Stenton Seashore Detectives November 5, 2008
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Experiential Learning , add a commentAfter the wet day today it was hard to beleive how fantastic the weather was on Monday. I have never seen sharks, turtles, huge jellyfish or giant sea birds at Yellowcraig before - these ones were all created by the fantastically enthusiastic pupils from Stenton Primary School! The pupils were leaning all about the seashore through experiential activities that included rock-pooling and seahore sscavenger work to create these amazing sea creature sculptures.
More information and pics and the Stenton Primary School Blog.
S4 Challenge 2008 September 29, 2008
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Challenges, Experiential Learning, Outdoor Learning , 2commentsDue to a reduced number of Schools available to join the event this year we ran a watersports based challenge at Levenhall Lagoons. Knox academy won the event with a fast run to claim the earth ball in the final event. The pupils as always were fantastic and once again support from the staff in the schools made the event a success. We hope that more teams will be able to make our next challenges and look forward to seeing all the schools at these and next years challenges. The challenges are a fantastic opportunity for pupils to take part in team based challenges and of course have fun and as with this challenge it illustrates that we do have many, skilled confident, enthusiastic, responsible and successful secondary pupils within East Lothian.
Can Schools be Learning Organisations? June 2, 2008
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Learning Organisations , add a comment
I have been working on the data from the responses to my on-line questionnaire for my MSc, it’s starting to feel like I may finish this incredible learning journey soon. The questionnaire was selected from examining several diagnostic tools used in the field of Organisational Learning. I am learning so much from the reading and research. There is a lot of critical writing on whether schools and educational establishments are capable of achieving the LO ideal. So seeing the data coming back (over a hundred responses so far - thanks to all!) has been fascinating. The data is starting to build a Learning Organisation Profile and Dissatisfaction Index of the sampled EL educational establishments. I will be evaluating this data and its potential to support management development courses. As part of a literature review I read this article yesterday, and although I have reviewed already writings on what a LO is I like this interpretation of the essential features of a LO described by Gephart et al [(1996) p 38, Training and Development]
- “Continuous learning at the systems level - Individuals share there learning in ways that enable an organisation to learn by transferring knowledge across it and by integrating learning into routines
- Knowledge generation and sharing. emphasis is placed on creating, capturing and moving knowledge rapidly and easily..
- Critical systemic thinking. people are encouraged to think in new ways and use productive reasoning skills, systemically in order to see links and feedback loops and critically, in order to identify assumptions.
- A culture of learning. Learning and creativity are rewarded, supported and promoted through various performance systems from the top down
- A spirit of flexibility and experimentation. People are free to take risks, experiment, innovate, explore new ideas , and generate new work processes and products.
- People-centered. a learning organisation provides a caring community that nurtures, values and supports the well being, development and learning of every individual”
This is of course only one interpretation of the LO. Do our East Lothian Educational Establishments have these essential features?
Acknowledging Acheivement Award (Through Adventure) May 10, 2008
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Duke of Edinburgh Awards, Dunbar Grammar School, Outdoor Learning, podcast , 1 comment so far
This clip is from a Bronze Duke of Edinburgh trip with Dunbar Grammar School. The pupils did eventually complete the pyramid through good communication and teamwork. You can hear some of their thoughts on the award in the podcast below.
During the trip I got chatting with one of the staff who are launching a new idea which aligns their outdoor education aims with the Curriculum for Excellence. As I have said before I believe that C for E is a gift for outdoor education and many of the aims of the C for E are already embedded within outdoor learning. Mr King pointed out that the award is called A3 or A cubed. The Acknowledging Achievement Award.
I have suggested renaming it A4 as It ties there are four capacities in the Curriculum for Excellence and the name could benefit from one more word, Adventure! The school aims to use the award at the forthcoming Nethy Bridge trip for S1 pupils. It will allow pupils to make direct links with adventure and outdoor learning with the capacities of the curriculum for excellence e.g.. allowing them to demonstrate positive teamwork, respect for the environment and realise their own expectations. Although this only scratches the surface of the potential use of this tool. I look forward to seeing how it all works out next weekend.
“Vision Express” February 6, 2007
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Experiential Learning, Outdoor Learning, Vision , add a comment
In the dark days of February The outdoor team has a bit more time to discuss and plan. We have been looking at the East Lothian Outdoor Education Service Strategy. Its up for renewal - reworking i.e. our last business plan and strategy document covered the period 2004-2007. As with all organisations we got hung up on the “what should our vision statement communicate about our organisation?” question. How do we convey what we are doing and what we will continue to improve on in one statement? And is it actually a vision statement (future) or a mission statement? (present).
Here is what we came up with:
“East Lothian Council’s Outdoor Education service provides high quality, safe, reliable and sustainable outdoor learning opportunities. The service promotes progressive, experiential learning, responding to the needs of East Lothians Schools and the wider community”
The major changes being that we have ditched the “will provides.. ” (as we do and will continue), adventure ( as outdoor learning we feel covers all that and more!). we have added “progressive” - to try and explain that we are moving towards and building more developmental style courses but still appreciating a use for taster style sessions. The last sentance should convey our need to develop and grow with the needs of the community which involves adapting to new initiatives i.e. A Curriculum for Excellence & political change.
All we have to do now is build the strategy…..and put it down on paper.
Orienteering November 22, 2006
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Outdoor Education, Outdoor Learning, orienteering , 7comments
We have been running orienteering days recently for the last few weeks with more to do in January. These have been aimed at Primary Schools in East Lothian. Today I was thinking how well these work for so many as a positive learning experience. It’s success seems to be in the way pupils can learn experientially so quickly. From virtually no map skills in some cases to completing a variety of courses in a couple of hours.
They have an instant measure of success and there is loads of room for progression. Using different environments for learning (i.e. different venues) seems to help too and the skills learned tie in to the curriculum and of course the Curriculum For Excellence….with the pupils arriving with a high level of “enthusiasim and motivation for learning” and definitley contributes to developing “confident individuals”
At Newhailes today the pupils excelled and all possible with co-operation from the National Trust Scotland for allowing us to use the venue (Highly Supportive). Thanks for the support of Primary staff and helpers.
Scottish Conference for Outdoor Learning. November 20, 2006
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Outdoor Education , 3comments
This conference was well attended at the weekend and there were a great range of delegates attending from the spectrum of outdoor education within Scotland. A variety of workshops were run in several areas of outdoor learning. See IOL website for more info www.outdoor-learning.org . The most useful session for me being the Curriculum for Excellence workshop. In this workshop again as last week we could see a huge opportunity for the outdoor community to contribute to the curriculum and looking closer at the original design principles we could see it could almost have been written by OE facilitators!
As well as quickly recgonising there were a number of dichotomys in the design i.e. between
Self ———————Group learning
Consumers————–Contributors
(With the emphasis on a movement right—–)
One of our interpratations seemed to be the need for a clear movement of learning from prescribed and tested learning to more holistic and discovery learning. This is nothing new and most see the value ( see Oliie Bray’s Extreme Learning blog http://edubuzz.org/blogs/olliebray) of learners being able to digest the curriculum from a more learner centered approach.
I can see that the Curriculum for Excellence is going to become a major discussion point in the outdoor industry.
A Curriculum For Excellence Seminar - Brunton Hall 16th Nov. November 20, 2006
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Outdoor Education, Outdoor Learning , 2commentsI attended a seminar last week at Brunton Hall on the Curriculum for Excellence. Presentations by the Ranger Service,The Sports Development Team, Museum service and a presentation on Family Learning all gave useful insights into how many areas of the learning community can contribute to the Curriculum for Excellence. Don Leddingham also facilitated a useful disscussion.(See http://edubuzz.org/blogs/donsblog). I feel that Outdoor Ed can contribute in a huge way as a delivery agent for many of the capacities in the curriculum , however our discussion “threw into the hat” much more. It for me highlighted that there seems to be a lot of variance on what a curriculum for Excellence is all about, depending on your interpration. This may also be the beauty of it rather than a flaw - It means it can engage everyone!. The more people involved in helping acheive this aspirational agenda the better. Links to offical site below. Lots of info. I found the ministerial response particularly interesting and the support resources for implementation of the agenda.
http://www.acurriculumforexcellencescotland.gov.uk/
New Blogger November 20, 2006
Posted by Bill in : A Curriculum for Excellence, Outdoor Education , 1 comment so far
Well it’s finally happened, after reading many of the blogs posted mainly by East Lothian Education Employees I have finally taken the plunge to start blogging. I intend to use this site to give users an insight into aspects of working as an Outdoor Education Teacher within East Lothian.
I hope to get started in earnest soon. Later today I will post information on a couple of seminars I have attended in the last few days, One within East Lothian regarding the Curriculum for Excellence and also the Institute for Outdoor Learning Conference on Saturday. The Curriculum for Excellence is an important issue for Outdoor Education and I will be posting some links and information.
As soon as I get to grips with the software I will start posting.
