CPDAnswers

The post in which CPDCentral welcomes its 700th member and launches a free, CPDRequest service!

CPDCentral membership reached the 700 mark yesterday.  Our 700^th member is Joe Kane (a thoughtful and innovative faculty head from John Ogilvie High School in South Lanarkshire whom I have also had the pleasure to meet). Among many other things, Joe is interested in harnessing the power of a learning round to continue to embed learning through technology in his school.

To celebrate our 700th, we are offering our 1% CPD service, CPDRequest.

The National CPD Team at Education Scotland will arrange CPD for you on any topic, for free, if you can get 1% of the CPDCentral membership to join you in this topic. Here’s how it works:

• you come up with a topic and its likely impact on learning where you are
• 6 other CPDCentral colleagues join you
• we source an interesting practitioner in your topic area
• we arrange an online CPD opportunity for you (usually a CPDMeet)
• the CPD is made available to all CPDCentral members  through our online CPD catalogue

Oh, and for goodness sake, don’t tell a soul. We’ll be snowed under with requests for all this relevant CPD with real impact on learning!

Remember, 7 is the magic number!

RSS is a great way to gather up to date  information on one theme  into a single feed.  So, in CPDFind you could use the RSS feed option to keep up to date about  all available CPD on collaborative learning,  or modern languages for example.  You could also find out what CPD is available from a particular provider, or use it to get a feed of all the CPDMeets that are planned or have been recorded.  It’s easy to use, just follow these simple instructions:

1. Go to CPDFind.

2. Enter your search term in the search box.

3. Click on the “latest opportunities for this search”  lnk and then “subscribe to this feed”

You’ll then get a frequently updated feed on that topic to keep you up to date with the latest available CPD.

Help will follow here shortly when the new look CPDFind goes live (around April 2011)

On a Windows computer:

Step 1 – Right-click the Attachments link

Step 2 – Select Save Target As…

Step 3 – Browse to a suitable place on your computer

Step 4 – Select Save

 See screenshot below for further help

Macintosh guidance to follow soon

You should always introduce yourself to any group of colleagues, don’t you think?  Otherwise it’s the equivalent of attending face to face CPD event with a paper bag over your head!

You would never dream of attending a face-to-face CPD event without registering and introducing yourself. The same collegiate principle applies to online CPD opportunities such as those offered to members of CPDStepin, CPDLead, CPDNet and CPDCentral.

If you add a picture, areas of interest and contact details you can start to make connections that will help you in your professional development.

It’s only natural to be a little hesitant of putting personal details (including photos) online so please be assured that the About Us sections of Glow are open only to named members of the community, they are not available on the Internet.

The good news is that if you introduce yourself to one CPD community (eg CPDCentral), you can tick a box and have them appear in other communities of which you are a member (eg CPDLead).

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch at cpdanswers@ltscotland.org.uk

Image courtesy of abbynormy on Flickr

This is a test blog post for the CPDSnow service. Its contents should not be taken as policy!

In inclement weather, such as heavy snowfalls, you may not be able to travel to your place of work. Some participating local authorities will allow staff to undertake CPD from home rather than travel to the nearest establishment.

Please note the following conditions:

1. You must register for each of the specific days
2. You must provide an email address that you can access from home
3. Your local authority leaders reserve the right to ask you to take part in specific CPD opportunities during working hours
4. You are expected to record both your intentions and achievements for each day

CPDLead is the new professional community for CPD Leaders on Glow. You will need a Glow user ID and password to access the community. Select this link to send a request to join CPDLead. Please use the form to give us details of where, and how, you are a CPD leader.

For the moment, we are limiting the group to:

• establishment-based CPD leaders (coordinators)
• LA CPD managers
• quality improvement staff /advisers
• EIS learning reps

Don’t let the list put you off. Please feel free to plead your case!

If you have your email details on Glow, you will get an email confirming your membership. Check the link again if you don’t hear from us within a couple of days.

If you can improve on this advice, please leave a comment, thanks!

If you can improve on this advice, please leave a comment, thanks!

If you can improve on this advice, please leave a comment, thanks!