Ollie Bray's Weblog

Lots of people asked me at SETT why my blog had stopped – the simple explanation is that I have recently moved house and only got a phone line yesterday – broadband should be in within the next week. I don’t like to blog from school as sometimes I feel that people think that blogging is not working (however as its 18.50h, I don’t feel guilty about it this evening!)

Along with the move of house I have decided to move blog and although it is still under construction I have started blogging with Typepad. I aim for a more official launch at the start of October.

You can find it at www.olliebray.com . We will soon be on-line again at home, which will mean I will be able to keep it up-to-date. In the meantime I will try to start posting more regularly and let you know what I have been up to. Please start to spread the word. I have added a bloglines subscribe button and a feedburner link to get up-dates by email.

See you on the other site! Ollie

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The school has a real buzz about it at the moment, the majority of classes seem to be working well and students are engaged in what they are learning. I hope that this attitude will continue for the rest of the year.

Accompanied Heather Fleming on a home visit just after registration to pick up a student who was having difficulty coming into school. I learnt a lot from Heather in the 30 minutes that I spent with her. She has a wonderful way of communicating with students and parents. I hope to be able to shadow her for a half day at some point during the next year as part of my own continued professional development. We brought the pupil back into school and I was delighted to see five ‘excellent’ grades on his monitor card when I bumped into him (literally) at lunchtime. Don has blogged about the importance of home visits before and I can now see how important this process is.

I popped into M Mohammed’s class very briefly during one of my trips round the school looking for pupils. An exciting lesson was taking place in Citizenship with S1 students looking at how they fitted into the life of MusselburghGrammar School and what they could contribute to the school. As I was driving home tonight I was thinking about the lesson and how we could share this information with everybody. I will come back to the theme of learning logs (or learning blogs) after I have had a chance to bounce some ideas around with Ewan next week.

SMT meeting after breaktime duty we discussed a number of issues including SELS, assemblies, re-coursing and a Curriculum for Excellence morning for S1 pupils.

Jim Young a former colleague of mine from Knox Academy once told me that he spent most of his time ‘investigating’ and this afternoon I became the Sherlock Holmes of the profession. I spent a bit of time investigating an incident involving a number of our students. The investigation eventually led to the temporary exclusion of one of the roll. Exclusion is an important part of the discipline process and although all East Lothian Schools make every effort not to exclude – there are situations when this is unavoidable.

For the final part of the day I had been given a ‘please-take’ for one of our S1 Seton Social Education classes. It was great to be back in the classroom talking and communicating with young people. It was a nice class, with some really fun characters. We spoke about their experiences at the school so far and talked a little bit about what the S1 Social Education Course involved.

After school there was an opportunity for all of the new staff to meet up with the school management team and have an informal chat about the week so far. Everybody seems to be having a positive experience. I asked a few of our NQT’s about last weeks induction programme and they were all very complimentary. This is great news. I really believe that our East Lothian induction programme is moving from strength to strength.

Tied up a few loose ends (well….quite a lot of loose ends!) and left at 18.45.

Finished the results analysis first thing this morning. I have been trying to compare the Standard Grade, Intermediate and Higher results of last years students to the courses they are sitting this year. In doing this I hoped to identify a small group of students that might be ‘selling themselves short’. For example they might have started the Intermediate 2 course before the summer but in the Standard Grade exam they had achieved a credit pass. This student might be able to cope with the demands of the higher course. The analysis showed a small group of students that fell into this category.

Got around a few more classes at registration today. Got a bit muddled up with the S3 and S4 classes – think managed to recover much to the amusement of the class!

Met my S3 Social education class. We are doing a unit on personal safety this term. Although I picked up my resource pack from the cupboard I decided to spend the double period trying to get to know the class a little bit better. We had a discussion on what we meant by personal safety and then we talked a little bit about hobbies and interests. I brought bebo, myspace and facebook into our conversation and I explained that we would come back to chat rooms and on-line communities when we spoke about internet safety in a few weeks time. This is one part of the course that I would like to develop. Perhaps Struan’s bebo lesson might come in handy here?

Other jobs: Contacted the local minister to help put this years assembly rota together, spoke with a parent about appeals, break time duty and lots of other bits and pieces!

One bit of good news is that our new data projectors will arrive tomorrow! Thanks for the email Karen!

Back at home I finished putting me bit of the appeals evidence together for the DGS Geography appeal.

PS: Great link from David on how to speed up these exc-el posts!

It was quite a hectic first day – although I’m assured by some of my new colleagues that it was actually quite quiet.

Managed to get around to all of the new first year classes in Seton House to welcome them to the school and wish them luck on their first day. This is something that I hope to continue and as I start to find my way around the school a bit better I should get faster at this in the mornings.

Ronnie Summers (The Headteacher of MGS) ran a number of one-off assemblies for all the year groups. I thought this was excellent and a good way to set the tone for the year ahead. I was interested to hear Ronnie use language from the draft Learning and Teaching Strategy including, ‘unconditional positive regard’. I was also interested to hear about his 5:1 rule and particularly liked the analogy between smoking at the school gates and being involved in an accident (more on this at another time). Making things sound simple to students is something that I need to work on. I often end up making things more complicated and I normally end up confusing myself.

Between assemblies managed to sort out quite a few ICT problems (mainly new passwords and logging a number of help desk calls). The lady on the other end of the phone now assures me that she can recognise my voice! I have to say Iain Turnbull has been superb in sorting out our network problems. Thanks Iain.

I have also been learning the ropes and been grateful to the other DHT’s for pointing me in the right direction when it comes to lunchtime and break time duty. I still have a lot to learn – but I think I will get there.

Briefly met my new S6 Social Education Class – we had a quick chat about UCAS and university entry requirements. I also spoke about the importance of choosing the right university.

After school I spent a bit more time getting my head around Phoenix (the school management software). Luckily, Sheila McIntosh’s office is just up the corridor and I am sure there is nothing that she doesn’t know about Phoenix. I have started to record some of her advice on a wiki. This should help the person who eventually takes over my role.

I have been set a task to analysis the results. In particular I have been asked to check if there are any students currently sitting a course (eg: Int2) who could potentially stretch themselves further now the summer results have been published (eg: to do Higher). This is going to be quite a long winded task (involving just under 400 bits of paper – don’t ask!), but I managed to complete about a third of it before heading home.

One last thing. Finally ran into Brian Cunningham and was able to put a face to the blog. We managed to chat about a couple of ICT ideas which I hope we can follow up in a bit more detail soon. Brian was also kind enough to show me where the toilets were!

Students back at school tomorrow and then the excitement will begin. My new colleagues at Musselburgh Grammar School seem incredibly supportive and I am very grateful for this. I’m on a sharp (slightly overhanging!) learning curve and conscious that I am going to make lots of mistakes (I’ve already made a few when it comes to introducing myself). I have been into school a few times during the holiday to look at the results and get started with sorting out the appeals. Last Wednesday I got lost for 10 minutes (not good for a Geographer!) but I am starting to find my bearings!

Since I have been back from the Alps I’ve been pretty busy working on some interactive whiteboard software and a new book project. I have desperately been trying to clear the backlog of work before the start of term – and I’m just about there. One more weekend should see the whiteboard project complete and after a weekend of researching, typing, reading and writing I am bang up-to-date with my publisher’s deadlines. More on both of these projects soon.

I think it’s going to be an exciting and challenging year with lots of new people and opportunities. Lots of other things to report and blog about, I’ll catch up with some of these ideas over the next few weeks.

Ok…off to pack some boxes. I move house in 10 days.

Back in Edinburgh Airport. Fly out to the Alps in a few minutes for some rock climbing and white water kayaking. Can't wait. Its unlikely that I will update my blog for the next couple of weeks. But I'll be sure to post a couple of photos of my Flickr site when I get back. Just before I go, a quick note about an exciting project that will be starting in the next couple of days. Bike Colorado 2006 will track the progress of a youth expedition as they mountain bike 1000 miles across the Rocky Mountains. Three of my good friends Clive Burgess, Mark Salmon and Paul Seys are leading the expedition. Paul who is a professional web designed has designed the expedition web site at www.bikecolorado.co.uk and included a project page which builds on the success of the www.geographyataltitude.co.uk project from 2004. I think the web site looks fantastic and Paul will be combining the best of web 2.0 (blogs, flickr, google maps, google earth etc...) to make a fantastic learning resources that will document the trip and serve as a portal for other expeditions wishing to repeat the venture in future years. I will also be using the trip as a case study in a couple of presentions during 2006/2007. Alex Frith a S6 student from Knox Academy is one of the team members and will be flying the East Lothian flag while she is away. Good luck to all the team, have a safe trip and I'll see you all when you get back.

In school today. Tidying, packing, sorting and marking! At first even I thought it was a little sad to be in school during the holidays. But when I looked at the signing in book and all of the other members of staff that had been in school since the end of term, I realised that a couple of ‘holiday days’ was probably a reality for most staff.

I don’t believe that teacher get enough quality time. In-service days are often cluttered with meetings or CPD and free periods are often disturbed by please takes, marking, conversation and even pupils!

As I was driving home tonight I started to wonder how much attainment would suffer with a couple more days off a year for pupils (probably not very much?). But how much benefit would occur with a couple of extra day’s development time for staff? Development time free from meetings and CPD. Structured development time just to improve courses and concentrate on reflection, review, learning and teaching.

Made an 8-hour start on a new book project today. There is a light, but it’s a long way from the end of the tunnel!

Delighted to read that we had a huge amount of visitors to exc-el yesterday. Hopefully David’s Connected Article and my promotion of the site recently in the US has added to the visitor numbers. I am sure that we will break the 1000 barrier early next session if not sooner.

Interesting that I posted yesterday about NAGTY and it was all over the BBC News this morning.

Into school tomorrow.

Lots more interesting presentations today. Ross Reynolds from the University of Reading started the conference by telling us about a project that he has been involved in to teach the weather to gifted and talented students in the UK through NAGTY.

NAGTY stands for the NationalAcademy for Gifted and Talented Youth. I had never heard of NAGTY before and some further research seems to indicate that it is only available for children in England (is there a Scottish version?). According to their web site NAGTY has a particular remit to support those at the top end of the ability range (the top 5%). Ross’s project sounded very interesting and I was even more interested when he showed some photographs of the Dorset Coastline (my old stomping ground!). In Scotland we often talk about catering for the top and bottom 20% of students. But I often wonder if we really do stretch the top 20%? All two often classroom teaching (my own included) is aimed at the lower end of the academic spectrum and becomes disengaging for more able students. A project like Ross’s based around a theme (metrology, drama, creative writing, ICT etc…) and making extensive use of outside expertise (a meteorologist, an actor, a poet, a computer programmer etc…) seems a really good way of doing this.

During his talk Ross also pointed out a couple of good web sites. The first was European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and the second the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station. I have used the second site before but not visited it for a while – there would be some great scope here for some ICT Standard Grade Weather Enquiry work.

Thomas Halenka (Czech Republic) also gave an interesting overview of Weather and Climate Education in the European School Curriculum. Thomas gave me a copy of his slides which I may use in a separate post. The differences in science education across Europe are very interesting.

I also enjoyed Roberta Johnson’s presentation on ‘ Bringing Magacity Environmental Impacts to the Global Community of Learners and Educators’. The presentation was about the climatic effects caused by Mexico City on areas outside of Mexico. The project used the Windows to the Universe web site as its main way to distribute the information. Again I have seen this web site before, but it was good to have another look around. There are lots of things that could be used for student enquiry. One of the things that I like about the site is that you can choose the difficulty of text between beginner – intermediate – advanced.

After a coffee break Joseph Lamos told us about the work he has been doing to develop a short course on watersheds. If you teach hydrosphere or river systems this is definitely worth a look, open up the run off page here wait for the flash file to download and then click on begin (bottom left and corner) The animations are fantastic. Joseph also is keen to encourage people to use this information and adapt it to suit any educational purpose. Other courses and animations can be found at www.meted.ucar.edu

After lunch there were a number of presentations on Globe Activities. Again Globe is something that I have used before and would encourage any teachers to take part in. I am definitely going to try and get involved in Globe at Night for next year. If you have never been to the globe teachers area (referred to as Educators Corner) its worth a quick look. How about this as a homework activity for reinforcing maximum and minimum temperature? Or this to help students learn the names of countries? Or what about this cloud quiz?

Overall a productive conference – I want to write up some of the conversations I had with Viki, George and the other conference delegates at a separate time. But hopefully the last few posts have given you a flavour of what I’ve been up to over the past few days and also given me an opportunity to share some of the things that I have seen.