The long road to Chartered Teacher

I’ve just been in to Moray House this morning to discuss my progress with my essay on Curriculum for Excellence and Teacher Professionalism with my tutor. I’m so pleased that I’ve chosen this topic as it’s so topical that I can’t help but think and read about it! I’m even more pleased that I didn’t get laughed out of the room for what I’ve produced so far!!

However, the reason I’m posting is that I’m really getting sucked into this blogging malarky. Before I went into Uni this morning I had a read of Jaye’s post on Sex Education in schools, which really resonated with me. And when I got home, Don had posted a reply to my comments on his blog regarding the Curriculum for Excellence and its implementation (to which Ewan had already replied). Quite a fruitful (and not very taxing) bit of CPD for a Saturday morning - discussion with a teacher in another school, an LTS National Adviser and the Director for Education for the council I work for!! Not only that, but these last two conversations have been relevant to my module 1 essay

I don’t know why I ever doubted it!

Spooky…I was just writing about my own perception of confusion regarding Curriculum for Excellence just the other day. And now it’s front page in the Scotsman apparently.

Although the groups warning the government seem to be primarily, and predictably, the unions and the independent schools - it is weird for me to reading the very sentiments I was expressing in a newspaper I wouldn’t normally read!!

I’m particularly interested in the following statement:
“Just three months away from being taught in thousands of classrooms, the Curriculum for Excellence is desperately underfunded and at risk of being lost in a haze of vagueness and ignorance”

The reason my blogging rate has slowed recently is that I am trying to string together an essay along the lines of ‘Curriculum for Excellence and Teacher Professionalism’ so my brain is full of this at the minute. So much so, that I don’t know what I think right now, so I wont write any more tonight.

Interesting though.

I’ve just got back from a free CPD event at the lovely Dalhousie Castle Hotel organised by EIS and Midlothian. The event was very well organised by Vicky Wallace as the Midlothian EIS Learning Rep (apparently East Lothian doesn’t have a multi-establishment equivalent!)

We were treated to the presence of the EIS President, Kirsty Devaney and received presentations from Elisabeth Ritchie of HMIe and Tom Hamilton of the GTCS.

I’m quite surprised how much I found out in such a short space of time. Elisabeth put this whole HGIOS in to perspective for me as I’d never really got my head round it as a relative newcomer. More importantly, she showed us the Journey to Excellence website (or HGIOS 5), which is really impressive and provides much food for thought. For example, have a look at this brief discussion of the assessment of thinking skills from Carol McGuinness:
DownloadAssessing thinking skills - Carol McGuinness

There is a lot more on the site as well - go and have a look!

Tom talked to us about the GTCS’s professional registration and recognition schemes - I’d not actually come across this recognition scheme! How’s that for someone currently fretting over an essay on professionalism!!!

It just shows you what you can find out from sticking your name down for these free CPD events which come along. Perhaps it also suggests that we could do with an equivalent to Vicky in East Lothian?

Is anyone else surprised with the general confusion surrounding a curriculum for excellence? The Curriculum for Excellence website states: “Scotland is currently pursuing its biggest education reform for a generation.” I’m not sure that we’ve all grasped this!

We’ve all heard about it, we can all kind of name the four capacities (although as far as I can gather most can only ever name three at a time) - but are we really engaging with it? How many people are reading the experiences & outcomes and completing the online questionnaires? How many schools (particularly secondary) are currently rewriting their curricula to prepare for the implementation in August 2009?

I’ve heard it said that very few returns have made it to LTS since the experiences and outcomes have been released for consultation, and what does this say about us as a profession? Although I can see the argument here, I also think you can turn this round - what does it say about LTS’s implementation of this hugely important piece of curriculum reform?

Why are so many teachers unsure of what is going on and what they should be doing?

So, Saturday was my last day at Moray House as part of Module 1. Not sure what use they’d be to anyone else, but I’ve stuck my notes onto scribd so I thought I’d mention it here. Of particular interest were the lectures/seminars held by Professor Morwenna Griffiths, Professor David Carr and Professor Lindsay Paterson. All very thought provoking…

So I had a go at using my iTalk and freeonlinesurveys.com. I had to feedback my findings to my fellow module oners on our last Saturday yesterday. You can have a look if you like at scribd:

I got myself into wee bit of a discussion recently over at Ewan’s blog.

It’s been a question that has been preoccupying me for a while: what to do about a lack of IT resources in school? (1) Make the best of what we’ve got and work around the difficulties without complaining (2) Make the best of what we’ve got but complain about the lack of suitable access (3) Give up due to the lack of suitable access.

I reckon most teachers could allocate themselves into these groups. I have to admit that I aspire to (2) but a lot of the time I verge into (3).

However, some teachers (such as Jaye) strongly feel that “we don’t live in an ideal world, and I’m afraid sometimes we have to make the best of what we’ve got” (I am hesitant in quoting you Jaye, but having read your blog I do get the feeling that this does briefly summarise your approach to this issue). I’d suggest that this approaches my (1) from above.

I have a problem with this argument. I do intend to try to make the best of what Glow has to offer - more than that - I’m really looking forward to it! However, from a personal perspective, I do believe that the lack of suitable access will severely restrict its usefulness to my learners. If I feel this way, should I not say so? I would argue that ‘complaining’ about the lack of access to PC’s is an argument on behalf of Glow, not against it.

I feel that Glow will not be a success just because it has been produced by LTS, or because teachers must use ICT in their lessons as part of their GTCS registration, or because it is a part of AiFL or aCfE. As has been shown with many initiatives in the past, they have to grab the imaginations of the grass roots to succeed - they cannot be directed from above.

I think Glow will be a much bigger success if the barriers to hardware are removed from non-IT classes. I appreciate that in the current climate that this is unlikely to be resolved - but does this mean I’m a complainer for saying so?

As part of module 1 we have to try out a research method and feedback to others on the course. In addition, to satisfy my geekish tendencies, I’ve been trying to use technology to do this. I’ve come across two useful tools which I thought I should share.

I popped into comet to see what they had in the way of dictaphones after talking about recording interviews one Saturday. As I browsed through the options looking for a mac compatible device, it struck me that there must be a way of turning my iPod into a dictaphone. The ‘helpful’ salesman assured me that although this would good be idea, they do not exist - his evidence? They don’t stock it! I wasn’t convinced and went home to see what trusty old google would say. It does exist: the Griffin iTalk pro:

This has a number of advantages over a dictaphone in my view - I now have an audio storage device with a massive memory for much less than the cost of a dictaphone (as I already owned the iPod). Plus, I think it will be much less threatening to the pupils as they are so familiar iPods and the iTalk just looks like the many FM transmitters which slot into iPods.

The second tool I’ve come across is Free Online Surveys.

I wanted to try out a questionnaire with my pupils, but didn’t really want to spend our budget (or the planet’s resources!) photocopying lots of printed questionnaires. So I tried out this useful website to create an online version of my questionnaire (you can have a look at it here). It’s so easy to use and allows 50 responses per 10 days per survey - you can simply make copies of your surveys if you need more responses though. On the free version it only gives you a webpage summary, but these could easily be transferred across to excel manually.

It would be so fantastic if schools subscribed to a site such as this. It would allow quick and easy feedback from staff, pupils and parents which would be easy to analyse - and best of all, it would not involve reams and reams of photocopying!

One last thing, for our third module 1 Saturday we had to read up on one research method and feedback. I was assigned questionnaires and my group seemed to like what I’d produced so I’ve uploaded it onto a fantastic website I’ve found recently - scribd.com

Click on the image to have a look: