Laurie O’Donnell

Well it’s Tuesday and I’m on my way home from sunny Birmingham and a four nations (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland & Wales) ICT meeting hosted by Becta.

• Scotland is represented by LTS (I’m here with our chief exec Bernard McLeary ).
• England is represented by a group directors of Becta including CEO Stephen Crowne
• Northern Ireland by Jimmy Stewart CEO of C2K
• Wales by Welsh Assembly Government official Kerry Darke

So what is happening across the UK and what are the issues?

England
• Lots going on here in this highly complex system …
• Becta has two Westminster Government departments to deal with.
o DCSF schools still very important but shift of focus towards children (especially those most at risk) and families. The Children’s Plan aims to make England ‘the best country in the world for children and young people to grow up in’. Quite ambitious!
o DIUS a new dept with the ‘I’ standing for ‘innovation’ looks really interesting.
• Lots of reviews taking place including a KS3 curriculum review and refresh of ‘Harnessing Technology’ (2005) to develop thinking around a more e-confident system & better meeting the needs of learners (personalisation)
• Increasing interest in consumer spend on technology and the potential benefits for education and universal access to ICT.
• The English education system spends c£1b per year on technology how might collaborative purchasing provide better value for public money?
• Computers for Pupils Programme will soon have achieved the target of getting 50,000 computers (and connectivity) into the homes of disadvantaged young people.

Northern Ireland
• Major review of public administration. Move to single education and skills authority by 2009 – embracing curriculum, leadership, qualifications.
• Review of policy & strategy – emerging policy ‘every school a good school’.
• Curriculum more skills focus, common 4-14 with choice agenda opening up from 14-19.
• C2K provides a managed service to all schools across NI including software, hardware and services.
• Every teacher has been given a laptop (20,000)

Wales
• Wales brought all of the public bodies/agencies into the Welsh Assembly Government a few years ago – a real bonfire of the quangos
• Latest project is a pilot of laptops for a group of 11 years olds. Connectivity at home continues to be an issue that needs some fresh thinking.
• Strategic development likely to focus on continuing inequalities and what does a digitally enabled classroom look like and how do we get there.
• Like the rest of the UK the e-Gov agenda is important with citizen/learner focus through technology prominent.
• Welsh Assembly Government is about to publish a school improvement framework and this will set the context for developments in technology.

Spending a lot of the time either travelling or in meetings at the moment and my blogging is really just a ‘where is Laurie log?’ rather than much of a ‘learning log’.

Last week started with a corporate management team the highlight of this was a presentation from my colleague Ewan McIntosh on some of the work he has been doing around social media for education. I had the chance later that day to discuss with Ewan our priorities over the next six months or so. Any readers of his edu.blogs will get a sense of how much ground Ewan covers – not just in terms of geography and networking but also in terms of his sheer activism and productivity.

On Tuesday I started off at HMIe HQ in Livingston with Chief Inspector Ken Muir. The context was the LTS Corporate Plan for 2008-11 and we had a very useful conversation covering a lot of ground from sharing good practice, through Scottish Government priorities and the changing public sector landscape to suggestions for the areas that LTS should seek to cover over the next three years.

We are at the stage of pulling together the programme for the Scottish Learning Festival 2008. The event is now established as the premier national cpd event and this has been recognised by our Cabinet Secretary – SLF Makes Scotland Smarter. We are looking at more than 300 offers of presentations with only 150 available slots. Being over-subscribed is a great position to be in at one level and an opportunity to reshape the event a little bit. Look out for some creative thinking!

I had a day of ‘leadership development’ from ER Consulting on Wednesday. Some of which was little more than basic management training as far as I was concerned. However, the opportunity to get some direct coaching on dealing with difficult situations was really great and made the day very worthwhile for me.
On Thursday I led a meeting with the 85 or so staff from the Learning and Technology Directorate within LTS. The objectives of the day were:

1. Share our work with colleagues
2. Make connections between our work and the work of our colleagues
3. Network
4. Have some fun
5. Take these four objectives and make them part of our every day practice

From my point of view it was an excellent day with over 30 staff leading short-presentations. We captured everything on an internal blog (which I hope to publish) and with the help of staff from BBC Learning made a short movie of the day. [Thanks to Andy Pendry from BBC Learning. Andy, former PT computing in Edinburgh and Apple education guru, will be joining LTS next month to take the role of Glow Technology Adviser and my chief technology adviser.]

Next week I am off to a 4 Countries ICT Summit hosted by Becta in Birmingham for a couple of days. I hope to blog some of this and try to capture an overview of what is happening across the four UK education systems.

We have LTS Corporate Plan consultation meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday and I’m off to Victoria Quay in Edinburgh on Thursday for a Scottish Learning Festival Governance Group meeting at the Scottish Government.

On Friday I have the honour of being a guest of East Dunbartonshire Council speaking at their launch of Glow in Douglas Academy.

So my week looks like this: Dundee to Glasgow to Birmingham to Glasgow to Dundee to Edinburgh to Dundee to Milngavie and finally back to Dundee. Phew (:

Last Friday was Tony van der Kuyl’s ‘funeral’ – what a wonderful celebration of a life lived to the full. Over 500 people packed into the Bonar Hall in Dundee to listen to his family and friends remembering big Tony and to enjoy the music that was a great inspiration to his life. A unique event for a remarkable man.

This week started for me at the weekend with our Dundee office move. We now have a functioning office again – phew! I am sitting here on the 9th floor of City House (Overgate Centre) with what should be a breathtaking view of the Tay estuary – pity about the fog. Anyway I am delighted with the office – even if it is a temporary move. I even managed to nip out at lunchtime to get the battery in my watch replaced the kind of thing that usually has to wait until the weekend.

Tuesday is an early start by train to Glasgow for a 0900 meeting. My senior managers are briefing the LTS Board on the work of the Learning and Technology Directorate. Our remit includes:

• Promoting new approaches to learning and teaching
• Designing and delivering innovative solutions
• Exploring and implementing new technologies for learning

So an opportunity to share the work we are doing now and discuss how we plan to take our work forward into the future.

The rest of the day is taken up with internal meetings on ‘Journey to Excellence’, ‘Assessment’, ‘Community Learning and Development’ and ‘The Scottish Learning Festival’.

Wednesday is a SLF Planning Group and a Learning and Technology management group.

Thursday starts with an update with my boss – Bernard McLeary LTS CEO. Another pile of internal meetings before a LTS-SQA joint executive team meeting. I finish the day meeting with John McCarney the RM Glow Project Manager.

Friday is back to Dundee for amongst other things a staff meeting to review the office move.

LTS has added a lovely set of classroom resources to support the forthcoming movie ‘The Waterhorse’. It has been placed within the context of Scotland’s Culture as the myth of the Loch Ness Monster is one of the first things that people from other countries associate with Scotland. Our talented staff , in particular Patrica Kemp and Mark Oxbrow, have once again shown why the LTS Online Service continues to be the most popular website for Scottish teachers looking for resources to support learning and teaching.

I have just finished Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’. This is a beautifully crafted novel with hardly a wasted word. An acutely observed piece that took me back to McEwan’s early short stories and the exploration of social taboos, eg ‘First Love, Last Rights’. It was one of these books that I just didn’t want to finish – it was all over a bit too quick …

The Cohen Brother’s latest masterpiece ‘No Country for Old Men’ is just great entertainment. Wild, funny and violent in equal measure. They are back to their best with this movie which for ranks beside my favourite of theirs ‘The Big Lebowski’. Tommy Lee Jones is wonderful as the Sheriff – he doesn’t need to act but just plays himself in whatever movie he is in and whatever part he has.

Wb 28.1
Monday of this week was back in Glasgow for a pile of internal meetings starting off with a corporate management team strategic review. My first external meeting of the week was with Jim Sweeney CEO of YouthLink Scotland.

I was supposed to back in Glasgow on Tuesday to meet with local authorities to discuss the establishment of Confucius (Chinese language and culture) classrooms in Scotland. My role was going to demonstrate the online dimension but my colleague Nick Morgan stepped in to allow me to stay in Dundee and catch-up with some tasks.

Wednesday was a Dundee start with a staff meeting to discuss the imminent office move. We are due to move out of Gardyne Road on Friday 8 February and be open for business in Overgate House on Monday 11 February. Our corporate distribution centre moved to Tom Johnston Road in Dundee this week and it was not as smooth as it should have been – combination of builders and IT! All sorted now and I am hopeful that the contractors involved in the office move are going to be more reliable.

Had an LTS Schools ICT Programme Board to look at progress with the LTS Online Service, how we are getting ready for Glow (LTS as user rather than manager), progress with a £700k contract for Determined to Succeed etc …

After that it was off to West Lothian House to see Gordon Ford, Director of Education and Culture, to discuss how developments and explore how LTS might add value. Lots of great stuff happening in this highly innovative authority. I was really impressed with the vision Gordon and Laura Compton have on the future of technology and impressed by the way West Lothian is getting on with Curriculum for Excellence.

Thursday was back in Glasgow for more internal meetings including an Glow Programme Board to review progress with the roll-out. Now 7 local authorities starting to use Glow and the next group due to come online in a month. Need to start to shift the focus from getting the technology in place to realising the educational benefits. Glow is going really well but as I would expect it is slow to really get started. I don’ think I am going to be saying that in a month.

Friday was back to Glasgow for more strategy review. This time it was in the light of the announcement that LTS is to be reviewed by the Scottish Government. No big surprises here as we have been waiting for a review since 2005 and it is right and proper that public bodies are reviewed to ensure that their functions are still relevant and that they carry them out effectively and efficiently.

Wb 4.2.
Early train to Glasgow on Monday for a Corporate Management Team meeting. Finish the day with the executive of the Scottish Further Education Unit and look forward to hearing about the key issues in the FE sector.

Tuesday is back to Glasgow to brief Eugene Windsor, the secretary to the Scottish Parliament Education Committee, on the functions of LTS and for us to learn more about his role. Then I have a meeting with an external consultant to review my directorate’s strategy and policy. I finish the day at BBC Scotland on Pacific Quay with Nick Simons, Head of Learning.

Wednesday in Glasgow is dominated by an LTS Board meeting. I end the day with a regular update with my two direct reports Ian Graham, Schools ICT Programme Director, and Marie Dougan, Glow Programme Director.

Thursday is my last day in Gardyne Road after 6 and a half years. Apart from chairing the (currently) weekly staff meeting and packing my last box I am going to be meeting the effervescent Louise McDonough of Do Be to find out how her latest innovative products are doing and being!

Friday is office move day in Dundee so I need to stay out of the way of the removal vans. I will spend the morning with Ian and Marie reviewing progress and planning for next year.

Friday afternoon is Tony van der Kuyl’s funeral and I will be there with many others to pay my respects.