Journey to Excellence and other matters

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?

Research Methods Feedback

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:

Complaining?

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?

Research Methods

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:

CfE - How big a change?

I attended the Scholar conference last Friday at Heriot Watt Uni. It was quite interesting to share ideas on how to use Scholar effectively from people who have used it much more than I have. In fact, I think the whole day was perfect for someone like me - a newcomer. The two main themes of the day were Scholar (obviously) and the Curriculum for Excellence. I get the feeling from many Scottish teachers that they have heard about these two things A LOT - but I know very little about them both.

1. Scholar: I love it. It’s such a fantastic resource and I only wish I could use it more. It’s hard to believe that there is an online and paper-based resource which perfectly matches the course. Why can’t I use it more? There doesn’t seem to be much of a culture amongst the kids of using Scholar in my school, so they don’t go online without lots of encouragement. Also, I find it difficult to incorporate Scholar into lessons with the pupils actually using it themselves. This normally involves booking computers in another part of the school and walking them there and back - difficult to dip in and out of Scholar as suggested at the conference.

2. Curriculum for Excellence: What is it all about? Brian Boyd spoke about Curriculum for Excellence and Scholar’s place within it. What was amazing to me was how different CfE sounded from Brian compared to what I’d already heard. I don’t know a huge amount about it being a newcomer. In fact, not much more than the four competencies which are on a wall in nearly every classroom. The impression I had up until now was that CfE wasn’t going to involve massive changes and was all about developing what we already do well and tweaking some things that need tweaking. Having listened to Brian (who was in some way involved with the creation of CfE) I’ve now heard a very different view. His view seems to involve a much more cross-curricular theme-based approach to secondary education with a very very different approach to assessment - i.e. a radical shift away from Highers. As he said a number of times during his address - “will the CfE actually be a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic?”

So although I’m more confused about a few things, I feel that this is the point of a conference. You should leave a conference with questions, not answers - that’s what training is for.

Blocked

After chatting to David last night I thought I’d have look at his blog today, only to be presented with this:

In case you can’t read it, it says:

Access to this web page is restricted at this time.

Reason: The Websense category “MP3 and Audio Download Services” is filtered.

So, because David podcasts, I can’t see his blog. That’s a shame.

TeachMeet07

I popped along to the Jolly Judge for a little bit of TeachMeet this evening.

I’m sure you’ll read much more on many other blogs (especially Ewan’s) as I had to sneak away early. Was I the only one to have other plans come 7.45pm on Champions League Final night? Poor Liverpool

Although I wasn’t there for very long, I did have a really good time. It was great to put faces to names (and blogs) that are rapidly becoming very familiar to me - and to learn a thing or two as well. I mainly spoke to David, Brian and Ollie, but also managed to find out a little about Do it Be it and ScotEduBlogs.

Thanks to Ewan for putting it all together.