Tag Archives: Curriculum for Excellence

Google Education Roadshow @kingussiehigh #NDLW17 #digitaldifference⤴

from

Kingussie Event - OB Keynote

Well it is the end of National Digital Learning Week in Scotland (#NDLW17).

I started the week by hosting and keynoting the Scottish leg of the Google in Education UK Roadshow at Kingussie High School and finished the week by having my latest resource 'Leading a Digital Learning Strategy' published by the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) as part of their Framework for Education Leadership. More about that here.

The Google Event had a real buzz about it on Monday and it was great to have an opportunity to work with the wider roadshow team, who are currently touring the UK as part of the Google in Education Fuel the Future Tour. A special shout out must go to Louise Jones, Oli Trussell, James Leonard and Dean Stokes for their excellent presentations – I certainly learnt a lot and realised that there are lots more features within G-Suite for Education that we could be exploiting at school.

It was also great to have 20 local authorities represented at the event and a good blend between practitioners, local authority advisors and policy makers. I am interested to see what G-Suite looks like within Glow when it becomes available as part of the productivity suite in August this year.

Kingussie Google Event - May 2017

The theme of this years National Digital Learning Week was making a #digitaldifference and for a little school in the middle of the Cairngorm National Park I think we certainly punch well above our weight in terms of making a #digitaldifference. The map below is a nice illustration of just some of our influence in the last week.18527383_10158619884970702_49681753105711023_o

 

Link to SCEL Framework here: http://www.scelscotland.org.uk/…/new-on-the-framework-lead…/ 

Google Education Roadshow @kingussiehigh #NDLW17 #digitaldifference⤴

from

Kingussie Event - OB Keynote

Well it is the end of National Digital Learning Week in Scotland (#NDLW17).

I started the week by hosting and keynoting the Scottish leg of the Google in Education UK Roadshow at Kingussie High School and finished the week by having my latest resource 'Leading a Digital Learning Strategy' published by the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) as part of their Framework for Education Leadership. More about that here.

The Google Event had a real buzz about it on Monday and it was great to have an opportunity to work with the wider roadshow team, who are currently touring the UK as part of the Google in Education Fuel the Future Tour. A special shout out must go to Louise Jones, Oli Trussell, James Leonard and Dean Stokes for their excellent presentations – I certainly learnt a lot and realised that there are lots more features within G-Suite for Education that we could be exploiting at school.

It was also great to have 20 local authorities represented at the event and a good blend between practitioners, local authority advisors and policy makers. I am interested to see what G-Suite looks like within Glow when it becomes available as part of the productivity suite in August this year.

Kingussie Google Event - May 2017

The theme of this years National Digital Learning Week was making a #digitaldifference and for a little school in the middle of the Cairngorm National Park I think we certainly punch well above our weight in terms of making a #digitaldifference. The map below is a nice illustration of just some of our influence in the last week.18527383_10158619884970702_49681753105711023_o

 

Link to SCEL Framework here: http://www.scelscotland.org.uk/…/new-on-the-framework-lead…/ 

Google Education Roadshow @kingussiehigh #NDLW17 #digitaldifference⤴

from

Kingussie Event - OB Keynote

Well it is the end of National Digital Learning Week in Scotland (#NDLW17).

I started the week by hosting and keynoting the Scottish leg of the Google in Education UK Roadshow at Kingussie High School and finished the week by having my latest resource 'Leading a Digital Learning Strategy' published by the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) as part of their Framework for Education Leadership. More about that here.

The Google Event had a real buzz about it on Monday and it was great to have an opportunity to work with the wider roadshow team, who are currently touring the UK as part of the Google in Education Fuel the Future Tour. A special shout out must go to Louise Jones, Oli Trussell, James Leonard and Dean Stokes for their excellent presentations – I certainly learnt a lot and realised that there are lots more features within G-Suite for Education that we could be exploiting at school.

It was also great to have 20 local authorities represented at the event and a good blend between practitioners, local authority advisors and policy makers. I am interested to see what G-Suite looks like within Glow when it becomes available as part of the productivity suite in August this year.

Kingussie Google Event - May 2017

The theme of this years National Digital Learning Week was making a #digitaldifference and for a little school in the middle of the Cairngorm National Park I think we certainly punch well above our weight in terms of making a #digitaldifference. The map below is a nice illustration of just some of our influence in the last week.18527383_10158619884970702_49681753105711023_o

 

Link to SCEL Framework here: https://www.scelscotland.org.uk/…/new-on-the-framework-lead…/ 

Adapting our approach⤴

from @ Education Scotland's Learning Blog

AGD 2015 imageBy Alastair Delaney, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Inspection, Education Scotland

There’s a famous Chinese proverb that states ‘A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it’.

It’s a simple yet effective proverb for how we should approach all work in which we engage. But in reality, many of us are guilty of being too focused on the task at hand and the looming deadline, that we do not spend long enough adapting our approach to suit changing circumstances. We just want to get the job done.

A couple of years ago we decided it was time to put this proverb in to practice with our inspection approach.

We wanted to fully consider the changing education environment and shape our approach to meet the needs of the system.

We were committed to fully reviewing the process without rushing to a conclusion; hearing from the various people who are involved in inspections rather than second-guessing what they thought about the process; and taking our time in trying out proposed approaches before implementing any changes.

It has been a lengthy process but an absolutely necessary experience to get us to the strong position we are in today and to ensure we can shape our approach around the education ‘vessel’.

The first of the new inspection approaches, the ‘full establishment model’ is this week being implemented in early learning and childcare, and school settings following a thorough consultation with partners.

Inspectors will use the new Quality Indicators included in ‘How Good is Our School? (4th edition) during inspections and in inspections of nursery classes and early learning and childcare centres, we’ll use the equivalent QIs from ‘How Good is Our Early Learning and Childcare?.

Another new aspect of the approach that I am particularly pleased with is that a further QI for focus will be negotiated with the school. It’s a real partnership approach and will enable school staff and inspectors, together, to focus on a particularly challenging issue or new initiative, with the aim of bringing about improvement through professional dialogue.

But we’ve not finishing shifting shape and to be effective we must continually adapt to circumstances. We plan to introduce a suite of inspection models, which we can use in different contexts and for different purposes. We are working on the development of our short inspection, localised thematic and neighbourhood review models, and will continue to engage with teachers, parents and stakeholders to gather their feedback.

The review has been carried out with a strong focus on consultation and we do not want to lose this important element of development. When all new inspection models are implemented we will continue to seek feedback, we will be flexible in our approaches and ensure we continually shape our approach to best meet the needs of Scotland’s education system.

Look out for future blogs on our progress with evaluating and implementing the new inspection models.

What Works Best in Education: the Politics of Collaborative Expertise – [Prof. John Hattie Research]⤴

from

John Hattie 2015

In his new June 2015 report (‘What Works Best in Education: the Politics of Collaborative Expertise’) Professor John Hattie asks ‘How do we increase the expertise of all teachers?’

IRIS Connect have dissected the paper on their blog and quite nicely condensed eight of the key tasks that Hattie believes need to be established in order to achieve conditions to nurture the collaborative expertise of teachers within a school.

The eight key ideas are:

1. Shift the narrative to collaborative expertise and student progression.

Hattie says, “re-framing the conversation away from its current focus on standards and achievement and towards progress is the first step. As well as recognising that everyone, from teachers and school leaders to parents and policy makers, should be working together towards ensuring every child receives at least one year’s worth of progress for one year’s input”.

 

2. Agree on what a year’s progress looks like across all subjects, schools and system levels.

Hattie says, “What a year’s progress looks like needs to be debated and agreed upon among educators. This will reduce variability in teachers’ understanding of challenge and progression for students and truly accelerate progress.”

 

3. Expect a year’s worth of progress by raising expectations that all students can achieve.

Hattie says, “Research proves that one of the greatest influences on learning is the expectations of students and teachers. When teachers have high expectations of their students, those students tend to be very successful in achieving their goals.”

 

4. Develop new assessment and evaluation tools to provide feedback to teachers.

Hattie says, “We need to find improved ways of helping students and teachers to better teaching and learning through assessment. Evaluation tools shouldn’t measure learning, they should help to shape it.”

 

5. Know the impact by making sure that all teachers take responsibility for the impact of everyone in the school on the progress of students.

Hattie says, “Schools need to become evaluators of impact and experts at interpreting the effects of teachers and teaching on all students.

Schools should create environments that enable excellent teaching and strong communication with a focus on making an impact,  where teachers identify what success looks like and the magnitude of the impact before they start teaching.”

 

6. Ensure teachers have expertise in diagnosis, interventions and evaluation through teachers working together as evaluators though self-evaluation of their impact on their students.

Hattie says, “Teachers need to be experts at diagnosis, interventions and evaluation. They need to understand what each student already knows and where they need to go next, as well as what interventions to use to get them there and then how to evaluate the impact they have made.”

 

7. Stop ignoring what we know and scale up success by using the wealth of knowledge that exists in teacher communities

Hattie says, “We have an enormous wealth of knowledge already about how to address certain challenges that students face. Teachers should be encouraged to share and use the existing expertise that has been proven to work.”

 

8. Link autonomy to a year’s progress by studying teachers who are achieving a year of student progress and supporting teachers who aren’t 

 

You can download the full report here and it makes interesting reading when you put it in the context of Scottish Education. I wonder how many teacher actually know what one year (or stage) of progress looks like within the context of the curriculum both in the BGE and Senior Phase?

Parentzone⤴

from

parentzone-logo--horizontal

Parentzone Scotland brings together the contents of the previous Parentzone and Scottish Schools Online websites to form a single resource.

In the Find a school section, you will find all the schools information previously held on Scottish Schools Online – contact details for every primary, secondary and special school in Scotland, as well as information on school awards and links to school websites. This section also now includes information on performance of leavers from S4-S6 for each secondary school in Scotland.

The website also contains:

  • information and resources to help you support your child’s learning from early years to beyond school
  • new resources to help you support your child’s learning at home in literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing and science
  • enhanced support for parents of children with additional support needs.

Sign up for regular Parentzone Scotland updates to get details of news, events and resources for you and your child

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/parentzone/

Children and Young People’s Regional Summit- #wish4scotland⤴

from

The first in a series of Children and Young People’s Regional Summit events centred on an education theme will be taking place on March 23rd in Inverness. The event is a collaboration between Scottish Government, Children in Scotland, Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament.

Scottish Government wants to help ensure children and young people are at the heart of decisions which affect them and their education. As set out in Curriculum for Excellence,  young people should have the confidence and skills to enable them to influence decisions around them, effectively participate in wider civic society and help shape the future Scotland.

Approximately 100 children and 40 supporting adults from schools and youth organisations across the north of Scotland will be coming along to the first regional summit which has been coordinated along with an official Cabinet meeting. Bringing the Cabinet meeting together with the Children and Young People’s Summit will give Government Ministers the opportunity to engage directly with children and young people to talk about their views on things like educational attainment, participation, children’s rights and social justice.

 

Follow the event and participate on Twitter using #wish4scotland 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Children and Young People’s Regional Summit- #wish4scotland appeared first on Engage for Education.

East Lothian ‘Making Maths Matter’ Conference – Professor Louise Hayward Keynote⤴

from

At the recent ‘Making Maths Matter’ Conference on 13th March, Professor Louise Hayward from Glasgow University provided an overview of the International research and current thinking on ‘Closing the achievement gap’ between those in the most and least deprived areas. This focus is a National and Local priority and the overview from Louise provides clear points for reflection as we continue to develop strategies in schools and communities to improve achievement.

The video of her presentation at the conference can be found at this link: http://links.edubuzz.org/makingmathsmatter

Could SAMR be a load of tosh?!⤴

from @ Charlie Love.org

It seems that everyone has this idea of the “transformative” use of technology in education. Every technology event I attend, just about every “evangelist” trainer, every company sales person or “education specialist” and every fan-boy/girl has this view that digital technology is a life-changing, wonder tool to inspire and change …