Another month of photos is done. The weather has been lousy for most of the month so taking a photo every day has been a real challenge. The month has ended with a nice week of weather but I have been really busy so not been out much. I have learned a little more about photography by learning about taking a bokeh and a few new techniques in using photoshop.
What will November bring?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Exam Changes Postponed
Well, well, well! It would appear that the government has decided to postpone the introduction of the new exams for a year. You can read more by clicking here. That means I will now have to reassess all of our planning as most of it was predicated on the time scale laid down by the introduction of the revised exams.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Do you know your history?
Those who have been around ICT for a fair length of time might be interested in this wee quiz on the BBC website. Jeremy Paxman asked contestants on University Challenge to identify some old PCs from pictures of them. Click here and see if you can do any better than I did! One or two are obvious but not all of them by any means.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Popping Colour in Photoshop
Have you ever wondered how they create photographs that are all black and white except for a small area. I took a photo of some leaves on Flenders Road a couple of weeks ago. In Photoshop I highlighted just one of them. It's a dead easy technique! It uses layers and the hue/saturation tool in order to turn the whole layer black and white. You then reveal the colour over the area you are wanting using a paint brush tool on the mask layer.
This video shows you how.
This is a great series of videos and ideas if you want to improve your photography.
Valid Assessment
This is a bit of a follow up to the post last week on the revision to qualifications in Scotland and was prompted by the announcement yesterday that SATs at 14 would be stopped in England. The report on the BBC news said that this meant that pupils would not receive any external assessment until they were 16. The implication was clearly that this was a bad thing.
As we have been grappling with implementing curriculum for excellence, the thorny issue of assessment continues to rear it's ugly head. Why is it that we are so obsessed by external assessment? Who says it's better than the teacher's judgement and why? Even teachers don't appear to want to trust their own judgement. The impression is that external assessment is good and internal assessment by teachers is untrustworthy, open to abuse and unreliable.
There must be a way of moving this debate on a bit from this point. I wonder how.
As we have been grappling with implementing curriculum for excellence, the thorny issue of assessment continues to rear it's ugly head. Why is it that we are so obsessed by external assessment? Who says it's better than the teacher's judgement and why? Even teachers don't appear to want to trust their own judgement. The impression is that external assessment is good and internal assessment by teachers is untrustworthy, open to abuse and unreliable.
There must be a way of moving this debate on a bit from this point. I wonder how.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Geotagging Again
I have been experimenting with another tool for geotagging photographs in flickr. It's called loc.alize.us and works really easily. The quality of maps is really good as well. They are still a bit out of date but the quality is pretty good. You can add a wee link to the toolbar which then allows a direct link from the photo in Flickr to the tool for placing it on the map.
This link shows a map of around our house with some photos that I have geotagged shown. I nice tool and certainly worth a try.
This link shows a map of around our house with some photos that I have geotagged shown. I nice tool and certainly worth a try.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Anyone Looking for a Job?
The advert for a post of education officer (QIO scale) has just been put on the Renfrewshire website. The post covers quality assurance for a cluster of schools along with the remit of science and technology. What the advert doesn't say (and this will need to be fixed) is the post is a secondment until Christmas 2009 in the first instance. We have struggled to find anyone for this post so I thought it might be worth noting a little more widely. This was my post at one time and covers all the ICT stuff in the curriculum, including GLOW. The post requires a high degree of self motivation and willingness to embrace working in a local authority so political awareness and a strategic understanding of what can and can't be done is vital.
I enjoyed doing the QIO job. I can understand why there is little appetite for this sort of work but there must be someone out there who is interested.
If you want to chat about it then drop me an email at g.mckinlay@ntlworld.com.
I enjoyed doing the QIO job. I can understand why there is little appetite for this sort of work but there must be someone out there who is interested.
If you want to chat about it then drop me an email at g.mckinlay@ntlworld.com.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
New Qualifications
I was at Ayr Racecourse today and not a horse in sight! The seminar was part of the SQA consultation on the next generation of qualifications in Scotland. I have just about finished our Local Authority response for submission so the timing of this one was a bit on the late side!
The four proposals are:
1. Retain access, higher and advanced and review them to make sure they match with the purposes and principles of curriculum for excellence.
2. remove Standard Grade, Intermediate 1 and 2 and replace with a new qualification at SCQF 4 and 5.
3. Develop new qualifications in literacy and numeracy.
4. Increase flexibility in the system.
As we have consulted with parents, pupils and staff about the proposals it was interesting to note that the pupils were by far the most conservative of them all. I have spotted this before when doing this sort of work. I don't know whether it is because it is just what they know or whether they inculcate the views of parents and teachers and then believe that it can't be any other way.
My own view is that I would like to see far more flexibility built into the system than is being proposed. I think we need to seriously think about moving away from end on "brain dump" exams and doing a lot more assessment when ready. If we are serious about curriculum for excellence then I don't understand how we can seriously believe that a set of exams can demonstrate the skills and aptitudes that we are looking for in our young people. This is not being reflected in any of the conversations I have been having so I think I am a bit of a lone voice on this one!
Anyway, our response is more or less done. After the schools break I shall have another look and finalise the response before getting it sent away.
The four proposals are:
1. Retain access, higher and advanced and review them to make sure they match with the purposes and principles of curriculum for excellence.
2. remove Standard Grade, Intermediate 1 and 2 and replace with a new qualification at SCQF 4 and 5.
3. Develop new qualifications in literacy and numeracy.
4. Increase flexibility in the system.
As we have consulted with parents, pupils and staff about the proposals it was interesting to note that the pupils were by far the most conservative of them all. I have spotted this before when doing this sort of work. I don't know whether it is because it is just what they know or whether they inculcate the views of parents and teachers and then believe that it can't be any other way.
My own view is that I would like to see far more flexibility built into the system than is being proposed. I think we need to seriously think about moving away from end on "brain dump" exams and doing a lot more assessment when ready. If we are serious about curriculum for excellence then I don't understand how we can seriously believe that a set of exams can demonstrate the skills and aptitudes that we are looking for in our young people. This is not being reflected in any of the conversations I have been having so I think I am a bit of a lone voice on this one!
Anyway, our response is more or less done. After the schools break I shall have another look and finalise the response before getting it sent away.
Youth Awards
I spent Monday at a conference on youth awards. Youth Scotland have just published a very helpful document called Amazing Things. It brings together a number of the most widely used awards gained by young people in informal learning situations. It includes the obvious ones such as Duke of Edinburgh and ASDAN along with Scouts and Guides.
This is a very useful resource and well worth bringing to the attention of all those in schools who are involved in guidance, UCAS applications and the like.
This is a very useful resource and well worth bringing to the attention of all those in schools who are involved in guidance, UCAS applications and the like.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
SLF Keynotes
Some more of the keynote addresses from the Scottish Learning Festival have been uploaded to the LTS website. This is great as it means I can do some more catching up from what I missed last week. The picture shows me catching up with the keynote by Richard Teese on my EeePC prior to a meeting yesterday morning. The EeePC is a great wee device for this sort of thing. It just does what it says on the tin. If I can get a wifi connection then a watch the streamed version. If not then I need to be a little more prepared and use the downloaded version.
This presentation by Richard Teese on risk taking is very thought provoking for all those involved in implementing curriculum for excellence. It would be so easy to implement a sterile risk free version that doesn't actually tackle the issues that we need to address. Good stuff and well worth a listen.
This presentation by Richard Teese on risk taking is very thought provoking for all those involved in implementing curriculum for excellence. It would be so easy to implement a sterile risk free version that doesn't actually tackle the issues that we need to address. Good stuff and well worth a listen.
CfE Update
Anyone who reads this blog will know that I am responsible for the implementation of curriculum for excellence in Renfrewshire. What will I do after lunch?
Anyway, here is a slideshare view of the presentation I recently used with all our head teachers:
Anyway, here is a slideshare view of the presentation I recently used with all our head teachers:
Cf E For Ht Meeting Sept 08
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.
Journey to Excellence
The second presentation of the evening was given by Sally Fulton from HMIE/LTS. She walked about Journey to Excellence. Sally introduced the five parts to the Journey to Excellence which includes How Good is our School (HGIOS), guidance on school improvement planning and the huge online resource of video clips and other professional development resources.This online resource covers ten aspects of excellence. The site is split into these areas to allow for ease of searching and locating the resource you are looking for :
- learning
- success
- vision
- leadership
- partnership
- parents
- reflection
- empowerment
- well-being
- ambition
There is also an LTS sister site called Learning about Learning. This has another huge host of video material which is also worth a look.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
