Laurie O’Donnell

Not been keeping my blog up to date recently – sign of being too busy.

I spent the week before last in London attending two events. The first was a Becta organised conference which was attended by 60 ministers of education including our own Maureen Watt, MSP, Minister for Schools and Skills.

Some great speakers including:

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, who called for more investment in the science of the web, the fostering of a culture of sharing/the commons of the web and for governments to open up their data for public use.
• Andreas Schleicher, Head of Indicators and Analysis Division, OECD PISA, gave a stunning presentation on how quickly education is changing across the world. It is clear that it is not enough for an education system to be improving if others are improving at a faster rate. Certainly no room for complacency if our children and young people are going to be able to compete in the increasingly globalised 21st century.
• Ricardo Semler, World Economic Forum nominated young business man of the year, owner of Brazil’s Semco and founder of the Lumiar foundation. Gave a brilliant talk on 21st learning and teaching and designing a curriculum around Formula 1, fashion, popular music of the 1960s, building a bicycle etc. Inspirational stuff and worth watching for the future as traditional curriculum structures continue t to come under pressure from learners, parents, employers and teachers as poor preparation for life and work in the 21st Century.

It was also a great opportunity to network and find out what is happening across the world from Saudi Arabia (making a massive investment in education), Japan (concerned about demographics), Finland (top performing in Europe but about to undertake a radical reform programme) …

The second event I attended was BETT. In previous years I have blogged about how little I get out of the exhibition but how much I appreciate the opportunity to meet pretty much everybody in the learning and technology world.

Apart from bumping into large numbers of the people I have worked with over the last 10 years I also met with senior executives from a number of IT companies including:

• Terry Sweeney, CEO of RM Education,
• Peter Isaacson, VP Global Education, and his colleagues from  Adobe Systems
• Herve Marchet and Mike Munn of Apple Europe

I also had the honour of having lunch sitting next to Prof Tim Brighouse – great conversation about how Scotland should respond to the recent TIMMS survey.  Also had the opportunity to listen to Tony Howell the current holder of Chief Education Officer/Director of Children’s Services with Birmingham City Council – got a real sense of the scale of the challenge he faces on a daily basis.

Brilliant week, fantastic opportunity and a privilege to have this job but I was glad when my plane landed back in Dundee on Friday night.

Sitting at home listening to BBC Radio Scotland’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth – Auld Lang Sang.

We have just published some new Burns resources for schools (and others) to use on the LTS Online Service. The highlight for me is the Burns songs performed by “The Cast” ( one of Scotland’s finest contemporary folk bands – I am told that their version of Auld Lang Syne was featured in the recent ‘Sex and the City’ movie). These 6 songs are unique content, recorded especially for LTS and published on our website only …another LTS exclusive!

Hilery Williams has tagged me, asking me to participate in some end of year frivolity: listing 7 things about myself others might not know (not to mention not be very interested in).

Anyway looks like a good way to get me back into the blogging habit again for 2009! So here goes:

1. My dad was a joiner and I really wish I had asked him how to properly use the tools I inherited. Luckily my 12 year old daughter is a natural – assembled her own bed from IKEA last month her grandfather would have been very proud ☺
2. I started playing golf left handed with my grandfather’s hickory shafted clubs. However I ended up playing golf right handed because when I went to the sports shop (pre internet) to buy my first half set of clubs they didn’t have any left handed ones. Some would say that this is an advantage (something to do with a good golf swing being more about pull than a push).
3. I always promised that I would never get a dog. But having been out voted by my family 3 years ago I now really love having a dog.
4. I have a degree in Politics and am qualified (and registered) to teach Mathematics and Computing Studies (long story).
5. I was born in Edinburgh and support Hibernian
6. I can’t sing in tune
7. I live far too far away from the LTS office in Glasgow and am really enjoying a break from commuting by train over the holidays.

My others (and my apologies if they have already been tagged) are:

Derek Robertson
Olie Bray
Martin Brown
David Muir
Joe Wilson
Allan Ogg

I just picked up the very sad news of Tom Conlon’s death today.

Tom was one of my lecturers when I was training to be a teacher at Moray House (along with Tony van der Kuyl who died last year at this time). He was a brilliant lecturer and the high standards he set for me as a trainee were great preparation for life as a new teacher.

Tom was one of the most articulate people I have ever met and it was great to see him in full flight – although not very comfortable when you were on the receiving end of his invective.

I will miss the challenge he provided and just wish I could have persuaded him that Glow was more good than bad.