CPD Team

Carpe Diem School in Yuma, Arizona is one of a new type of “Bricks and Clicks” school. In this article in the Harvard Education Letter, Brigid Schulte describes a very different educational experience on offer to students. They are offered a combination of the best face-to-face teaching and cutting-edge online curriculum. Results are impressive with the school being designated as “highly performing”.

The hybrids began to develop in the States after the US Department of Education released a meta-analysis of on-line learning that seemed to confirm that a blend of face-to-face teacher time and on-line curriculum produced better outcomes than either strategy on its own.

Also worth checking out is the Top Ten Web Tools for Education by Dave Saltman – “In the quest to work smarter, not harder, teachers are flocking to an ever-expanding galaxy of web-based tools for help with everything from classroom manage- ment to classroom discussions . . . . “

in 1978, I became part of the exciting educational innovation that was Wester Hailes Education Centre. Along with many other colleagues, I committed myself to the concept of community schooling as a way to redress social and economic injustice. We were young, passionate and bursting with ideas and energy.

One of my new colleagues was Ian Smith, and from our first meeting he prompted me to think in new ways about education, learning and the responsibility of teachers to change society. For me he was a key thinker who had a huge impact on my thinking, and of course, he was great fun to work with.

We parted company as colleagues after just a few short years, and he went on to influence a much wider range of people, and to have a much greater impact on ideas of learning and teaching than had been possible as a class teacher.

At various points, we reconnected. His unrelenting focus on good learning and what it looked liked, was a touchstone for many of us who continued to work in schools in areas of poverty. He was always generous with his knowledge, skills and friendship.

I met Ian last year at an event in Orkney and he was still firing on all cylinders – his passion for learning undimmed. Being with him, talking to him, reminded me – as ever – of the essential importance of education and teachers. I will miss his energy, insights, learning and essential humanity.

On behalf of the CPD Team I extend our deepest sympathy to Ian’s family and colleagues.

I was delighted to be invited to talk to Gaelic colleagues at the national conference in Inverness. Here are the challenges Mary MacMillan and I set.

Seo na dùbhlain a gheall mi fhèin agus Con dhuibh aig “An t- Alltan 2010”. 

• Gheibh sibh an taisbeanadh agus ceangalaichean aig http://bit.ly/cpdlinks
• Tadhail air an duilleig seo air buidheann Glow An t-Alltan 2010 airson:
  • pàirt a ghabhail ann an CPDMeet Gàidhlig
  • aon  buidheann/neach ainmeachadh a b’urrainn CPD a’ tabhainn.  Cuiridh sinne fios thuca gus an tèid an ainm air CPDFind. 
  • aon rud a cho-roinn.
  • beagan innse mu do dheidhinn fhèin agus do dhealbh a chur suas!

Mòran taing agus tha sinn an dòchas cluinntinn bhuaibh agus coimhearsneachd air-loidhne a leudachadh.

Màiri

Excellent TED talk by Charles Leadbetter who works with Cisco.
http://tinyurl.com/373j5fo

Also check out the article that followed his input at the Scottish Learning Festival which covers much of the same ground

http://tinyurl.com/2wuubv4

Photo from LTScotland

This is a guest post from John McCann, Director of Next Practice at Scotland’s Colleges

I have heard it called a form of insanity.  That well known phenomenon of repeating the same action while expecting different consequences.  This is in contrast to life’s experiences which suggests strongly that if you do the same thing again it will, indeed, have the same result.

 My first memory of this phenomenon came as I developed computer programming skills.  Programs require to be submitted to a computer for translation according to a very strict set of rules.  Normally the result of submission was an extensive list of those rules which had been broken.  I have to admit that on more than one occasion, I resubmitted.  There was always hope – maybe the computer wasn’t paying attention the first time; maybe it was having a bad day; maybe the rules would be relaxed; maybe …… 

I have also to admit that on every occasion, the result was the same.  Surprising that – same action, same consequence. 

In my analysis, I have come to the conclusion that this arises through pain-seeking behaviour which seems particularly prevalent in Celtic communities.  I have come across it throughout my career.  In staff workrooms, for example, where learning from experience, particularly of others, would be regarded as a denial-of-pain situation to be avoided.  We have a wonderful collection of reasons not to share.  Pain-Seeking-through-Ignoring-Experiences-Syndrome may be our preferred cultural state.  I will readily admit to being a sufferer and that, apparently, is the first stage in finding a cure.

I was reminded of this phenomenon preparing for a presentation on ‘Colleges and Quality’ to the implementation partnership of Curriculum for Excellence.  It was a welcome opportunity.

I was able to describe to the audience a time and a place where colleges used to be.  When the time scale for changing qualifications could be measured in geological time; when teacher centred approaches were prevalent; when the culture was a dependent one and where the needs of external assessment dominated everything.  I suggested that members of the audience might recognise such a world in their own space.  Judging by the murmurings, it seemed to be the case.

I described a current world where colleges, according to HMIe, have comprehensive quality assurance and improvement systems that enhance the learner experience.  And that there were ‘no systemic weaknesses’ in the sector.  I suggested that seemed to be a good place to be and the murmurings suggested agreement.

Some of the  lessons in that journey were outlined – moderation and quality assurance to be regarded as part of a total quality system, assessment/verification policy with clear aims, quality grounded on professional dialogue, a developmental internal audit regime, retaining the core purpose of improvement and so on.  Learning from colleges made available to the system.

We are all aware of the challenges facing schools in taking Curriculum for Excellence forward and, through his TES articles, Don Ledingham has identified the potential for learning from colleges.  College experience and interests are well represented in Curriculum for Excellence implementation structures.  It feels there is measure of sanity there.

However, we need to work harder.  The public funding pressures are such that we need to use ALL the resources of the system.  We need to make sure that learning from one part of the system impacts upon another.  We need to move so that any part of the system is receptive to learning from another.  That would be a real gain of Curriculum for Excellence and help deliver what Graeme Hyslop has described as the first comprehensive learning system in Europe. 

In these difficult times, Pain-Seeking-through-Ignoring-Experiences Syndrome is looking more than a little indulgent.  Let’s aim for systems sanity.

TeachMeet is entering its fifth year and the unconference for teachers, by teachers has helped hundreds – maybe thousands, in fact – to try out something new, alter the way they already teach and learn, join a community of innovative educators or completely transform their way of working.

The hope was that the model would spread. It has, but as those who have created and helped pull TeachMeet together over the past four years, we want to see it spread further, deeper and with increasing quality of input from practitioners. This post outlines how we think we might manage this. This is the beginnings of a conversation with those who care about TeachMeet. Add your views in the form of any blog post or comment or tweet – tag it #tmfuture

What are the goals of TeachMeet?
TeachMeet was originally designed to:

• Take thinking away from the formal, often commercialised conference floor, and provide a safe place for anyone to pitch their practice
• Provide a forum for more teachers to talk about real learning happening in real places, than one-hour conference seminar slots allow
• Showcase emerging practice that we could all aim to undertake; sales pitches not allowed
• Be all about the Teach, with only a nod towards tech that paved the way for new practice.
• Provoke new ways of sharing our stories: PowerPoint was banned. We wanted people to tell stories in ways that challenged them, and the audience
• Empower the audience to critique, ask questions and probe, all online, through SMS or, later, Twitter.

Over the years, these ‘rules’ have altered, leading to some great innovations, others less so. The answer to “What is a TeachMeet?” has become a myriad of meanings, some pretty far off the original goals. We need to help and support people to organise, run and contribute to events that build on previous ones. We need to make TeachMeet as accessible to newbies as it was in 2005. We need TeachMeet to once more find its focus.

Supporting the “infectiousness” of TeachMeets

• Sponsorship is hard if there’s no bank account into which funds can be sent
• Without sponsorship, any event over 30 people becomes tricky to organise while also giving people a special night of learning, the time, space and mood that gets people over their self-conscious selves
• Paying for refreshments and venues is impossible if there’s no organisation to pay them the precise sum.
• The best TeachMeets provide social space, social activity, entertaining MCs, good refreshments, good online coverage and some form of online ‘conclusion’ – this needs coordinating by the organiser(s), but it’s not a skill everyone will have the first time around.
• We’ve got a superb opportunity to curate the best bits from all these TeachMeets that are happening weekly – this needs a degree of oversight.

A means to make TeachMeet more sustainable, easier to use for sponsors and organisers, and have the ability to do something spectacular
TeachMeet is owned by the community that shape it – but there needs to be a body to manage sponsorship and sponsors, and provide support for new organisers so that they maintain the TeachMeet goals. We assume that if someone is organising a ‘TeachMeet’ they would like to emulate the success of those popular early TeachMeets, and better-supported national conference ones (e.g. SLF and BETT).

What would support from the TeachMeet body look like?

• Seeking of sponsorship all year round – including ways and means to get your message to as many teachers as possible
• Brokerage of sponsorship – i.e. one place sponsors and those seeking sponsorship can come together, in a transparent manner
• Recommendation of onsite support (good venues at discounted rates/free, A/V, event organisation [for bigger venues], catering etc)
• Suggestions for various formats that have worked in the past
• Mentoring from previous TeachMeet leaders including on-the-night help
• Featuring of content and promotion of the event in a timely manner on an aggregated, higher profile TeachMeet site
• A group calendar so that events can be seen by geography and date
• Promotion of TeachMeet through international and national events, using contacts of existing TeachMeeters
• In-event publicity (e.g. if you plan an event at a regional ICT day or national event, then we can help broker paper materials for insertion into packs etc)

But, above all, TeachMeet is reaching a point of saturation in the UK – things are going really well in terms of enthusing teachers about their own learning. We have a great opportunity to carry over a small proportion of the sponsorship and contributions towards creating a TeachMeet culture in countries where teacher professional development in this way is still blocked by barriers physical, financial or cultural. This is just one idea, harboured for a long time but unable to realise in the current setup.

This body can take the form of:

• A Limited company (with a Director and shareholders)
• A Charitable Limited Company, with a board of directors and voting rights for fellow ‘shareholders’ (we could work out some way of people being ‘awarded’ shares based on [non-financial] involvement?)
• A Social Enterprise, perhaps formed as a Limited Company (see more information on what this means and how it might work (pdf))
• A Charity (this feels like a lot more red tape to pull through and perhaps not entirely necessary)

As we take things forward we invite you to contribute your ideas and thoughts to make things work smoothly. We want you to comment, probe and make your own suggestions before the end of June, using the tag #tmfuture

A wee while back at a South Lanarkshire CPD event hosted by Andrea Reid, I was lucky enough to see Caroline Gibson in action. Caroline spent many weeks over the summers of 2007, 2008 and 2009 in Malawi helping teachers and students, all on her own time and partly funded by her too.

I was delighted then when she agreed to be captured for a CPDShort. Here she talks to Anne McGhee (an associate of the National CPD Team) about her three educational visits to Malawi and her CPD plans for the future.

Caroline has also kindly agreed to answer questions on the Glow page for this CPDShort

You can find out more about Caroline on her blog and follow her on Twitter @carolinegibson

… join the CPDShort on this topic … 

There has been some recent discussion about the usability of Glow. You may have noticed the recent changes in Glow’s interface at national level (see the National Site) or may have been following Andrew Brown’s initiated ‘Glowbetter’ work. While navigation through Glow might be a bit daunting, one of its saving graces for me has always been its ‘hyperlinkability’. It means if you put a resource on Glow, you can copy the shortcut and publish that shortcut anywhere you like, ie add a bit of Glow, or +glow it!

What does this mean? For CPD, +glow usually means ‘now with added collegiality!’. For example, I might recommend a CPD thought-piece (eg Temple Grandin’s TED TV talk – The World needs all kinds of minds). The problem with this approach is it’s an open loop – there is no feedback. I have no idea who follows the link, or what they think about it, or what one thing might they change in their practice as a result of watching and reflecting on the video. But more importantly, numerous colleagues from all over Scotland may be accessing the same video and not realising they have something in common, or know of better examples, or have CPD resources to support teachers of autistic students and so on.

I like the analogy of building escalators not just stairs. By putting that same video onto Glow and asking colleagues to ‘sign up’ you turn a stair into an escalator. Participants get to see the video and also get an instant snapshot of interested colleagues from around Scotland. They can start (or contribute to) a discussion and share practice collegiately.

Try the Temple Grandin +glow version by following the link from CPDFind. Of course, you will need a Glow password for this version.

We have been developing these +glow CPDShort thought-pieces since the turn of the year. A thought-piece doesn’t need to be a video. It could be a discussion paper, an example of student work, a vox pop, results of a survey, etc.

Furthermore, +glow doesn’t just stop at thought-pieces. In future posts I will look at how colleagues +glow lots of different types of CPD; newsletters, face to face events, skills training and more.

Go on, if you are on Glow, start building escalators instead of stairs. You rarely see an escalator marked ‘Out of Order’.  The worst that can happen when you build an escalator is that folk use it as a stair.

So, +glow those thought-pieces and send me a link!

image courtesy of victoriapeckham on Flickr

That’s the ambitious question that has been set by two colleagues from Islay High School, Ian Stuart and Andy Wallis. To help answer it, they have arranged an ‘unconference’ on a Friday evening, no less. More than 40 educators, including me, will be coming from all over Scotland, from Ireland, England, and the United States to discuss the question.

 The unconference will look at 4 areas; assessment, future spaces, learning for all and relevance of skills. There will also be an opportunity to take part remotely using Flashmeeting technology.

I will of course, report back on the event. In the meantime, you can find out more on the education2020 wiki