The Education ICT Weblog

Had a good meeting with the Primary ICT Co-ordinators today. It was the first time I had the opportunity to meet with them since returning to work .....

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One School, one Teacher, one Class, one Blog

Can we have one teacher and a class blogging in every school for the start of next term?

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View my thoughts on the conference at My Blog .

Today being the last Tuesday in May, I held an afternoon surgery/drop-in session, from 1.00pm – 4.00pm for Additional Support Needs issues at Prestonpans Education Centre. I have freed up the last Tuesday of every month since last October for these surgeries so that staff, who are available, can come to see me to discuss issues regarding children in their class who require to use technology to access the curriculum. This has been done so far on a trial basis but if you feel that this surgery/drop –in session should continue into next session then please comment, I would be happy to hear your views. If you have not heard about this service would you have liked the opportunity to have attended on occasion?

From 4.00pm – 6.00pm I delivered the Inservice course ‘Using ICT to support the Dyslexic Learner’. We looked at hardware and software there is available to support the dyslexic pupil. Hopefully participants went away with a few more ideas than they came with.

Had an office day today. Elizabeth Cowan, Fiona Cunningham and I had our team meeting. Much of it was taken up with what we could achieve in the few weeks before Fiona leaves to go to Pupil support. I'd like to thank Fiona for the support she has given the Education IT team for the past 5 years and wish her all the best in her new post.

I had an interesting meeting with the IT department to consider the priorities for the IT spend in schools this financial year. Much of the budget is being set aside for the Schools Wide Area Network (WAN) which will improve the speed and robustness of our networks. This is well worth the investment and will improve the service for everyone, especially as more content is delivered through the internet and the revolution that is Web 2.0 technology.

The rest of the afternoon was spent corresponding with schools for various projects. One of the key communications was to the PT music staff. Music and the technology available to work creatively in music has developed significantly in recent years. I suggested that we meet to look at current and potential requirements of the music curriculum in terms of technology and consider new software/hardware available. It would be ideal if the music departments could reach a consensus of requirements in the modern music department to faciltate the sharing of resources and training. I have set up a wiki for comments, questions and ideas for our meeting (hopefully) on 9th June.

I had a wonderful morning in Haddington Infants. I visited a class of P2 children who had been working hard as production companies - producing their own animations. They confidently told me about the process they went through to create their films and their teacher, Robert Whiteside, explained how they worked independently and used problem-solving skills to collaborate to produce the end results. I was really impressed by the planning, storyboarding and ultimately the filming that the class undertook. One of the children said that it was the best thing he had ever done! Robert told me that this child could be quite disenchanted with some class activities so this was a real achievement! I have published the animations on our ICT web site to allow parents to have a look.

Spent the afternoon at St Gabriels. I was the first time I had been there since they had their new extension completed. It looked great - really light and airy! They have recently had an Interactive Whiteboard Installed. We are intending to have Interactive Whitboards in the new school being built at Tranent so I took the architects to have a look. It has been useful trying to co-ordinate the technology at the start of the build - real joined up thinking.

After a morning of Admin. work in the Office Fiona Cunningham and I headed off to North Berwick Nursery to deliver an In service training, to the Nursery Staff, about the use of the server and the new school email system. These new developments were enthusiastically taken on board by the Staff who were already thinking of how they would use the server in the Nursery. Staff were also keen to use the email system and were busy emailing each other from different rooms when Fiona and I managed to take our leave.

Hope the weather improves for the weekend.

It was good to get back at the office today to catch up with all those jobs that can only be done at the desk. Ispent part of the morning looking at the new PC build for primary schools which we plan to roll out in the summer. It is looking really good and should bring the software up to date to mirror the mac build. Johnny Baxter from Gullane is going to test it for us to help us iron out any potential problems. He has helped us in this way before, he tests them with pupils in a really methodical and rigorous way. Thanks Johnny!

I spoke to our finance about the tender we put out for Interactive Whiteboards in primary. It looks as though Promethean came in with the best deal for us so I have given the go ahead for the schools who expressed an interest in purchasing them. Hopefully we can guarantee this price for all schools this year so it should make it easier to procure and install them.

Elizabeth and I had a really interesting meeting with Don Ledingham. We updated him on various aspects of the strategy and about the outcomes of our attendance at the eLive conference. I was keen to explore the idea of freeing up the curriculum to engage pupils in projects and self-initiated learning. I see technology as a driver for this change as it is the way pupils today communicate and learn. We have to engage with it to excite and motivate pupils to learn. Don expained some ideas he has about Extreme Learning as a way of delivering the 4 components of the Curriculum for Excellence. I think this is a real way forward. I think schools appreciate guidance in this area and I found this a way of embracing new learning opportunities without throwing out good practice currently in our schools. It was a really animated discussion. Well done to Jacqui MacKinnon - I like the idea of ACE (A Curriculum for Excellence)projects.

Went home to pick up my children. My daughter had fallen and hurt her nose when out playing at nursery. We came home and decided to podcast the story of the fall to our website to enable her 'Baba Anne' (her turkish grandmother) to hear her story- and she's only 3! There's no doubt we have a lot to learn from our children!