I have spent many an enjoyable afternoon and evening with colleagues around Scotland and beyond.  I always promise the participants a copy of the presentation and a note of the online CPD links we explore in each session.

Here is the presentation

And here are the links

CPDFind, CPDReflect summary, CPDScotland, CPDConfer home page, Information on Glow, Don Ledingham’s blog.

I am delighted to be able to join you here today at the 2nd Scottish Government International Summer School on School Leadership.  The excellent turn out during the summer holidays is a clear indication of the significance that this event has for educational leaders.  I am pleased to see that we have wide representations from within schools (headteachers, deputy headteachers, principal teachers, chartered teachers and classroom teachers) and from local authorities and other stakeholders.  I am also glad that the summer school has again been able to attract interest from abroad.  I am sure you are all enjoying your week - it certainly looks an interesting, varied and challenging programme. I want to do two things as I speak to you this afternoon. 

I am on my way to Dunbar Grammar to help with the start of the CPDReflect pilot. Brave and kindly souls from Dunbar Grammar, St Gabriel’s Primary and Musselburgh Grammar (our good friend Ollie Bray who so kindly blogged from the Summer School last year) will assemble this afternoon to be the first of many to use this innovative toolkit.

I am very grateful to Kirsty Robertson and Ruth Munro of East Lothian Council for their support and to Graham Wilson and Dominic Torrisi and all the other ‘computer-whisperers’ at LTScotland and 3T who pulled rabbits out of hats in the last few days!

Look out for more posts on progress with the pilot here.

I had the privilege of talking to CPD coordinators in Edinburgh City Council and East Dunbartonshire Council. I had 10 minutes to give them the national picture on online CPD, so we didn’t stop to take notes!  I promised the links and here they are!

• For more information on the national CPD picture - CPDScotland 
• To find out about the national intranet - Glow
• The reflective toolkit is due in autumn and you can get information here - CPDReflect
• please sign up to the CPD update
• and, and … pick of the CPD pops! - CPDFind.

Oh did I mention signing up for the CPD update ?

PS The soundtrack for this presentation is ‘At the Sign of Swinging Cymbal’ - the theme tune for Pick of the Pops. You’ll need to provide that yourself!

John Johnson of Sandaig Primary is taking Roland Barth’s quote “The most powerful form of learning, the most sophisticated form of staff development, comes not from listening to the good words of others, but from sharing what we know with others” to a new level. With some limited support from the CPD Team, he is setting up an online ‘CPD collective’ where teachers can contribute CPD opportunities using a wiki.

To find out more:

• You can read John’s blog post at Connected Live
• You can see his presentation from a recent TeachMeet in Perth
• You can have a look at the early development wiki for the initiative.

We look forward to being John’s partner in this exciting development.

CPDReflect is an online toolkit to help teachers and other educators to reflect on their practice, maintain a CPD portfolio and share with other CPDReflect users. The toolkit consists of several separate, but linked, tools.

The Reflection tool.

CPDReflect will allow users to drill down through frameworks, such as the professional standards, and to evaluate themselves against elements of these frameworks. To help in the process,

CPDConfer our new tool for discussion on key CPD developments goes live on the afternoon of the 28 February and can be accessed through the CPD Scotland site.

The first edition concentrates on coaching and mentoring and contains examples and accounts of practice from across Scotland. It also features pieces written by Gary Bloom and Jan Robertson who offer international perspectives on coaching in education. Thanks to the many folks in the CPD community who have shared their work and colleagues in LTS who have helped bring CPDConfer to life. 

Please join in the live discussion and share your ideas at  http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdscotland/cpdconfer/index.asp

And if you want to encourage colleagues to join in, send them this CPDFind entry.

On Friday of last week, my colleague Anne McGhee and I hosted two workshops for registered CPD providers on how to make best use of the CPDFind system. Both workshops were over-subscribed and went down well with attendees. It was a pleasure to work directly with CPD providers and we came away with some excellent ideas for improving the system and the access to information about CPD opportunities.

Here are our top 5 tips for CPD providers using the system:

• less is more! Remember the average visit to a web page lasts 1.5 seconds!
• write for an individual. Have a specific person in mind who you want to attract to your CPD
• use your website to host the more detailed information and hyperlink to that from the CPDFind descriptor
• don’t forget to use http:// before any hyperlink
• don’t forget to add at least one occurrence or your opportunity will not be made live.

I spent a very illuminating day with some of the EIS learning reps who came from all over Scotland to learn about our online CPD project, CPDScotland.

The 24 reps who attended over 2 sessions looked at, and discussed, the various aspects of the project, including the use of CPDFind and how Glow may become an invaluable tool for CPD.

In turn, I found out the variety of ways that EIS learning reps contribute to CPD in their local authorities. This varies from being an independent sounding board on CPD matters for their members, to the management and delivery of key aspects of CPD, including the role of professional recognition. I look forward to the day when EIS learning reps feature as providers of CPD in CPDFind.

It struck me that many of the EIS learning reps are well advanced in online CPD skills, given that some act as tutors for the Chartered Teacher programme in the University of Paisley, which is delivered online.

You can find out more about the work of the EIS learning reps on the EIS website.

The 1st part of the afternoon session of the meeting was given over to an update on CPDScotland,  the CPD team’s online CPD project.

Some of the key points to emerge:

• there are over 150 CPD providers on the CPDFind system and many such as The University of Glasgow, the Open University and LTScotland’s - Learning about Learning are committing heavily to populating the database with their CPD resources
• Finding CPDFind will be all the easier as almost all of the local authorities in Scotland have installed a magic button to CPDFind on their local sites (the CPD Superheroes as they are now to be known!)
• the CPD team are hoping to try out the CPDConfer tool from mid-Feb with a  occasional paper on coaching and mentoring.

We started the second part with a game of ‘PRD Fortunes’! “We asked 100 colleagues what they reflect on before their PRD interview…” etc. It was a bit of fun to start the vital discussion on CPDReflect. CPDReflect is the online self-evaluation tool and CPD portfolio currently under development.  CPDReflect, among other things, hopes to help bring the Professional Standards to life.

The 1st workshop was on the ‘who and how’ of exemplifying the Professional Standards. This generated a tremendous amount of discussion and you can see the complete summary of points made in this document.

Lastly, and all too briefly because of the worsening weather, we considered the ‘building blocks’ needed to make CPDReflect a success.