CPD Team

One of the unexpected features of Building Windmills was the use of Twitter before, during and after the event. Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ tool which is catching the imagination of educators the world over as a way to stay in touch and getting some serendipitous CPD. The essence of Twitter is you have up to 140 characters to describe what you are doing, express an opinion or point things out to fellow Twitter users.

Opinions on its use vary from “the best professional development a teacher can get!” to “I don’t get it. It seems like the 21st century equivalent of writing on the toilet wall to me!”

Before the event, we set up a keyword (windmills09) which we tried to use in all our ‘tweets’ (as the conversation pieces are called). Mike Coulter (a consultant working with LTScotland on online strategy) attended the event and kindly gathered some of the conversations into a slideshow for us.

A number of the attendees (at Stirling and remotely using Glowmeet) have Twitter accounts (some of them as a result of Jaye Richards and Ollie Bray’s excellent session on Personal Learning Networks). Here are some of the ‘Twitterati’ involved but please feel free let me know if there are more out there!

cpdc , wheresiab, katiebarrowman, jayerichards, olliebray, robthill, mikecoulter, laurieod, derekrobertson, cpdscotsman, cpdgirl, don_iain, dgilmour, gtcs, annemcghee, alagsmi, goodonskis, matthew_boyle, johnjohnston, theokk, ewanmcintosh, mvass…

The CPD Network Building Windmills (face to face) event took place on 5th and 6th February. It raised lots of great CPD conversations and challenges, partly because of its themes (online CPD and Curriculum for Excellence) and partly because of its blended format. The associated professional community on Glow (Building Windmills) was heavily used to stimulate and capture conversations, resource sharing and action planning. A range of social networking techniques were used including Twitter and Flickr. Several colleagues took part remotely using Glowmeet.

Over the coming week, I will extract and highlight key points from the Glow group and the event. In the meantime, if you are a Scottish CPD leader with a Glow account, please feel free to apply to join the Building Windmills community and keep an eye out for more posts on this blog.

(Thanks to Ollie Bray for the photo!)

Andrew Brown of the LTScotland Glow Team will set the ball rolling by asking the question “Can we do CfE without online CPD?” He will demonstrate a range of professional learning using online technology and get the 1st of the collegiate sessions underway.

Colleagues from a range of national organisations such as HMIE, SQA, GTCS and DTS have kindly agreed to share the stage and demo and discuss their existing online CPD provision and their plans for the future. Colleagues taking part are:

• Jean MacMillan from Determined to Succeed
• Douglas McMillan from SQA
• Mairi McAra from GTC Scotland
• Ken Muir and Sally Fulton from HMIE

Each will demonstrate their current online CPD provision, outline their plans/thoughts/expectations for the future and take some time to focus on their role in CPD for CfE. There will be ample time for questions from the floor and Glowmeet. This session will be hosted by Roddy Stuart.

Jaye Richards (teacher in Cathkin High School) and Ollie Bray (DHT in Musselburgh Grammar) will lead a session on how online technology forms a key part of their own professional learning.

In this session, Con Morris of the National CPD Team will look at how CPDFind has developed over the last 2 years, give participants a sneak preview of the changes being made and host a discussion on its future.

Sheila Smith of the National CPD Team will lead a conversation for new (and newish) members of the CPD Network.

We want to hear from you on this one. Members of the Glow team will give you a whistlestop tour of how Scottish educators are already using Glow for their professional development. If you, or some of your colleagues do, then let us know as soon as possible and it will feature. Of course, you might be keeping it for the ‘Open Mic’ session!

We are well aware how busy life is as a CPD Network member. Here’s a chance to improve your hands-on skills in Glow with Katie Barrowman, Andrew Brown and other members of the Glow Team at LTScotland. You might even use the time to get some of those challenges done!

At last, a chance to tell the world about what you are doing in your local authority, your university, your national organisation! It can be a presentation, a visit to a website, a chat, a song and dance routine, it doesn’t matter as long as:

• it lasts no more than 7 minutes
• it’s about online CPD!

If we have too many on the day, we will dig out the old CPD random generator!