CPD Team

I had an excellent discussion this week with Catriona Oates of Scottish CILT. Like many others, Catriona is looking at how national organisations (such as SCILT) can add value to the culture of teacher-led CPD which is proving so valuable. We discussed a lot of examples such as the various TeachMeets and the recent Flashmeet about which Catriona kindly blogged. One of our conclusions was the need to facilitate online communities on Glow to ignite discussion topics and sharing of practice. Our conclusions?

• renewed determination to find, or be facilitators, for Glow groups such as CPDLead and SCILT
• use CPDShorts to focus on some key areas for debate / professional learning
• use CPDFind to bring colleagues to both of these things
• The MFLE community in Scotland (through LTScotland online service) was a leading and early success story for Scotland in the area of online CPD. Time to relight the fire?

I spent this morning in the company of colleagues from the Highland Council (mainly Dave McCartney, Terry Kerr (CPD manager) and Louise Jones) looking at the various CPD offerings on the Highland Virtual Learning Centre and highland.gov web sites. We focussed on how national CPD tools can enhance the already forward-thinking, online practice in Highland. Specifically:

• a trial of how CPDReflect could be used to exemplify and deepen understanding of the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Framework. This has recently been substantially revised for CfE
• how Glow and CPDShorts could be used to bring collegiate CPD to existing excellent awareness raising CPD on the Highland toolkit and framework
• how CPDFind could be further used to promote all types of CPD in Highland Council
• how the excellent CPD sessions from the recent CfE Showcase could be revisited through regular GlowMeet events over the coming session

I look forward to going back up in December to help take these innovative ideas forward.

I have just had a smashing (not to say privileged) few days visiting the CPD festivals in Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Orkney Islands Council and Highlands Council.

One striking feature of all 3 events was the decreasing reliance on external CPD providers and the increase in local, practitioner-led CPD. For much of the time, I was ‘manning’ a table with a rolling display and sets of the eminently collectable CPD postcards but I also managed to fit in some visits to keynotes and seminars. I had a number of rewarding conversations as a result. Here are just some of them:

• with a number of supply teachers including Lorena (see la historia de Lorena)
• with Margaret Alcorn and Ian Smith (the latter of Learning Unlimited) on the links between professional learning communities and Learning Rounds
• with Carol McManus of Orkney Islands Council on how CPDFind can be improved to support local authority CPD
• with Neil Stewart of the Glow team on how we can make more use of CPDFind to raise awareness of the growing amount of CPD using and on Glow
• with Morag MacDonald of Storlann and how tools such as Glow and CPDFind can support their valuable work in Gaelic education
• with Eddie Broadley (area adviser at LTScotland) on how CPDReflect might be used to support development of curriculum maps
• with senior Highland Council colleagues on how CPDReflect might be used to exemplify their Learning Teaching and Assessment Policy

Many thanks to all for their warm welcomes and particularly to Donald MacLeod, Carol McManus and Terry Kerr of the CPD Network.

Thanks for  finding out more about CPDFound!

CPDFind is a national database of CPD for Scottish educators (although not exclusively!). CPDFound is one way of keeping up to date with the range of CPD opportunities. CPDFound will tweet you:

• when one of the National CPD Team has found some interesting CPD on CPDFind and wants to tell the world
• when one of the many registered CPD providers adds a new opportunity
• if things are a bit slow, it will randomly pick a CPD opportunity from the 1600 + currently on offer

If you want the direct route to CPD opportunities, use the search facility here. If you want to access free CPD opportunities, enter cost:free in the search box.  If you want to follow real people as well as databases, then try Margaret Alcorn or Con Morris !

Thanks for following CPDFound

I was invited along by Richard Benjamin to have a chat with some of his colleagues at Respectme. They are funded by Scottish Goverment Schools Directorate to support ant-bullying in Scottish schools.

Respectme work with carers, parents, young people and educators and have developed a number of resources and CPD materials many of which can be seen on their web site.

Their vision is ambitious.

“… a respecting, just, equal and inclusive Scotland in which all children and young people can live free from bullying and harassment and are encouraged to reach their full potential.”

We had a very good discussion about how this vision could be better realised through online CPD including:

• Support for LTS and Scottish Govt colleagues on national Glow groups
• Development of online CPD resources
• Making sure the wide range of CPD that Respectme provides (not just their excellent training courses) are advertised on their CPDFind area

I look forward to helping them with this journey if I can.

This is a cross post from the team’s CPDAnswers blog as it may be of general interest

CPDFind is a national database of CPD opportunities which has been developed as part of the collaboration between the National CPD Team and LTScotland. The opportunities (not just courses!) come from a wide range of providers including LTScotland teams, HMIE, SQA, private providers and universities. In addition, we are seeing some local authorities (eg Aberdeen City) using CPDFind to advertise their local CPD to a wider audience.

You might be interested in CPDFind for a number of reasons:

• your own professional development (just type a keyword into the CPDFind search box)
• to support your colleagues in their professional development
• to promote CPD that you deliver or enable.

All the providers on the system have gone through a registration process. If you are interested, contact cpdregister@ltscotland.org.uk

There are plans to further develop CPDFind in the coming year, including:

• an endorsement feature for Glow users of CPDFind
• local versions for both authorities and school establishments

CPDFind is part of the CPDScotland project, led by Con Morris, which also includes:

• promoting Glow for CPD purposes
• gathering good CPD practice using the CPD Team blog
• the CPD website
• a PRD toolkit called CPDReflect

I met with CPD colleagues from Orkney Islands Council on Monday to look at ways that CPDFind can be used to promote local CPD. Luckily, I had the excellent work of Andrew Jones and Aberdeen City Council to draw upon. I worked with Carol McManus (CPD manager) and some of her team Alison, Kelly and Rachel, ably assisted by Graham Bevan, a weel-kent figure in both CPD and ICT networks. The end-result was we came up with a plan for a low-cost (ie free!), reasonably efficient advertising and booking system using a combination of CPDFind and Microsoft Outlook. Carol and her team are now in the process of testing it before its possible use for the Orkney Learning Festival in October.

As a result a group of CPD network colleagues are getting together to take this approach further in Aberdeen on the 25th June. If you are interested in the detail of this or joining us, just drop me a line. I’m not that hard to find!

South Ayrshire Council

I spent this morning with colleagues in South Ayrshire including Fiona Taylor (erstwhile member of the CPD Team) and Alastair Smith. Among many highlights were a discussion on how CPDReflect could be used as a way of supporting the PDR process with colleagues across the whole of Children & Families work in the council.

As a first step, and with some support from the CPD Team, they are hoping to build on a mapping from SAC’s own leadership framework and the Standard for Headship.

Alastair and Fiona also demonstrated the considerable progress made in designing professional communities on Glow that align with CfE and outlined the plans to integrate them into CPD. We finished the formal part of the morning with how CPDFind might be the very tool that helps integrate CPD provision right across the authority. After all this hard work, Fiona kindly treated us to lunch!

Journey to Excellence is an excellent, online CPD resource which covers 10 dimensions of excellence with a comprehensive set of video and downloadable think-pieces. Look out for the specialist CPD trails through the materials!

CPDFind links

1. The J2E  provider complete list

2. look also at the associated providers on the CPD Register; HMIE Publications and HMIE Good Practice

The CPD Team and LTScotland have been listening to CPDFind users and we are happy to tell you about some recent changes to the system:

• the search page has been simplified
• the categories have been removed from the search
• you can now refine your search by additional keywords or by delivery mode

Look out for the recent posts elsewhere on the CPD Team blog on how to access free CPD using CPDFind.  

Thank you all for your support for CPDFind and don’t forget if you want a magic button for your CPD site, just point your browser to this page here!