Laurie O’Donnell

Just had a couple of wonderful days in Glasgow at SLF2008. We have evolved the festival into a showcase for Scottish education over the last 9 years and I think we now have a model that works pretty well with continuous improvement built in by design. This year the focus was very much on Curriculum […]

I am in our Dundee office today trying to catch-up on a few tasks before the Scottish Learning Festival. It’s a beautiful clear day here with blue skies and the River Tay shimmering to a warm gentle breeze as my only distraction… well apart from email, the phone and a to do list that keeps […]

My LTS colleague and friend Derek Robertson (see Man From Uncle picture above) is once again in the news.  This article in The Sunday Herald is another example of how Derek’s work has moved on the discourse around computer games in the classroom from ‘how much damage they do’ to ‘which ones can we can […]

I spent a couple of days in Dublin this week with former Becta Chief Executive Owen Lynch. Owen is working with LTS to benchmark what we are doing with ICT in Scotland against the policy and strategy of other countries across the world.
The Irish Government’s Department of Education and Science recently published two reports the […]

We came across the updated Framework for 21st Century Learning when we were in the US.  Nine of States have live projects exploring the model and there seems to be a growing movement of educationalists, politicians and employers happy to sign-up to what amounts to a radical departure from normal practice in US schools.

The […]

Over the last few years we have been using more high quality video to help support the development of professional practice in education. The latest addition to the LTS website is the  Partnership with Employers resource, funded by the Scottish Government’s Determined to Succeed programme.
This project has been managed within LTS by Fiona Andrew and […]

One of the objectives of the visit was to build on our existing relationship with The George Lucas Educational Foundation, and find out more about their flagship publication Edutopia. We had the opportunity to spent some time with Milton Chen, Executive Director and Steve Arnold, Vice Chair/CFO.  We were also able to brief GLEF staff […]

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One of the many highlights of our visit to the US was the opportunity to spend some time with Gary Plano Superintendent of Mercer Island School District and elected School Board member Lisa Strauch Eggers.
Mercer Island sits in the middle of Lake Washington - a 6 square mile suburban community 10 minutes drive from downtown […]

I spent last week in the States with my friend and colleague Andy Pendry, LTS Glow Technology Adviser . The purpose of our visit was to:
•    Help develop our thinking on how we might evolve Glow over the next few years (Glow v2)
•    Explore trends in the use of technology for learning
•    Get a better […]