CPD Team

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.

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!

Muriel Amaechi and I led a very enjoyable session in Dunbar Grammar today as we started the pilot of CPDReflect.

There were a couple of wee technical hiccups at the start (as you might expect) which we were quickly overcome. The speed at which colleagues from East Lothian got to grips with the toolkit was heartening and the suggestions for improvement were numerous and various.

The pilot will run to the end of term and we will publish (and take account of) the lessons learned over the summer testing period.

The best bit was an overheard comment from one of the participants -”That’s so cool!” Not something you hear often when talking about the PRD process! Of course, they could have been talking about the excellent catering from the Dunbar Grammar catering staff!

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, users can see examples of the Standards in action, using rich, online resources such as Journey to Excellence and Learning about Learning. Learning. At any stage in this reflection process, users can:

• Add a reflective comment
• See which colleagues have offered assistance with this part of the Standard
• Set a CPD objective, which is automatically added to the planning tool.

The Planning tool. Users can set CPD objectives in this tool and users are prompted to:

• Describe the objective
• Identify success criteria (based on impact on practice)
• Identify suitable activities to overtake the objective

There are automatic links between this part of CPDReflect and the new, national database of opportunities, CPDFind. Activities identified in the planning process are automatically added to the recording tool.

The Recording tool. Users can add CPD activities in this tool and they are prompted to:

• Record progress through the activities
• Record time spent on activities
• Set reminders for adding evidence of impact
• Add evidence to the evidence bank of the CPD portfolio

The Journal tool. The Journal tool can be seen as another route to the processes described above. Users can add a reflective comment to the journal. On saving the comment, the user is prompted to:

• To check the reflection tool to see if the Standards can assist
• To add a CPD objective if appropriate
• To record progress against an objective
• To add the entry as evidence to the bank

In what ways will CPDReflect encourage users to share practice?

There are a number of ways that users of CPDReflect are encouraged to share. Firstly, and most importantly, users can choose to share their portfolio with any other CPDReflect user. Users can choose which tools to share with which colleagues. For example, a user may choose to share the CPD plan and record with a line manager, but allow a mentor to see the reflection area also.

In addition, throughout the tool there are prompts to share:

• Users can submit examples of practice to be included in the bank that is used to exemplify the Standards in Action
• Colleagues who evaluate themselves as innovative or strong in a certain area are encouraged to allow themselves to be contacted by other colleagues through the system
• Users will be encouraged to visit other users’ portfolios

It is important to note that the default for all users is not to share. Sharing is a personal choice for individual users to make.

Who can use CPDReflect?

CPDReflect is targetted at all educators in Scotland. For best value reasons, it is only be available through the Glow Intranet currently being rolled out in Scottish Education. The toolkit will come with several frameworks in place for reflection:

• Standard for Initial Teacher Education (SITE)
• Standard for Full Registration (SfR)
• Standard for Chartered Teacher (SfCT)
• Standard for Headship (SfH)

Additional frameworks can be added at national, authority and establishment level by authorised users. Examples include job descriptions, leadership frameworks and authority and school improvement plans.

Who is supporting CPDReflect?

CPDReflect was developed by a partnership of Learning & Teaching Scotland, the National CPD Team in Scotland and Lightbox Education. The funding for the tool comes from the ICT directorate at LTScotland.

When will CPDReflect be ready for use?

It’s available now. Go to the CPDReflect home page for more details

The latest meeting of the CPDReflect usability group met yesterday with colleagues of 3T Productions Ltd who are developing the self-evaluation toolkit for LTScotland and the National CPD Team. As ever, I am indebted to colleagues who come from far and wide and give of their time to provide invaluable feedback on the way the tools are developing.

In preparation for the session, we were able to get a ‘wee shot’ of the 1st version to go online. Although, the functionality is a long way from complete, the potential power of the tool to reflect on professional standards and identify CPD objectives and activities is already apparent.

A key step in realising the power of CPDReflect takes place next week at the CPD Network meeting in Glasgow. This is the group that represents the local authority CPD managers, CPD providers, Universities and other key bodies such as the GTCS. A good part of the meeting will be dedicated to CPDReflect and, in particular, how we can provide relevant and up-to-date examples of practice to bring the professional standards to life. Already colleagues such as Terry Kerr of Highlands Council and Raymond Young of Clackmannanshire have sent me some of their work in this area, which is very much appreciated.

Considerable progress has been made on the CPDReflect front over the last few months. Here are some of the details and decisions made.

• We have agreed a detailed design and 3T are developing the solution as I write (more pictures soon!)
• LTScotland has agreed to host the tool on their servers to let us get maximum benefit from integrating this product with other LTS online services (including our very own CPDFind)
• We will exemplify the Standard for Initial Teacher Education and the Standard for Full Registration in the initial phase.
• CPDReflect will only be readily available to users of Glow

Timescale

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