Laurie O’Donnell

The bicentenary of the abolition of slavery has received a lot of coverage in the media over the last couple of weeks. Much has been made of Tony Blair’s failure to apologise or more accurately his failure to apologise properly. I am sure that the Government’s lawyers have advised him in the same way that car insurance companies advise us never to accept liability even if it was clearly our fault . There are I am sure times when this might be good advice but it tends to feed a view of humanity that makes the lawyer the first rather than the last resort – good for the bank balance of the lawyer but bad news for our ability to deal with difficulties at a human level.

Great article in this morning’s Guardian by Jackie Kay reminding us of a shameful part of Scotland’s history that tends to be swept under the carpet. London, Bristol and Manchester are all hosting major events to commemorate the abolition of slavery. Glasgow, a city that prospered as result of the slave trade seems to be strangely silent. The reminders of the slave trade are all around Glasgow as the street names echo the names of tobacco merchants and the places in the West Indies where they made their fortunes.

My talented and creative colleagues at LTS have produced a wonderful resource to help teachers and learners to gain a better understanding of Scotland’s role in the slave trade and the abolition of slavery. Hopefully slavery in the form that was abolished 200 years ago will never be repeated in this country. In the meantime let’s not forget that 200 years on far too many people across the world continue to be enslaved in variety of different ways.

One last thought, I wonder what the British Prime Minister (if there still is such a post) will be asked to apologise for in 200 years time?

Another interesting week that seems to have flashed past very quickly.

Five mornings and three afternoons in Glasgow as well as afternoons in Edinburgh and Dundee. A lot of time taken up with internal LTS meetings; Glow and Schools ICT programme boards, corporate management team etc. An interesting meeting in Edinburgh Council’s new offices in Waverley Court to discuss personal ICT (The Learning Hubs project) and agree the next steps. Also chaired my first meeting of The Scottish Learning Festival steering group and was delighted to see that programme is just about ready with Stephen Heppell, Michael Fullan and Mick Waters already signed-up and over 150 seminar presenters secured.
Out of the office the main news was the BBC Trust decision to suspend BBC Jam. My former colleague John Connell has posted on the subject and there is not much more I can add. The £150m of wonderful digital content that was promised appears to have been lost for the moment. It will be interesting to see what happens to resources promised to support Gaelic, modern studies and other aspects of the curriculum in Scotland.

HMIe launched a report on ICT in Learning and Teaching today on the Anderson High School website. Disappointingly The Scotsman and The Herald both led on ‘ICT fails to raise attainment’. I think they have missed the point and the video clip of Graham Donaldson’s introduction is worth watching as it gives a much broader perspective on progress to date.

One very sad piece of news last week was that Professor John Sinclair had died suddenly in Florence. LTS has been working with John on a corpus linguistics program for schools over the last five years and we are in the process of piloting a product called PhraseBox right now. At a 73 John was wonderful company and had so much life in him. My thoughts are with his family and friends who I know will miss him terribly.
Anyway enough of work. I am back to Glasgow on Sunday and already biting my fingernails thinking about Hibs in the CIS Cup Final. I just hope the team play well and do themselves justice … and of course win

After my day as a juror I managed to get my hands on a Nintendo Wii thanks to my fellow juror Derek.

Now watching two 10 year olds working their way through Wii sports and having so much fun. I am sitting with a glass of wine and every now and again I get invited to play. At the moment I can compete pretty well but experience tells me that by the end of the week they will have left me behind.

These two 10 year olds are 2nd generation digital natives; they don’t speak digital with an accent and they expect everybody else to be able to speak their language.

Anyway time to seize control of the Wii controller and get back to Wii Golf

Got selected for jury duty today at Dundee Sheriff Court. This is not much of a surprise as I have been called four times and never selected so it was just a matter of time. The real surprise is that my colleague Derek Robertson not only had a citation for the same day but was selected for the same jury. I was picked out 2nd and Derek was 4th out of the 15.

The one good thing about jury duty (apart from the important civic duty that it represents) is that I have a very good reason for not driving to Glasgow on Friday. It’s one thing to have a rail strike but quite another to have no trains north of Stirling.

Another interesting day away from my desk and my inbox. Started off meeting my two programme directors, Ian Graham (Schools ICT) and Marie Dougan (Glow), in the IKEA cafe on my way to Haddington. Ian, Marie and I try to meet up at least once a week to plan, discuss issues and generally catch-up. Rather than have a fixed meeting in the diary we try to fit in with our other appointments and this week IKEA was the best bet. On our agenda was end of year finances, content strategy for Glow, staffing requirements for next year, priorities for the next week and making sure we cover all the meetings between us. I have worked with Ian and Marie in LTS for more than four years and have known them for much longer as we were all local authority ICT advisers together. They are both great colleagues, hard working, solution oriented and dedicated to improving Scottish education. I like to think of us as a team pulling in the same direction, celebrating progress and supporting each other when times are tough.

After my free coffee in IKEA (only before 1000) I was off to meet two of my favourite bloggers and educational thinkers, Don Ledingham and Ewan McIntosh. Over a baked potato (thanks Don) we discussed progress with Ewan’s secondment. Ewan is on secondment to LTS but placed back with his home local authority, East Lothian. Both Don and I are delighted with the work Ewan has being doing to drive forward innovation in East Lothian and to support LTS in the development of our Web2/LiveWeb strategy.
As mentioned in an earlier post Stephen Heppell is going to be spending some time working with schools in Scotland in preparation for his input into the Learning Festival in September. Both Ewan and Don have agreed to spend some time working with Stephen in East Lothian and I think this will be a really useful collaboration.

After lunch I gave Ewan a lift back to Leith on my way to Victoria Quay to meet Vicky Carlin and Neil MacFarlane of the New Educational Developments Division in SEED. Ian and Marie had arranged a meeting to look at our work for 2007-08 so I took the chance to drop in to discuss progress with Glow in preparation for the Executive Board on Wednesday.

Just before 1600 I was back on the road north again.

Wednesday is a Dundee day. Starting off with a meeting at DCA to discuss links with Curriculum for Excellence and as part of my role in promoting LTS in the city. Next I am meeting the Chair of our Board John Mulgrew to show him around some of the other public sector offices in Dundee. Then it’s back to the office for John to meet with a number of Dundee based staff. At the end of the day I will video conference into the SEED Glow Executive Board which is now meeting once a month as we closer to the launch of the service.

On Thursday I may have jury duty. An important public duty but one I could do without this week – but I suppose that is what everybody says. Wanting to serve on a jury should probably lead to an automatic disqualification

A good week over and sitting at my kitchen table with a glass of beer listening to Van Morrison and trying to stay out of the way of the teenagers on a sleepover.

Covered a few miles this week but it’s always great to get out and about even if that means not being able to service the demands of my inbox. The long trip to Torquay was really worthwhile. It gave me a (brief) chance to catch-up with developments in England. Listen to a seminar on OFSTED’s findings about ICT. Find out how our progress with Glow compares. Not to mention catch-up on my reading.

On the subject of reading I am really enjoying Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (good summary in Wikipedia and well worth a read). Helped me to understand why it took us so long to close the Scottish Virtual Teacher Centre down. The sub-title ‘how endless choice is creating unlimited demand’ in our business means that we need to make sure that we continue to cater for minority interests, niche markets, specialisms etc and not just the big hits.

Norman Drummond sent me a really inspirational book ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’. Another one I would recommend.