For further information on Digital Leaders check out the following links or get in touch with me on Twitter or via the comments below.

http://www.mrstucke.com/tag/digital-leaders/

http://kristianstill.co.uk/wordpress/category/curriculum/digital-leaders/

http://digitalleaders.co.uk

http://vital.ac.uk/

Technorati Tags: CPD, Digital Leaders, EdTech, education, ELearning, frog10, learning platform, Toshiba, training, VLE

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I was honoured to be invited to Becta-X (the x stands for exchange) during the Easter break.  The conference brought together 75 leading educators and 75 leading people from the Media sector.  Thanks to @TomBarrett for getting me the invite – truly much appreciated.

The aims of the day were:

The way the digital media industry influences young people is both a threat and a real opportunity to education. As part of its “Fit for the Future” programme Becta has asked Just-b. Productions to independently bring together thinkers and doers from both these two worlds

We hope this participatory and distributed forum will break down walls between these two sectors, between big and small, between speaker and delegate, between real and remote participants and create fresh thinking on all sides.

I’ll not describe the entire order of events, if you want the details or indeed just the perspectives of others then please have a skim through some of these posts from other educators who were in attendance:

Fred Garnett / Tom Barrett / Doug Belshaw / Dai Barnes / Kristian Still / Nicola McNee / Ewan McIntosh

As you will see from those posts there was some discussion and reflection afterwards as to how much of a success the event was.  My 2-cents worth:

Yes we have been discussing filtering, social networking, wifi etc repeatedly for the past few years.  But this shows what a hindrance they still are in many schools.  Slowly we are making progress in this area, the recent Ofsted report on filtering & AUPs being a prime example.  Should Becta / Ofsted go further on this issue – perhaps, although whether policy is needed I’m not so sure.  Everything is in place for schools to open up their filters and manage this problem with sensibly written AUPs, it is a matter of educating LAs and Head Teachers that this is the right thing to do.  But remember the other 75 people in the room, many from the Media sector were surprised at the variety of filtering issues we had, I’m sure some went away with an understanding that they cannot just assume that their innocuous seeming website won’t be blocked for some educators.  This can but help.

Yes we could have taken more input from the children, their wire-framing of a new website on the fly via a Skype video call was inspirational.  Unfortunately and ironically technology seemed to be against that link up on that day.  Perhaps next time they should be invited in person?

The biggest positive that I took from the event was the interest and connections built with the Media professionals who were present.  I think that Ewan, Katz & the team really succeeded in their aim to bring together these two industries and to give us the opportunity to build these connections.  It may seem like we’ve been having the conversations about filtering etc repeatedly, but isn’t that partly to do with the relatively small and dare I say it, cliquey Ed-Tech community?  The majority of the Media professionals that were there were genuinely interested in finding out what was going on in schools and how we could work together in the future.  Only a few were there on sales duties.

The afternoon sessions where we worked together on the 5 key questions that had been identified was probably the highlight, some great and varied minds putting their heads together was exciting stuff.  Much comment has been made that 4 of the solutions were very similar.  Focussing on a central, tagged, Delicious style repository of teaching ideas (credit to Kristian Still for getting this ball rolling).

I’d just like to expand on our particular question and solution about collaborating between industry and education.  The question:

“What kind of partnerships between schools, digital industries and content creators (including brands) can be mutually beneficial?”

We had an entertaining discussion about educators benefiting from the skills and expertise of industry working with their pupils, of industry inspiring youngsters into their profession.  I emphasised that for these partnerships to pay dividends they do have to be based around a part of the curriculum.  My Head has repeatedly reminded me to make sure that our Digital Leaders project should ultimately benefit our pupils and help them towards improving their qualifications.  For better or worse that is the key driver in our schools and an easy way to get projects and collaborations high level support in your school.

We finally came up with a ‘solution’.  A website something akin to a ‘clearing house’ where businesses from across the country could ‘advertise’ their willingness to work with schools.  I think this would be an invaluable resource.  At present forging those links with businesses to develop meaningful collaborations is incredibly time-consuming and needs a very dedicated member of staff to initiate it.  Yet my conversations with professionals at Becta-X showed me just how many companies are eager to forge these links.

So where now?  Kristian has shown how the participants can take some of these ideas and run just as Ewan hoped.  However do we need the likes of Becta to also do this?  I think for any of these web-based hubs of content to succeed on a national level then it will need their support and promotion.  And with an election imminent, who knows if they’ll even be around to do this?

Technorati Tags: AUP, BECTA, becta-x, BectaX, Delicious, EdTech, education, ELearning, Filtering, Internet, PLN, Twitter, Web2.0

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You can now make you own stories with 7 simple search terms.  It couldn’t be easier, you just type in up to 7 search terms and then choose whether the video will show it as a normal search, image search, map search etc.  Try it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SearchStories

I knocked one up very quickly – took about 5 minutes, you’ll have to excuse the cheese factor of it!

Could be a great tool for pupils telling stories new or old, explaining topics, making revision tips, any other suggestions?

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: ELearning, English, Google, online, Resources, stories, teaching, video, writing, YouTube

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Parliament Sunset by G4EGK on Flickr

First of a two part reflection on my Easter events.  I recently blogged about the Progressive Education Network after they invited me to an event at the House of Commons.  They subsequently invited me to a seminar led by Dylan Wiliam at the Institute of Education in London, conveniently the evening before Becta-X (see part 2 of these posts) I was pleased to be able to attend.

Dylan Wiliam is Deputy Director and Professor of Educational Assessment at the Institute of Education, University of London.  Formerly of King’s College London, Dylan was a co-author of Inside the Black Box - a seminal publication on the role of assessment as a formative element in learning.

Dylan Wiliam: Improving Education, why it is a national economic priority:

Dylan spoke passionately about improving education, why it is a national economic priority.  He argued that in the current economic climate the only effective way for us to continue improving the standard of education is to improve the quality of the teaching.

His seminar was backed up with high quality data, data that is available to all of our politicians.  He showed that low skilled jobs continue to vanish at an increasing pace (especially in times of recession).  He showed that investment in education was money well spent, public money spent on education is efficiently translated into improved economic output.

Looking at three generations of school effectiveness research he said:

• Raw results approaches
  • Different schools get different results
  • Conclusion: Schools make a difference
• Demographic-based approaches
  • Demographic factors account for most of the variation
  • Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference
• Value-added approaches
  • School-level differences in value-added are relatively small
  • Classroom-level differences in value-added are large
  • Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

Delving more deeply into the variance of the data he showed that it doesn’t matter very much which school you go to, but it matters very much which classroom you are in.  More specifically it matters which teacher you have.

One particular area of interest for me was when comparing private and state schools around the World.  I had often heard that when you factor out the socio-economic differences between these schools that state schools are more often than not shown to have better teaching and better results.  This often show up in Contextually Value Added scores in the UK and interests me as I work in Trafford, one of the last remaining LAs that has a Grammar School system.

Comparing State & Private Education

This slide from Dylan’s presentation compares the two after socio-economic factors have been factored in (like using CVA in the UK).  I forget the exact x-axis units, forgive me.  A pink bar stretching farther to the right than a purple bar shows state education out-performing private schools.  Notice that the Conservative’s favourite school system in Sweden doesn’t come out too favourably here.

After concluding that the most cost-effective and time-effective way to improve our education was to improve our teaching staff we discussed CPD.  CPD of the current workforce (changing entry requirements etc to the profession take a generation to filter through and have little proven effect).  I asked if Dylan thought that there was time in a teacher’s year to improve their CPD.  We know what a busy life filled with paperwork the average teacher has already.  Dylan replied that there was time, but it is the responsibility of school leaders to make that time available.  This may mean asking staff to stop doing good and effective work in order to make time for training in turn making their work even better.  Something that is difficult and courageous for leadership to do.  It was also argued that CPD should be directed to some degree by research findings.

Discussing CPD, Dylan stated that improving practice involves changing habits, not adding knowledge.  That’s why it’s hard and takes time!  We also discussed Performance Management and how we could start to divorce some of the CPD from this.  Effective CPD needs to be something tailored to an individual that they have chosen to work on, not something inflicted upon them to tick a box.  Dylan suggested asking every member of staff “Do you want to improve as a practitioner?” and suggested 95% would honestly answer yes, and that the rest probably need removing from post asap!

To quote his final slide:

• What is needed from teachers:
  • A commitment to the continuous improvement of practice; and
  • A focus on those things that make a difference to students

• What is needed from leaders:
  • A commitment to engineer effective learning environments for teachers :
    • creating expectations for the continuous improvement of practice
    • keeping the focus on the things that make a difference to students
    • providing the time, space, dispensation and support for innovation
    • supporting risk-taking

I think these are salient points for all teachers and leaders.  Also for those of us who have a habit of using technology for technology’s sake – the learning has to come first.

Progressive Education Network – Influencing Policy:

I was interested to meet some of the PEN and to get a better feel for their objectives.  To quote them again:

Generating clear messages that build, nurture and give a real voice to a coalition of school leaders, teachers and governors is core to how Progressive Education Network will be different and distinct in its approach and work.

We believe that education and our childrens’ futures demand that we place the partnership of our frontline school leaders with government at the heart of policy making. We cannot afford a retreat to the old style politics of division and the domination of the ‘expert’ and the powerful.

There are influential figures involved with PEN who do have the ears of policy makers at Whitehall.  This then had me wondering about my involvement, the words politics and policy are a little alien to me.  I was not sure if it’s my place to influence these things.  Well, why not?  I’m not going to be out campaigning for this and that, but I do feel that future education policy needs to be considered and based on solid research and data.

PEN – Engaging online:

I was asked towards the end how I thought PEN could engage more effectively on-line with the various communities.  They are keen to have more involvement from staff on the front line and I guess a blog and Twitter network of 600+ makes me something of an ‘expert’?!

Thinking about this I’d say it’s relatively simple:

Engage with educators on Twitter: There is a PEN Twitter account, either via this, or possibly with individual members accounts, get involved in conversation – @reply people.  Set up some Twitter searches on the key topics you want to discuss and get involved in those conversations.  Twitter networks build quickly when you give valuable opinions back.

Encourage discussion on the PEN website.  Get those survey results out and enable comments somewhere no the website.  Again, encourage the conversation.

I don’t think there is any easy way for a group or company to ‘buy/promote’ there way into social media, you need to add value to people’s networks.

Technorati Tags: CPD, education, PEN, policy, politics, Progressive Education Network

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Watch one of Hans Rosling’s classic TED talks to see what it’s capable of:

There have been a number of great updates which can be seen in this diagram I’ve borrowed from Gapminder.org:

You can see the blog post detailing these on Gapminder, but to summarise:

• More data;
• Downloadable data – each set is available as a Google Spreadsheet ;
• Data displayed as scatter graph or plotted on a map;
• News & videos. (Bookmark their RSS feed in your Google Reader!)
• For Teachers section that is soon to be updated with teaching ideas & resources.

How have you used Gapminder in your classroom? I’d be fascinated to hear.

PS: I also note that Google (who bought our Gapminder a few years ago) have a little strangely brought out a very similar tool: Google Public Data Explorer.  This has some nice alternative data sets to investigate.

PPS: Another short Hans Rosling video – just because he’s great

Technorati Tags: Data, Gapminder, geography, Google, Google Spreadsheet, hans rosling, history, math, mathematics, Maths, science, social studies, world

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The Internet I love (Image by Niffty on Flickr)

Inspired by Simon Job, this is a post about how I surf the torrential tidal wave of information that is out there on the Internet, how I filter it down into a manageable stream to consume and how I save the best bits for later.

I have been using Google Reader for the last 3 years or so to read the latest updates from my favourite websites and blogs.  I have just spent about the last 4 hours tidying up my list of 400+ websites which I follow after reading an article on Lifehacker about how to declutter and streamline you google reader inbox.

I hope there are some useful tips about Google Reader, Delicious & Instapaper for newcomers to rss, and to old timers with a bulging reader like myself.

I’ve split this little guide into three sections:

1. How I read just the best bits of the Web that I want, filtering out the noise.
2. How I save the best bits to read later or for future reference.
3. How I find retrieve my archived information.

I’d be fascinated to hear how you filter the Web to your liking, and whether any of this was of use to you

Simon Job has created a great little graphic to explain this process:

Using The Web

Filtering / Reading The Web:

The basics: RSS & Google Reader

If you are not familiar with RSS then I suggest you watch this video and it will explain all:

Adding feeds couldn’t be easier, anywhere you see the orange rss icon you can add a feed.  For a detailed guide of adding feeds and all the features of Google Reader try this guide.

Filing & Filtering

So assuming you have a Google Reader account, the next step I would suggest is to create some folders or tags of feeds based on specific topics.  I worked for several years with a list including: Teaching; Technology; Football; Gaming and a few others.  This worked great until recently, when I check this morning I had over 400 feeds and was receiving 500+ unread items a day.  Way too much to process efficiently without missing stuff.

That’s where the Lifehacker article came in.  This has 3 great tips for the experienced or the newcomer:

1. Delete unnecessary feeds. Click on Your Stuff > Trends > Inactive.  This will show feeds that haven’t been updated for a while.  Unfollow any dead feeds, check the last post on these, I found lots of blogs with posts saying “I have moved my blog to xxxx, please update your reader” and have re-followed some old chestnuts that I hadn’t realised had gone from my feed.
2. Priority based folders. I have created 3 new priority based folders to help me not miss the posts that I’ll be really interested in.

_favourites has my favourite non-education feeds in it that I want to read every day and never miss a post.

_secondary has all my other non-education feeds in it, if I don’t have time to read these it won’t be the end of the world.  I could mark all as read on busy days and not miss too much.

_teaching fav has all my favourite education related feeds that I wouldn’t want to miss.

3. Reduce unwanted posts with rss filters. I didn’t go down the Yahoo Pipes route, it’s a little complex for my needs.  I used the excellent PostRank website.  Some blogs and websites that I subscribe to pump out staggering amounts of posts.  PostRank will filter this down.  Type in the website of your choice, try Engadget for example.  You will see a little box with ‘All Posts’ in it, change that to ‘Best Posts’ as you will see this filters down the Engadget feed to only the very best posts (based on comments, links, tweets etc).  This can be a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of some very busy websites.

Sharing / Getting Started

Most of my day was spent going through the hundreds of education blogs I subscribe to and putting them into categories such as English, Maths, Policy etc etc.  Whilst not necessary I’ve been meaning to do this for ages so that I have little groups of feeds to share with staff in my school.

You can share bundles of links in Google Reader, to do so click Browse for stuff > Create a Bundle.  You can then drag either individual feeds in or whole folders.  Here are a selection of feed bundles that you may be interested in following:

• Technology News
• Education Favourites
• E-Learning / Leadership blogs
• Maths blogs
• Primary school blogs
• Educational News
• Moodle

If you click through these links and follow the bundles you will be automatically subscribed to all the feeds in that bundle.  Following a few of those should get you some quality content in your reader.

Reader also has some great social features, you can share items with friends, and see what they have shared.  If you have a Google Mail account then a little nosey around the Sharing Settings page should find you some friends who already use Reader.  I’ll not go into further details here.

On the Go:

When at a computer I use the web interface for Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader , it’s fab and I see no need for an alternative.  When I’m on the go I used to use the mobile version of the Google Reader website on my iPhone, however I have recently started using the excellent Byline app .

Byline syncs perfectly with your Google Reader account.  It displays feeds perfectly, has support for things like starring (more of that later) and best of all will cache your feeds for reading later.  This is great for train journeys for example.  I know when I travel to London the 3G coverage on the train is patchy, I can load up byline before I leave, sync all unread items over my wifi and then browse them at my leisure later.

Saving For The Future

So that was how I consume most of my Web, but anything that catches my eye needs saving safely for future reference.

Starring

The first thing I will often do is ‘star’ and item in Google Reader, if I’m skimming through and spot something interesting but either don’t have time to save it for future use or read it there and then I will click the little star, it will then be ready in my starred item list next time I have time to look at it properly.  As I mentioned before this can also be done in Byline.

Instapaper

If I come across a longer article that I want to read later I might send to to Instapaper.  I can do this either with the send to button in Google Reader (click Settings > Send To to change your options) or with a bookmarklet saved in my browser.

Instapaper then has a great iPhone app that displays that article in an easy to read way on the iPhone.

Delicious

The final crucial tool is Delicious.com.  Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that has been around for years.  Here’s another handy video for those not in the know.

I’m not going to go into great detail about how to use Delicious here.  If you need a blow by blow account, knock yourself out with these videos.

I have around a 1000 bookmarked webpages on Delicious.  When I’m saving a website I try and use as many descriptive tags as I can so that it’s easy to find in the future.  Delicious is now my first port of call when searching for info no a certain topic, if I’ve saved something there myself it must have been good!

Here’s my main education account:

And here’s my Maths account:

Retrieving

Google Reader combined with Delicious give me an invaluable store of information tailored to me.  If I’m working on a new project and want to search for information, I’ll search these two sites first for my own personalised results directly from the websites I trust.  After this I’ll head on over to an old fashioned Google search, or probably ask my Twitter network.

Technorati Tags: Delicious, education, Google Reader, Internet, News, online, PLN, Resources, rss, Twitter, web, Web2.0

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Snail's Pace by Randy on Flickr

I have complained bitterly all year about the speed of our Internet connection at school, it hampers learning day after day and shows no sign of improvement.  I thought it was just me being difficult until a Capita support technician’s comment on the phone last week as an update failed and crippled our SIMS FMS system.

“So whereabouts in Manchester are you?”

“Hang on, you’re not in the Trafford black-hole are you?”

“Oh.”

“We’ll post the update out to you”

Glad it’s not just my imagination then!

Roll on the new Academy and hopefully a new connection.

Technorati Tags: Internet

No related posts.

I’m bitterly disappointed that the short notice means I will not be able to attend.

I came across the PEN via a tweet last month.  Chaired by Mike Gibbons and supported by The Co-operative Group the PEN’s aims are:

Progressive Education Network aims to engage with and challenge policy makers of every political hue by bringing the voice of experience and the wisdom of leading education professionals and school leaders to the debate. How do we best build on what’s working now to develop the education system that maximises the opportunities for the success of every child?

The PEN launched last month with the release of Please no year zero, a ‘report card’ on recent reform commissioned for the launch event that argues that there is much to celebrate in the reforms and their intent since 1997 but that the next phase of continuing change needs to be driven by practitioners, government and local communities in partnership.

I agree with the vast majority of that document, it is time that education is divorced at least some way from politics.  Michael Gove‘s recent policy statements worry me greatly about the future of education should the Government change this Spring.  The 6 years so far of my teaching career have seen an incredible number of Government initiatives (too many for sure), some successful, some not, but it is time to evaluate these properly using the skills and knowledge of the practitioners and the pupils themselves.  All of the major parties are happy to play for votes with populist sounding promises in education, few of which seem to be rooted in experience or evidence.

So as I cannot attend in person I will at least add my voice, yours is wanted to, PEN have a questionnaire for anyone involved in education to have their say.  Here are my responses:

What do you think has made the greatest contribution to improving standards in SCHOOLS GENERALLY in the last 10 years?

Investment pure and simple. In wages, buildings, ICT etc..

What has had the greatest impact on improving standards in YOUR OWN school or federation?

Only been there 6 months, but School Specialisms have been incredibly positive.  We are a Language College and a RAPP (Raising Attainment Partnership Programme) School.  The school has developed positively through both of these specialisms.  We have a thriving Languages Department and foster great links working on languages with our feeder primary schools.  The RAPP specialism has enabled us to share best practice with schools across the country, and farther afield, we had a visitor from New Zealand this week.

What has the investment in education in recent years enabled your school or federation to do which has contributed to raising standards?

Keep talented and ambitious outstanding teachers & support staff at the school.  Develop a site, most of which is over 80 years old, into a positive learning environment.

What strategies should be priorities for practitioners to promote to continue to improve schools and federations?

Collaboration and time to share.  Through official channels such as RAPP and the SSAT to unofficial channels such as this blog and Twitter.  But to do this on a large and positive scale teachers need time.  Imagine the possibilities if we could give all teaching staff 20% time like Google allows it’s developers!  We could see Teachmeet style teacher led CPD transform teaching & learning.  I realise that 20% is wishful thinking, but some reduction in new Government led initiatives would help free up teacher time.

What one piece of constructive advice would you like to give to the Government’s education team after the next election?

Reduce the influence of 5A*-C with English & Maths league tables.  They have been put on a pedestal by Government and by the Press and as such they are the single biggest driving force in schools and the single biggest hinderance to innovation and progress.

What is the greatest concern you have for the future development of your OWN school or federation?

It’s an exciting time for us as we look to the future with a potential merger and new Academy so I’m full of hope.  However as I’ve alluded to earlier: too much change, too much legislation, too much paperwork are my biggest concerns.

What are your thoughts on the best ways to give practitioners a real voice in education policy debates and to encourage mass participation? In your experience, what works well and what doesn’t work?

A tough one, as I don’t feel I have ever had a voice in policy debates, my invitation to this event and to BectaX next week are the first time I feel my voice could have a real say.  Both of these invites I think come down to this blog and to Twitter, not something the majority of educators have.  Perhaps we need a more considered approach to policy driven by research into teaching & learning.  Although notoriously difficult to arrange in education, evidenced based research could directly involve those on the front line.

What do you think Progressive Education Network should focus on and prioritise?

Research into what has improved teaching & learning over the last decade.  Representing the real classroom leaders on the ground, giving them a voice that is heard by Government.  Celebrating front line teaching & learning success stories.

Technorati Tags: BECTA, education, Google, mathematics, Maths, national curriculum, PEN, Progressive Education Network, RAPP, SSAT, teaching, TeachMeet, Twitter

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Poster

As per my previous post, Kristian Still asked me to become involved in developing the Digital Leaders idea into my school and others in collaboration with Vital.  

A strange set of coincidences has blossomed this project into something greater than I could have imagined already.  The open letter in my previous post to ICT suppliers received a positive reply from Len Daniels at Toshiba.  I met with Len and Bob Harrison, Educational Advisor to Toshiba to discuss the project.  The coincidences started here as Bob is also School Governor for Lostock College, the school we will potentially be merging with in September.  He had also seen Kristian and his Digital Leaders present at the SSAT Conference last year so was aware of the programme and their considerable success.

A positive meeting followed and we agreed to work together on this project, we also agreed that working in collaboration with Lostock from the start would be advisable.  This had always been my plan a little down the line, but with the situation we find ourselves in it made sense to get more staff and students collaborating together earlier rather than later.  I was also honoured to be asked to become one of the Toshiba Ambassador schools, and I look forward to the chance to collaborate with these other innovative schools.

I took the concept of Digital Leaders to the Senior Leadership Team at my school and to Vicki Nuttall (Head of ICT) at Lostock, along with my ICT & Media departments.  Every member of staff that was approached about the idea was genuinely positive and excited about the project.

I launched the project just over a week ago, inviting applications from pupils.  My only stipulation was that the application should be digital.  I’ve had a great response so far, lots of pupils intrigued by the project.  Everything from emails saying “I want a laptop” to presentations & videos outlining their skills.  The pupils have another week to complete their applications, we will then be planning interviews.

Through Bob Harrison’s interest and contacts we are now also working with Vital on the project in the North-West and also with Trafford College.  Vital’s funding will allow us to work more closely with Kristian’s team in the South-East, hopefully we’ll have a great case-study of Digital Leader’s by the Summer.  Toshiba’s inclusion means that with their support we can loan each DL a shiny new Toshiba NB300 netbook.  This will give them the opportunity to really embed ICT in their learning, to support their classmates and teachers and to investigate the notion of 1 to 1 provision in our school for the future.

Finally, last week the Digital Leaders team met up for the first time at The Open University’s offices in Oxford.  This was a chance for the schools across the South East (& myself) who Kristian has got on board to sit down together and put together a course for Vital.  The idea being that any school wishing to follow our lead can register on Vital and take the bare-bones of a Digital Leaders programme off the shelf.

An inspiring 24 hours was had putting together a framework with some inspiring teachers.  You can follow them all on Twitter here.  It was great to see such energy at work and to have some detailed discussions of what we see Digital Leaders being, both as individual pupils and as an entity of it’s own.

We came up with 5 cornerstones that we want to see from our young leaders:

1. Exclusive but open
2. Mixed year group access
3. Mixed gender
4. Committment
5. Shape ICT in school

And we split the programme into 4 main areas:

1. DLs as Staff Trainers
2. DLs as Digital Journalists
3. DLs as Technical Support
4. DLs having fun and learning new skills and tools

More on these once we finalise the details.  Personally I’m really excited to choose Stretford High’s Digital Leaders and to start developing them as young leaders.  I’m excited to build links with Lostock College & Trafford College, our 3 institutions are on a potentially exciting path together and these few pupils could have a big impact on the future of the schools over the next couple of years.  I’m also excited at the possible collaborations and interactions with Toshiba, again for the pupils involved and myself also.  I hope to have 6 pupils that by this Summer are on their way to considering careers in ICT / Media.  Who are helping me and the other staff out at school, in turn developing the teaching and learning they and their peers receive.  And I look forward to working with a great bunch of educators over these coming months.

Everyone that has come into contact with the concept of Digital Leaders has been excited by it, I hope I can do Kristian’s original vision justice.

If you want to know more about the Digital Leader’s then you can visit the staff blog at http://digitalleaders.co.uk or you can visit our DL’s blog at http://traffordschool.digitalleaders.co.uk (the pupils will start blogging here one they begin their roles).  Hopefully by next month you will be able to find the Digital Leaders Course on the Vital website.

Technorati Tags: Digital Leaders, education, ELearning, ICT, laptops, media, Toshiba, vital

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I have just completed the second edition of the SHS E-Learning Newsletter.  This issue’s focus was:

1. Google Maps/Earth Special!
2. MFL – Street View
3. History – Historical Imagery
4. Science – Tours of the World
5. Maths – Collaborative Maps
6. Further Reading / Ideas

Check it out here, or sign up for the next edition over on the right in the sidebar

Technorati Tags: ELearning, Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Street View, maps, newsletter

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