CPD Team

On an invitation from Kirsty Robertson, Margaret Alcorn and I have just had the pleasure of attending the final session of the East Lothian Council’s 1st Steps into Leadership programme which our regular readers will recall started back in October.

The leaders (for there was plenty of evidence of first steps in leadership) are all drawn from the Musselburgh cluster and the programme was supported by Agnes Hendry from Clearwater Brookes. Today was a combination of a celebration and presentations on school-based leadership projects.

A number of themes emerged that continue to be important for CPD in Curriculum for Excellence (distributed leadership, cross-sectoral working, learning teams for staff and, of course, coaching).

Lots of highlights here, but let me share two of the lighter moments:
• one of the participants who showed admirable leadership skills by declaring a ‘resources amnesty’ with her staff to get back vital teaching resources for her project. You wouldn’t mind but it was for RME!
• the name of the former pupils’ online site in Musselburgh Grammar; MGSTID (Musselburgh Grammar School ‘Til I Die!)
It was also good to catch up with a good friend of the CPD Team, Ollie Bray, who is one of the brains behind the scheme. Ollie joins LTScotland soon on secondment and we wish him all the best.

One of the partners in the CPD network, HMIE has just published their third corporate plan , covering the years 2008 to 2011. It has been drawn up following a series of internal discussions, consultation with a range of stakeholders, and discussed with and approved by Scottish Ministers. It sets out in broad terms the work which HMIE plan to undertake over the next three years to achieve our aims.

It’s good to see a continuing emphasis on building capacity through CPD and self-evaluation and an explicit commitment to online technology as one means to do both!

CPDScotland, the website, has been given a bit of an overhaul in recent weeks to make sure it can keep up with the pace of the work of the CPD Team and the CPD Network. You will still find links to CPDFind and our email bulletin but you will find a brand-new section entitled What we do.

The What we do section is designed to provide concise summaries of the many CPD projects underway. Down the right hand side of each of these pages you will see a couple of feeds which will keep you posted on the latest news from the CPD team blog and opportunities from CPDFind which are relevant to each area.

Don’t forget the CPD-focussed, professional communities on Glow starting with CPDCentral (needs a Glow password)

We would love to hear from you on how we can improve the national CPD conversation!

If you are an educational leader (aspiring or otherwise) you will be interested in the latest provider to CPDFind.  The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) website has a wealth of online leadership opportunities and has kindly given LTScotland and the CPD Team permission to highlight some of them through a partnership provider on CPDFind.

My own particular favourite, 50 lessons!

All these opportunities are in the public domain already but we will be featuring more soon that are only available through the NCSL Learning Gateway and explaining how Scottish teachers can access them.

This is a guest post from June Jelly of the Glow Team

There are so many ways to view and use a Glow Group. The prime role may be for teaching and learning with a class, for collaboration among staff, for distribution of information. This week I met Lynne Bowie, Curriculum for Excellence Officer in Aberdeen City. Lynne is developing a Glow Group as a CPD resource. The Sharing of Good Practice Glow Group is designed to ensure all staff have access to resources, research and examples of effective practice, that will prepare them to teach within the Curriculum Framework.

When Lynne attended a Glow awareness-raising session run by the Aberdeen ICT Team, she realised what an opportunity Glow offers to deliver the materials she is developing to all Aberdeen teachers. In the present financial and environmental climate, Glow has many benefits. Using Glow reduces the need for lots of paper based resources. Using Glow to host the materials means everyone can access them, unlike conferences where only those lucky to attend are fully provided for (…and who can get out to go to conferences when there is so little class cover available?). Using Glow means that the project, which brings together good practice advice and examples, will be sustainable since the Glow Group can continue to develop as practices improve and more guidance comes out about delivering Scotland’s curriculum.

The Glow Group itself is really a mini-collection of sites. The parent group has the Curriculum Framework at its heart, in particular the Learning & Teaching portion. There are subgroups covering AifL, Active Learning, Co-operative Learning and Critical Skills – all tools that have been highlighted for Curriculum for Excellence. Each of these also has subgroups to ensure all the elements involved are given good coverage and allow staff interaction in discussion pages. Lynne is standardising the layout of each area so staff will become familiar with the template and know where to look for the research, key features and local exemplification that is on each noticeboard page.
The Glow Group is still in development but there is no doubt that Aberdeen practitioners will be well served by it when it launches at summer.