One of the more interesting features to emerge from the New Scientist (NS) special The Roots of Music was an article on amusia. Like many people, I had imagined this simply to mean the inability to carry a tune or to perceive changes in pitch and rhythm. However, researching further in a listen again edition […]

Find out how East Lothian is getting on with its implementation of Glow. This week: Mentor Training.

These are the slides I used at TeachMeetPerth Last week. You can see the images on a Flickr set.
I first got the idea for OpensourceCPD from TeachMeet at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2007 [you can see some pictures here]. Ollie Bray is widely quoted as saying that TeachMeet was his best Continuing Professional Development […]

I have to thank everyone who helped make TeachMeetPerth such a great success! Excellent conversation and ideas delivered in typical TeachMeet style! Lots of sharing and lots of humour… roll on the next one! I decided that I’d use my 7 minute slot to highlight a few tools that I like and which are a) […]

Have you ever seen a theremin played outside Bill Bailleyesque comedy? Let me recommend this short video featuring Pamelia Kurstin.
Lest you fear that the timbre is going to be a little samey throughout, try to hang on until at least 2:45 when the sound changes dramatically. At 14:15 there is a lovely arrangement of Billy […]

John Connell points to a superb step-by-step guide on the classroom management issues for getting your class started blogging, from Al Upton.

In an attempt to refresh mind and body between school and a twilight Parents’ Evening, I recently spent an hour in the pool and health suite of North Berwick Sports Centre. In the steam room I found myself, inexplicably whistling*. Apart from the fantastic acoustic and the apparent contribution of the steam to the quality […]

John Johnston, Scottish blogger and primary educator extraordinaire, is blogging and video-conferencing with his class from Georgia, USA, to mark the beginning of yet another collaboration with Carol Fuller, a teacher met through the serendipity of Musselburgh Grammar’s senior school Auschwitz blogging project four years ago, then a Sandaig-USA theatre project.
John’s moblogging the whole trip, […]

It’s fun to see that the blogging system Learning and Teaching Scotland worked with East Lothian Council to build is now being used to document the LTS Consolarium’s PSP trial taking place in Campie Primary School. It shows once again how having the tools available, having the encouragement in place, and students and teachers who […]

In 1994 I went on a trip to Sweden with the Lothian Regional Orchestra and Jazz Band. Our host, a man with the resoundingly Nordic name of Gerry Morrisey, took us out for a tour in his car and and pointed out a patch of spare ground covered in oil where learner drivers would practise […]