Laurie O’Donnell

It is now 5 days since I left the ranks of the salaried public sector to become self employed. At the moment it just feels like the school holidays in the years when I was a teacher … and I am loving it

My plan is to take most of July to get myself organised with email, website, bank accounts etc and also to have a proper break from work after LTS.

I am in the process of setting up my own website/blog  www.laurieodonnell.co.uk (currently redirected to www.ltsblogs.org.uk/laurieodonnell).

Some of my post LTS portfolio is already in place and it looks like a good mix already with more variety to follow (I hope).

Planning to blog about my reading and my future plans over the summer. Have a great summer (or winter if you are in Oz or NZ).

Lx

Well I have managed 61 posts over the last 15 months – getting close to one a week. Much better than I managed the first time round with my blog back in 2005. Some weeks and months have been better than others but I seem to have established the habit.

Key turning points in getting my blog established were:
• Developing an understanding of my audience. By and large my readers are working in Scottish Education, many are known to me personally and some are my work colleagues at LTS. I am acutely aware that my blog is out there and calls from journalists based on what I have written in my blog reminds me that this is on the public internet not hidden away on a private intranet.
• Thinking of the blog as a learning log (following Don Ledingham) has been important for me. So for example I wanted to capture the main points from the OECD Report on Scottish education. In the past I would have got the highlighter out, drawn a mind map and taken some notes for my own personal use. Now my preference is to put my thoughts up online for my own future reference and for anyone else who might be interested.

So what next? I think I have a developed a model that works for me and found what my colleague Ewan McIntosh has called ‘my voice’. I am going to try to do a regular ‘Last Week/Next Week’ as part of my learning log. I will continue to post largely on Scottish education and my role in LTS and look out for the odd random entry on whatever comes into my head.

After reading Don Ledingham’s article in TESS (version from Don’s Learning Log) this morning I have decided to change ‘Laurie’s Blog’ to ‘Laurie’s Learning Log’. The alliteration makes it sound much better for a start but I also think the case that Don makes is compelling. Like Don I want to use my learning log to capture: where I have been; where I am; and where I am going. I want to use it as a tool for professional reflection; somewhere to share some of my experiences; and in my role as a public employee to open a window to my world – inviting comments, contributions and insights from others.

I have had a pretty mad few weeks will wall-to-wall meetings and not taken the time to blog. I can’t believe my last post was on the 29 November. I plan to commit some time over the next couple of weeks so look out.

Purpose of this blog? No single purpose but rather multipurpose.

First and foremost I will use it as a journal and try to make a weekly entry focussing on how LTS is taking forward the learning and technology agenda in Scotland through the two main programmes we are managing – Glow and the Schools ICT Programme (formerly NGfL). I will probably make this my contribution to the LTS Corporate Management Team blog as well. I hope that over time I can start to provide some insights into how LTS works for my colleagues and for an external audience.

Secondly, I hope to take the opportunity to reflect on some broader education issues and how these impact on Scottish Education and LTS.

Thirdly, I want to pick up some more random stuff on movies, music, culture, news, websites, books, friends, places etc.

At the moment I am working with my LTS colleagues Graham Wilson and Scott Ogilvie to improve the look and functionality of my blog. I hope to be able to establish a template that makes it easy for large numbers of my colleagues to blog.

I started a blog last year but didn’t sustain it – a combination of (in reverse order) a poor user interface for the blog software we were using, no clearly thought out purpose for keeping it, a new laptop and a failure to commit the time to maintain and develop it. Since then I have been reading and enjoying lots of blogs, and even commenting on them now and again. I have been encouraged (and given some practical help) by my colleague John Connell to start my own blog again. So here goes.

When I look at the blogs that are out there it is clear that a lot of ground is already being covered very well.

Don Ledingham is doing a great job in East Lothian using his blog to think aloud and to open up a window into his thinking on the future of education. I want to come back to the East Lothian wiki he has established to on Xtreme Learning soon.

Many of my colleagues at LTS are now regular bloggers

Ewan McIntosh should also be commended on his work in raising the profile of Web 2.0 tools to enhance learning. Ewan is currently on secondment to LTS but remains based with his employer East Lothian under the leadership of Don Ledingham.

Derek Robertson is another LTS blogger, based in our Dundee office, working on our strategy for computer games and learning.

Allan Ogg works in the LTS corporate ICT team and has a technology blog that I use to keep up to date with applications for the Mac.

Nova Stephenson works on the LTS Online Service on the content side and is an avid blogger.

Jim Buchan works on the LTS management of Glow.

Andrew Brown is working for LTS on new technologies for learning.
John Connell former SSDN/Glow Programme Director with LTS and now our Learning Futures Strategist has become a great blogger and leads our Web 2.0 strategy. Special thanks to John for helping me to set up this blog in Wordpress.