can include podcasts.

Wiki for cross-curricular collaboration

Wikis are web pages that can be easily edited, the most famous of which is Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia.

When Tom Rae took over as the head of Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh, he noticed the school's Wikipedia entry was outdated and short on hard facts. As he was not sure how to update it, he set his senior students the task of doing it. In just under a week, a group of more than 10 students had researched and rewritten it. They became the first Tynecastle students to be published in Wikipedia. How empowering is that?

YouTube and live video streaming

Saltash.net Community School in Cornwall has really embraced the idea of social media and online audiences. As well as having their own YouTube channel, which features lesson resources, videos and extracurricular material, they regularly use Twitcam (an online tool that lets you turn your Twitter account into a video stream) to broadcast in real time from the school's livestock enclosure.

Musselburgh Grammar School in Scotland has used twitcam  to broadcast a show to classrooms, associated primaries and parents at home. Taking part in activities such as these are important in their own right and simultaneously instil a sense of confidence and responsibility in children. Also, because the pupils know the footage is going to be displayed online or broadcast live, they seem to take more pride in their work.

Gather live data with Twitter

Social-media tools such as Twitter also allow teachers to gather "real data" quickly and efficiently. Last February, I was asked to cover a Year 1 class. It was snowing and there were lots of questions about it. One pupil wanted to know why it was snowing and where else it was snowing in the world. I sent a message out via Twitter asking my personal learning network whether it was snowing in their country. Within 10 minutes, we had more than 20 replies from Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and the US.

Armed with my iPhone, I asked one of the children to plot the responses on a Google Map. We then imported this into Google Earth and overlaid the cloud-cover layer. A great discussion ensued about clouds and weather fronts. What made the lesson special was its social nature - the children were amazed by the number of people willing to share information from around the globe.

Be social

Some school leaders remain wary of using these and other powerful social media tools in the classroom. But as long as they are used appropriately, wikis, blogs, Twitter and the like present no significant risk.

Indeed, many would argue that schools should be making more use of these resources, not only because of their powerful learning applications but also so the school can teach children how to use them in safe and responsible ways.

The latter is hard to do with school firewalls. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency's Think U Know (thinkyouknow.co.uk) website provides advice on using social-networking sites responsibly. Applications such as www.securus-software.com are also available.

THE SOCIAL-MEDIA TOOLBOX

• WordPress - an open-source blogging platform (www.wordpress.org)

• Wikispaces - create, edit and collaborate on your own wiki documents (www.wikispaces.com)

• Flickr - a photo-sharing website (www.flickr.com)

• YouTube - upload and share videos online (www.youtube.com)

• SlideShare - view, upload and share presentations and documents (www.slideshare.net)

• Twitter - a micro-blogging platform for swapping experiences and ideas (www.twitter.com)

TRY IT YOURSELF!

Blogs

Does your school or class have a regularly updated website? If not, why not set one up for the whole school or a year group or class? It's easy to do, using blogging tools such as WordPress, Blogger or TypePad.

You could start by creating a blog for a school trip, so parents can keep in touch and leave comments while you're away.

Wikis

Does your school have a Wikipedia entry? Is it a real reflection of your school? Could it be improved?

Anyone can edit Wikipedia. You could use it as a powerful learning opportunity and get your school published in the largest encyclopedia in the world.

Social-media savvy schools and councils:

• East Lothian Council (edubuzz.org)

• Law Primary School (edubuzz.org/blogs/law)

• Musselburgh Grammar School (www.mgsonline.org.uk)

• Saltash.net Community School (www.saltash.net)

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

• Wikipedia social media article (http://bit.ly/16SPG)

• Social media in plain English video (http://bit.ly/QliUq)

• Social media revolution video (http://bit.ly/qCmT8)

Consolarium (Games Based Learning Podcast) Podcast

I work as part of the Consolarium Project at Learning and Teaching Scotland. The Consolarium is the Scottish Centre of Games Based Learning and Innovation in Education.

During the first few months of 2010 we will be bringing a few new services on-line that we hope will better support the games based  learning community in Scotland and beyond.

The first of these will be a bi-weekly podcast recorded by the Consolarium team. We had a lot of great fun recording the first one a few weeks ago and have the outlines drawn out for the next few episodes.

The outline of the podcasts will follow a similar format for each episode where we will discuss some of the work that we are doing or plan to do over the next few weeks, we will have a feature piece where we will speak to one of the classroom teachers or school leaders involved in one of our games based learning projects and finally in AOCBGBL (Any Other Competent Business Game Based Learning) we will share a couple resources that we have recently found that might be of interest to other professionals.

Why not listen to the first podcast here and consider subscribing to future episodes.

Personal and Professional Review for 2009

It’s the time of year when I look back over my learning log to see what I’ve achieved during the last 12 months. As with most years I’ve probably achieved a bit more than most people, but a bit less than I should have. Overall though, despite a few ups downs down I think it’s been a pretty good year, not quite a vintage but a pretty good year all the same!

Here are a few aspects from the last year that really stuck out:

Work

I continued to work as Depute Head Teacher at Musselbugh Grammar School until 1st April 2009. Since then I’ve been seconded to Learning and Teaching Scotland as National Advisor for Emerging Technologies for Learning.  I started this role as part of the Glow Team but have since been transferred to the Consolarium project whilst maintaining a cross-organization portfolio for social media and advice on new technologies for teaching and learning.

I miss the buzz of the grammar school in particular working with the young people and the staff. I also miss being more distant from the East Lothian learning community. I don’t miss the Thursday morning senior leadership team meetings.

I am really enjoying my current remit in particular working with such a talented bunch of people. We work hard, spend a lot of time away from home, travel miles but have great fun. I am also enjoying being given the opportunity to contribute to policy advice and being consulted on a number of aspects of the Scottish Curriculum reform.

I’ve cut back on a lot of the external work over 2009 to concentrate on my new day job. But I did managed to deliver a couple of consultancy projects near the beginning of the year which have included:

• BBC New Lives New landscapes – was really pleased how these TV programmes turned out. I was the principal consultant and I think we managed to finally make ‘Industry Interesting’ again! I was particularly pleased with the Dundee programme that looks at the computer games industry.

• DoBe Teach IT – I was the main author on this resource contributing to the Google Earth, Best of the Web and Images section of the pack. I heard its now in over 500 schools across the UK which is something to be proud of.

• Microsoft InnoVids – After the Microsoft Summer School. I produced a few videos looking at the creative use of Microsoft Office in the classroom. A full range of the videos will be available at BETT 2010.

• CfE Social Subjects Textbooks – When I have had the chance I’ve been writing and editing resources for Hoddar Gibson (more on this in the new year) - the deadline is the 5th January!

Academic

I finished my Scottish Qualification for Headship in June and continue to do bits of work for the University of Edinburgh on the PGDE Geography Course including student observations.

It’s also been great to also be able to contribute to the BEd Primary Programme at Edinburgh University and work with PGDE Secondary Students at the University of Strathclyde.

Education Innovation

I’ve established some good relations with Microsoft over 2009 in particular the Innovative Teachers Network. I’ve visited Reading, Vienna and Brazil promoting the value of games based learning and other new technology in schools.

Since starting my secondment I have had an opportunity to engage with hundreds of teachers from around the UK and further afield. Specific highlights include:

• Computer Games in Schools: NAACE Strategic Conference.

• Personal Learning Networks: at the Scottish International Summer School on School Leadership.

• Accelerated Leadership - How do we develop motivated school leaders?: at the Scottish Learning Festival.

• Social Media in Schools: at the Handheld Learning Festival, London.

• Geography: Past, Present and Future Keynote Presentation: at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers Annual Conference.

• Literacy, ICT and CfE: at Drummond Community High School.

• The use of Mobile Devices on Expeditions: at the Royal Geographical Society London.

• Curriculum for Excellence, Science, Change and New Technologies: at SSERC Conference.

• Using computer games as a context for learning and social interaction: at the K-12 Online Conference.

Professional Development

My main professional development comes from my personal learning network in particular twitter and my RSS Reader.

I have also been lucky enough to attend a number of conferences and Teachmeet events including Teachmeet BETT 2009, Teachmeet NE London and the Islay 2020 unconference in June.

I headed up the organization and chaired Teachmeet at the Scottish Learning Festival and I think that everybody that attended will agree that it was a lovely evening. I even achieved an ambition to my name on a BrainPop letter! which the BrainPop team later included as one of the highlights of their year.

 

Outdoor Education

Much of the first half of the year was spent trying (unsuccessfully) to get fit for my summer adventure to cycle the Great Divide from Banff, Canada to the Mexico Border. In the end I gave up training (it was taking far to long) and just flew out to Canada to start the ride.

After two weeks with Marco and Simon followed by posting most of my equipment back to the UK, deleting songs from my iPod and two further weeks riding alone I found myself (nearly 3000 miles from the start) at the Mexico border. I was looking a shadow of my former self, with no feeling in my right hand, slight concussion and huge smile on my face.

Cycling the Great Divide was without a doubt one of the hardest things I have physically ever done and a real highlight of the year.

Home

I continue to live in East Lothian and work across Scotland. Most weeks you can find me in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee on at least on day of the week. Work also increasingly takes me to London and other location all over the UK. I still enjoy regular trips to Weymouth and miss my friends and family back at home (even Yazz and Bertie).

You can find my pre-booked 2010 event list here – with lots of other events and conferences in the pipeline. Please get in touch if you want to meet up.


Volunteering

I continue as the chair of Volunteer Development East Lothian and we recently moved our offices out in Haddington to new premises in Musselburgh. I’ve been on sabbatical from the role for the last few months but I will be re-engaging with the organization from the new year (tomorrow actually!).

We have some exciting community and social enterprise projects up our sleeves for 2010 and I’m looking forward to being able to tell you more about them (particularly if you like cycling).

This was also my first year as a member of the SCSSA Advisory Group on School Leadership and member of the Media Literacy Scotland National Steering Group.

Looking forward

I already know that 2010 is going to be a very interesting and possibly a difficult year for me and is likely to involve change on a number of levels. Here are some of the things I am looking forward to:

• Re-engaging with the Volunteer Centre and taking on some new projects and initiatives.

• My new texbook will be published in June 2010. I’ll probably also start work on the CfE Level 4 edition - although I have another idea for a different side project that might end up occupying this time.

• I’m going to cycle between Lands End to John o' Groats. Not for charity – but in the words of late George Mallory, ‘because its there’.

• In June 2010 I will announce the team and dates for a return trip to Denali’s West Buttress that will depart in 2011 or 2012 depending on National Park permits and a few other details.

• In July I’m leading a group of young explorers to the Alaska Wilderness where we will trek and canoe the Noatak River from its Headwaters to the Bearing Sea.

• I’m going to start to make preparations for the end of my secondment from Learning and Teaching Scotland and for my return to school. I aim to apply for my first (well second actually...) headship during 2010.

• I’ve felt really fired up since the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Event in Brazil and as a result I’m going to work harder than ever before. 2010 will be the year I up my game and really fight for what I believe in to make sure that any children in my care get a modern education and not a re-invented one from the past 200 years.

• I’m going to attempt to find that work-life balance (OK you right… that’s not going to happen!)

•  I’m going to continue to expand my whiskey collection and share it with friends at regular intervals (yes, even Alan Parkinson).

• I’ll continue my quest for the perfect cup of coffee and hope to finally get round to helping my pal Michael roast some real beans early in the new year.

• Despite times of massive local, national and global change, I’ll remain optimistic about the future.

Anyway, if you’re a regular visitor to my little part of the Internet - Happy New Year and huge thank you to everyone how has helped, supported, worked and laughed with me through a good 2009.

Happy New Year

OB

UK Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum and Conference 2009

Yesterday along with Con Morris (National CPD Team) and Joe Wilson  (SQA) I traveled down to Birmingham for the Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Forum and Conference.

This is the first time that Partners in Learning have run a conference like this as part of the UK forum and it was a really good event. It was also free for anyone to attend and a great day of quality professional development with a bunch of very enthusiastic teachers.

The event was opened by Steve Bewsick, Microsoft UK. I met Steve last year in Reading and it was nice to meet him again and listen to him open the conference.

The morning keynote was given by John Davitt who did a really great job of getting the day off to a positive start. I’ve seen John present before and really enjoy his style and humor. Amongst other things he demonstrated the Learning Score and of course his Learning Event Generator (LEG) and the iPhone version the Random Activity Generator (RAG).

If you have not seen or heard of the LEG or the RAG before have a read of this post from Stuart Ball and if you want to find out more about John here is a really nice article about some of his work that was published recently over on Merlin John’s site as part of the Innovators series.

After the keynote I had a chance to look around some of the Innovative Teacher projects that were on display. All of the work was very impressive and it was nice to chat to such dedicated and enthusiastic teachers who were all very obviously passionate about learning.

I had a second dose of John Davitt for my morning workshop where we were challenged to complete one of the random activities generated from the LEG. My group had to produce ‘knitting as a role play’.  We had great fun collaborating, gathering props, filming our role play and of course learning how to knit (thank goodness for YouTube!)

After lunch I went to a workshop that was run by Shirelands Learning. Shirelands are doing some interesting work with their first year curriculum (it is now completely thematic). They have also invested heavily in technology. Some of the students from Shirelands showed us some of the work that they have been doing using Microsoft Surface and also Little Big Planet for the PS3.

I particularly liked one of the ideas for Little Big Planet – where Shirlands have re-created their school in Little Big Planet. First year students play to the game to get to know their new school and to learning about their new surroundings. We have a number of Little Big Planet projects starting from the Consolarium in the new year and this might be one of the ideas that we follow up on.

The final part of the day was the UK Innovative Teacher Awards. All of the projects were great but the four projects that will be representing the UK in Berlin will be:

• Dave Rogers (Priory School Specialist Sports College) Pirates and social networking
• Simon Horleston (Howe Dell Primary School) EcoVids    
• Amy Lewis (saltash.net community school) Heroes    
• Jan Webb (Weston Village Primary School) A classroom without walls    

I was particularly delighted to see my good friend David Rogers pick up an award – which was very well deserved. I was also really pleased to see Dave Garland from Saltash.net get a special achievement award for all of the hard work that he has done to promote ICT in Schools.

So, overall a great event and one that I hope to have an opportunity to attend in the future…

"Why it’s all Ollie Bray’s fault..."

I laughed when I read Dave Rogers recent post in my RSS Feed Reader. It was a real delight to read a lighthearted blog post called 'why it's all Ollie Bray's fault' from someone I have so much time and respect for.

Dave was writing about the first time that we met at the Scottish Assosiation of Geography Teachers Conference (SAGT) in 2006. I over ambitiously presented  a talk titled ’50 ideas in 50 minutes’ – at the time (despite over running!) it seem to be quite well received by the assembled audience of close to 200 geography teachers.

I made a screen cast of the talk and posted it to Google Video – it surprises me that it still continues to get hits and views most days. Much of the content is now quite historic and some of the tools that I mention don’t even exist anymore! I’ve also changed my mind about lots of things – but otherwise if you have not seen it, it might be worth a watch?

It’s nice to think that I might have influenced Dave’s practice in some way. But I’m sure if I had not introduced him to blogging then he would have found his own way. Never the less reading his post made me feel quite proud. It’s great to be able to work with teachers, introduce them to new ideas and share resources. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

I also read this article on PopTalk (the BrainPop UK Blog) titled 'Save the planet with a little help from Tim and Moby'. It was a post about Annette Lafrate a newly Qualified Teacher at Knightswood Secondary, Glasgow she had been using Tim and Moby to teach her class about environmental issues. The children had produced BrainPop posters as part of their assessment for the unit of work. Again Annette had discovered BrainPop through this site.

It is stories like this that remind me why I continue to blog, share and collaborate with the wider education community. I still believe sharing is the biggest efficiency saving we could make in education.

How many people have you shared your thoughts lesson plans or ideas with this week? Also if you have used a link or idea from this site - I always love to hear from you!

Photo: geoblogs

Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum–Brazil 2009 (3 of 10): Innovative Schools

This year’s Worldwide Innovative teachers forum was combined with the Worldwide Innovative Schools forum to create the Microsoft Worldwide Education Forum (does that make any sense?).

Over 110 applications were submitted globally by schools who were wishing to take part in the programme. Out of these 110+ schools 30 schools were chosen to attend the Innovative Schools Forum in Brazil. Two of these schools were from the UK and both were from Scotland. It’s also worth noting that Scotland was the only country in the world to have two schools represented at the forum – the applications must have been good!

The two Scottish schools were:

1. Stirling High School
2. Calderglen High School

As part of the schools strand of the forum the schools set up displays on the Tuesday evening about their schools and their local contexts. The displays also contained information and ideas for possible curriculum change, models of future curriculum architecture and individual school vision. The two Scottish Schools are shown below:

Stirling High School, Stirling

Calderglen High School, South Lanarkshire

It was interesting looking around the school displays (until Kristen kicked me out!).

One of the things that struck me was how much attention Stirling High School were getting. On the Stirling stand the Principles of Curriculum Design within A Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) were proudly on display as the schools vision.

The principles and priorities seemed to impress many of the international delegates - particularly when they found out it was actually Scotland's vision. I found this very reassuring and although I know there may still be confusion about A Curriculum for Excellence at local level its nice to have in reinforced that we have the big picture thinking right.

There are two types of Microsoft School within the schools programme - Pathfinder Schools and Mentor Schools. Both Stirling and Claderglen are Pathfinder schools. You can find out more information about the Microsoft Innovative Schools proramme here.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the impact of the event on the two school over the next twelve months.

On-line CPD: Internet Safety and Responsible Use (Glowing Thursday)

Most Thursday’s Jennifer McDougall (one of our Glow Development Officers) at Learning and Teaching Scotland hosts an on-line CPD session that we call Glowing Thursday (the name comes from here).

The programme is available well in advance and the CPD sessions are about an hour long and led by someone who has interest or expertise in the chosen field. The sessions are delivered via GlowMeet (Glow’s video conference client) and anyone with a Glow log in is welcome to join. You just turn up in the virtual room.

The sessions are nearly always videoed if you miss a session or if you can’t get along to watch the presentation live. GlowMeet is currently based on the Marratech client which allows instant messages between participants, a shared whiteboard space for presentation slides and video / audio capacity.

When I’m out and about speaking to teachers I always try to make the point that was well as Glow having fantastic potential to enhance and open learning in schools and classrooms. It also has amazing potential for CPD – Glowing Thursday and our Building Windmill Events have been really good examples of this.

Anyway, below are the slides that used during this evenings presentation on Internet Safety and Responsible Use and thank you so much for everyone who attended. Its great to see web cams pointing out into classrooms with groups of staff watching these presentations after school on-line. This really helps demonstrate the wide impact that this type of technology can have on professional development.

Glow Internet Safety Talk

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

If your looking for some notes on some of the things that I said have a read of this blog post and for specific information on http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/2008/05/mobile-phones-i.html

Also, we are currently working on a National Internet safety and Responsible Use Glow Group – that I hope will become a great resource for all Scottish teachers.

Feel free to leave feedback about tonights talk below.