This afternoon I received a phone call from Claire McCallum from the BBC. Admittedly when I received the message from the school office I thought they had asked for the wrong person!

However, I was invited to join the BBC Learning Secondary Consultative Panel. This is not something I had even heard of before but it sounds very interesting. The literature I have since been sent states that

The panel is a reference set of “critical friends” whose contributions can help to inform our provision of resources for the secondary sector.

I was very curious to know why I was being invited to join this panel only to find out that I had been located through this very blog!!

In June this year, East Lothian Council, in partnership with Lothian and Borders Police, will be hosting a series of Internet safety and responsible use training sessions for parents with pupils in P5 - S6 across the county.  This is in response to growing concerns, expressed by individual parents and parent councils, about how to make sure young people use the internet safely and responsibly. The sessions are also designed to show parents how they can protect their youngsters from on-line dangers.
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> The training sessions will be led by Ollie Bray (Depute Head at Musselburgh Grammar School) and PC David Gunn from Lothian and Borders Police. Both Mr Bray and Mr Gunn are accredited Ambassadors of the Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency (CEOP).
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> The training session has already been piloted within the Musselburgh Cluster and received positive response from over 200 parents. The content of the evening includes background information on new technologies and information about computers and mobile phones and the law. But the main part of the presentation involves Mr Bray taking the parents into some > ‘> real> ‘>  social networking spaces that young people use. This includes Habba Hotel, Teenspot, MSN Instant Messenger and Bebo. The session also gives advice on how you can protect your home computer and advice on on-line gaming.
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> Everybody who attends the training will have access to a comprehensive on-line handout.
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> The sessions will be held at:
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> *     Preston Lodge High- 3 June 2008
> *     Ross High - 10 June 2008
> *     Dunbar Grammar - 11 June 2008
> *     Knox Academy - 18 June 2008
> *     North Berwick High - 24 June 2008
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> All training sessions will take place between 7 - 9pm.
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> Ollie Bray, Depute Head at Musselburgh Grammar School, says:
> ‘> This is a very exciting time for East Lothian to be leading the way in Internet Training for staff, parents, families and pupils.  We are going to use the feedback we gain from these sessions to inform good practice nationally through the Scottish Learning Festival.> ‘>
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> These evenings will start promptly at 7pm and have a limited availability. If you have any queries or you would like to book a place on one of these sessions, please email Tess Watson, (Acting Education Support Officer) at  twatson at eastlothian.gov.uk or log onto http:edubuzz.org/blogs/internetsafety

Today I attended a Podcasting session run by the East Lothian ICT support team. Before the session I had a pretty good idea what Podcasting is and how I can use it in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning. A few weeks ago I posted about my S1 Modern Studies class who have asked to do Podcasting as part of their Mock Election campaign.

This meant that I went into the session with very clear aims:

• Find out what equipment is required
• Find out what software is required
• Find out how to post it to the internet

The session started with an introduction on what Podcasting is. We were shown a number of podcasts by various schools across Scotland and East Lothian. We were then shown the software that we would be useing and how to use it.

The rest of the session was given over to hands on experience of the technology. Although, it was dissapointing that some of the technology failed us, the course certainly left me with a much clearer idea of how I can bring Podcasting into my teaching and I have even learned how to post the Podcasts to a blog. This means that the class can link up their blog to any Podcasts they make.

I would like to thank David Gilmour, Dave Rawson and Tess Watson for presenting a very interesting course and Ann Cochrane for arranging it.

This week my S3 class have been busy researching, direction and producing their own news broadcasts. Though I use this activity to teach the ending of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, it is a really fun task that can be used in many subject areas to teach different topics.

I split the class into two groups or rival news channels. Each group had to pick their own director, camera person, researchers, writers and of course presenters.  Each period I expected a full script to be completed for a single broadcast. Each broadcast included sports and weather in addition to the main news topics. I called directors meetings at random times to give the teams faxes that had just come through. These faxes were designed to give the pupils a brief outline of the key events and helped them structure their broadcasts.

The pupils then recorded their broadcasts and we watched them back together. The class enjoyed the task and every member of the team contributed to the finished product. Pupils who did not want to be on camera could work the camera or acted as researchers. One pupil even dressed up to deliver the weather bulletins. The two directers emerged as excellent leaders and I would like to congratulate them on the maturity, and the skill in which they lead their teams.

Thanks also to the drama department for the loan of the costumes!

Part of the S1 Modern Studies course at Knox is to allow the pupils to plan and take part in their own mock election. They plan everything from manifestos to rosettes and party political broadcasts. I was talking to the pupils about this and I said that we could video the broadcasts and watch them back as a class. One pupil then pointed out that maybe we could do it as a podcast instead of a video. While this seems like a very good idea, I have absolutely no experience of podcasting and don’t know where to start or what equipment I would need. Does anyone have any tips for me? Knox Academy is planning to hold a Teachmeet on Podcasting at the end of February but the pupils may be ready to record their broadcast before this.

We were joined by Sue again today to help us pull together the project that we have been working on all week. Sue had set out a structure that could be applied to our individual sections. This means that the final project has a more consistant approach throughout. We spent the whole morning editing and bringing together all the Teacher notes and the Pupil notes and by 12.30 we had our final project. The web designer now has the task of turning our thoughts into an interactive, user friendly, online resource to be used in schools across the country.

We were then treated to another fantastic lunch with the most wonderful sandwiches I have ever seen! We were joined by the whole JMA team who seemed really interested in, and excited about, what we had been doing during the week.

This afternoon Emma had organised three curators from other departments to come to talk to us about the work that they do in the Library. They had been asked to bring along their favourite three items from the collections that they work with. Our first guest was Dr Marina Castrillo who is the Manuscripts Curator. Maria brought along a selection of manuscripts including a diary of a Scottish emmigrant to Canada. Dr Brian Hillyard who is the Rare Books Collection Manager brought along three rare books including one of the first books for the blind ever published. Finally we were shown a selection of graphic novels from John Birch the Assisstant Purchase Curator. This started an interesting discussion about using books, traditionally written off as mere comics, to engage the most reluctant of readers. I was particuarly interested in the Maus books which raises issues about the Holocaust.

I have had a fantastic week at the National Library of Scotland. I have been given the opportunity to work with a wonderful collection of manuscripts and learned a great deal about the workings of the Library. I have developed skills that I can use in the classroom, particularly in developing resources directly related to the Curriculum for Excellence.

I would like to thank everyone at the Library, particulalry the JMA team for making us feel so welcome and Careers Scotland for organising the placement. I also appreciate the support I have received from Knox Academy and East Lothian Council for allowing me to take this once in a lifetime opportunity. Finally, I want to say a massive thanks to the four people that I have spent a great deal of time working with this week, my colleagues Donald and Martine, our consultant Sue, and of course Emma who has supported us throughout the project.

If anyone reading this is thinking about applying for a EEBL Teacher Placement, particularly within the National Library of Scotland, I would encourage you to go for it. It really is a once in a life time chance to do something different which builds on skills required in the classroom.

Today was another very busy and challenging day at the National Library. We met Emma who had set aside some work space for us to use within her office. This was to allow us access to computers, the internet and printers. We were also given a space to allow us to sit down together as a group and plan our resource. Emma then showed us a PowerPoint slide she had made using the outline we had provided of how the website homepage will look.

We then briefly discussed the progress that had been made yesterday and agreed that today we just wanted to get started on laying the foundations of our resource. We decided that the best way to do this would be to split the tasks into three and each take a section to work on independently.

The three sections were:

• Scotland and the Scots
• Murray’s Handbook for Travellers to Scotland
• Designing a local travel guide

I decided to take the second section. This seemed the most logical choice as it is the area most closely related to the study of History. I started drafting a worksheet that pupils will use in the classroom. I designed it in such a way that it can be used by teachers to stimulate a class discussion as well as for pupils to write their answers on. I moved on to draft some teachers notes, explaining how teachers may like to use the resource in the classroom. At this point I felt it important to emphasise the way in which the resource can be used accross the curriculum.

During lunchtime Emma had organised a visit from Ken Cockburn who was the John Murray Archive’s writer in residence in 2006. Ken clearly had a great deal of knowledge about various aspects of the collection and experience in using the material as a teaching resource, as during his time at the library he had run workshops with both adult groups and with groups of Primary 7’s. Ken then set the three of us a task to write a letter to a historical figure. I shall not rewrite my letter here but I will tell you that I chose General Haig. The task he set was useful and I know my English colleagues are keen to try it out in their classrooms.

We then decided that the teacher’s notes that I had typed up this morning could be used, with some additions, as the Teacher’s guide to the whole unit of work. We spent the remainder of the afternoon editing this guide. By 4.30pm we had in place a full Teachers’ guide and draft versions of the pupil tasks to be included in the pack.

This afternoon we were given an excellent tutorial in the use of interactive whiteboards from John Self a representative of Promethean. John started with the basics including switching the projector on and off and callibrating the pen. He discussed the use of other programmes through the board to allow teachers to use resources they already have. We then looked at various tools. John finished off the demonstration of each of the tools by explaining how we could use them in the classroom and giving us practical examples of these.

We were then given some time to play around with the software and try things out while John went round the group answering questions. The session finished off by the group coming together and we discussed things we had found and tried whilst exploring the software.

Despite going into this session having already used an interactive board for a number of weeks, and feeling fairly confident in the use of the board, I still came away with many new skills and ideas. Interactive whiteboards certainly have a lot of potential within any classroom and I am in no doubt about their value within the History classroom, it is just a case of playing around with the software and being as imaginative as possible.

I would like the thank John for his inspiring presentation and sharing his knowledge and experience of using this valuable resource within the classroom.