New Teachers Ask For Email Training August 20, 2008
Posted by David Gilmour in : CPD, Glow, Schools ICT, infrastructure , 5commentsFeedback from an introductory training session on ICT for this year’s East Lothian NQTs apparently included the request that we should have covered how to use the school email system, in place of introducing Glow.
Maybe this is a sign of the times, as increasing numbers of younger people make less use of email, preferring instead the immediacy of MSN? If so, these people are going to be out of their comfort zone if they find they can’t keep in touch - with colleagues as well as friends - via MSN while in school.
Taking things a step further, we may be seeing a new generation bringing new expectations of what communication tools should be on a school PC desktop. Glow Chat may just have arrived in time.
New Glow Group Will Keep East Lothian’s NQTs Connected July 31, 2008
Posted by David Gilmour in : CPD, Glow , 2comments
East Lothian’s newly qualified teachers (NQTs) will be able to stay in touch, support one another and find their programme documentation, via their own Glow Group this session.
Their induction training before the session starts includes a day-long session on use of ICT in East Lothian schools. This year, the session will include some time on Glow. Of course, we wanted that to be hands-on and relevant, which is where the idea of a Glow Group to support the NQTs came from. By doing this, we’re hoping to make it easier for them to get their heads round what Glow is all about through practical experience.
So far the site has been populated with some sample links, Glow Meet, Glow Chat and a couple of documents from the Probationer Programme. It’s hoped that the group will have plenty of ideas for further improvements.
Support new web users amongst staff? October 29, 2007
Posted by David Gilmour in : CPD, eduBuzz , 2commentsI found out today that there are staff trying to explore edubuzz who are still so unfamiliar with the web that they worry about clicking the wrong thing and breaking something, or about ending up somewhere and not being able to get back again.
No one has yet fed these points back in person: they came out of a meeting with Hilery Williams and Eleanor Carnell of Support For All today about making edubuzz more accessible.
This is good news in terms of the increase in audience, but it maybe means we need to cater more for the needs of this group. For example, our Support Wiki at http://edubuzz.org/support currently targets an audience who are already past that stage. We don’t provide help, for example, in using Ctrl-Z to undo actions in Windows.
Ideas from the meeting included some home page options to explain terminology like blogs. The home page is currently being worked on, and these points will be used to inform that work.
It’s clear that there’s also scope to extend CPD to include foundations of web use. This could include such things as browser commands, use of the mouse and simple searching.
“Making Your School Website Dynamic” is a popular course! February 15, 2007
Posted by Gilmour David in : CPD, Exc-el, Google video, RSS, WPMU, WordPress, eduBuzz, flickr, information literacy, internet safety, tagging, training , 1 comment so farToday after-school I ran a 90-minute CPD session on creating dynamic school web sites using WordPress. Until I arrived, I was expecting around 5 people, and had prepared, just in case, for up to 10. In the event, there were 13 on the latest list, and everyone made it. There was great enthusiasm, and I went away convinced the group will be making full use of what they learned.
The course outline is here as a Word document: It covered: ECS371 Making Your School Website Dynamic - outline (more…)
