Outcomes and Experiences

Day 214 - Beware of abrupt depth changes
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay

The draft numeracy and science outcomes for curriculum for excellence have now been out for a few weeks. We are beginning to gather some sense of what folk are thinking about them but don't yet have a mechanism for feeding this back to LTS. Over the next few weeks we will be running a series of engagement seminars to allow teachers from all sectors to sit down together and talk about what they think about what they have seen so far. We are working with West Dunbartonshire and Inverclyde on this task. It will be good to have the opportunity of allowing teachers from across the three areas to mix and discuss their concerns and anxieties as well as what they see as good and helpful.

At our strategy group meeting yesterday we started to discuss the feedback we had received so far. Whilst there are lots of questions raised it is clear that there is a lot to welcome and much that is comforting for teachers. How we handle the anxiety and concern will be important. It is also important to recognise that the implementation of these new outcomes and experiences will not happen over night but will take a number of years to embed.

I also understand that the modern language outcomes are due to be published this Tuesday (the 30th of October). That will give us another load to get our heads round.

A Glimmer of GLOW

Diffraction
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay

Well it's started. We now have some real live accounts with access to GLOW. We have started the training for staff who will manage accounts, the SEEMIS link seems to be working and yesterday saw our first day of training of teachers. There is still a long, long way to go but we are starting to head in the right direction. After our launch event a couple of weeks (which I should have written a post on but have been so busy :-)) it is really quite exciting to see things starting to take shape.

I will write more over the next few weeks as we get things rolling.

Cooperative Learning for Head Teachers

We bring all our head teachers from all sectors together every now and then to explore an area of education without cluttering up the day with business. In my current role, the organisation of the most recent of these fell to me. I have talked before in this blog about cooperative learning and the possibilities that it brings in challenging the quality of learning and teaching in our classrooms. The meeting of head teachers this week gave me a great opportunity to share the idea with all of our heads at the one time. We got Chris Ward to come in and facilitate the day. Chris is currently seconded to North Lanarkshire from Durham in Canada where she was heavily involved in developing some of the ideas. Our heads are used to days of sitting and dealing with death by PowerPoint. The challenge this week was to get them all to mix and to engage with the subject matter. It worked! Chris was great at leading the session, absolutely everyone was engaged with the content we were exploring throughout the day, and the evaluations of the day were better than I could have believed possible. One HT emailed me the day after the meeting to tell me that she had gone away, thought about it and then used the cooperative learning techniques in her staff meeting the following morning and that it had been a great success.

The plan now is to organise staff development opportunities in the spring to start training as many staff as possible in the use of cooperative learning. The focus with curriculum for excellence on the quality of learning and teaching gives us a very real chance to change the way that things happen in our classrooms at all stages. I am not suggesting that cooperative learning will cure all ills, but it isn't a bad start.

My thanks have to go to Chris for all the hard work she put into the day and to all our head teachers for suspending their disbelief long enough to really get a huge amount out of the exercise.

I like this

Every now and then I come across something in my reading which tickles me. The Cartoon Blog is one of those that often has something really interesting to say. On this occasion it was just funny!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

GLOW Launch

Day 282 - GLOW Launch
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay

Well, we have now done the official launch! Last night 250 people were in the main hall at Gleniffer High School in Paisley to get their first glimpse of GLOW in Renfrewshire. The evening started with Alan Wait from Learning Curve Software giving a presentation on digital literacy. This was followed by our first live glimpse of GLOW. Paul Smyth of RM demonstrated some of the main functionality and it all worked!

The evening was hosted by a former pupil of a Renfrewshire school, Heather Reid and it was really nice to see some of her old teachers queuing up for an autograph.

Over the next few weeks the first of our schools will start to get accounts and begin to explore what it might mean for learning and teaching in the 21st century. The staff tutor is going to be up to his eyes in training for the next few months.

Exciting times ahead.