CPD Team

Graham Thomson and I were delighted to do a presentation and lead a discussion on this theme at the recent Practitioner Research event at St Georges in Edinburgh.  Linda Blencowe who is the Research and Development Fellow at the school arranges these early evening events on a regular basis, and it was good to see so many colleagues coming along after school to talk about learning and teaching. You can contact Linda at lab@st-georges.edin.sch.uk to find out more about this excellent example of teachers teaching teachers.

The photo shows Graham and I with the headmistress Helen Mackie.

The partners delivering Curriculum for Excellence are developing a toolkit to help practitioners communicate with parents and carers around CfE.

In January, the toolkit will be launched by Cabinet Secretary.

Watch the promotional trailer here:

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/video/p/video_tcm4575287.asp?strReferringChannel=curriculumforexcellence

 The toolkit has been designed:

• in response to research on parents’ needs: they want to hear from the school and the teacher who knows their child
• to share stories that start to give a real sense of the look and feel of CfE
• moving on from the policy lines and guidance we’ve had to date
• to give simple messages to practitioners and material to support them in answering the simple and complex questions from parents
• to be an online resource in the main – a starter kit that we build onto (we are producing leaflets for parents aimed at 3 broad stages: EY, primary and secondary+
• to provide information, photos and film resources that schools can repurpose, adapt and set in their own context for sharing with parents.

More information from :

Barbara Chalmers
Project Manager, Communications
CfE Implementation
Schools Directorate
Scottish Government
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh

T 0131 244 0385
M 07760 990919

See link below to an article published in this week’s TESS describing the complexity associated with describing and providing “good” CPD for teachers and other educators with an interest in CfE.

I’d love to hear any comments

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6028170

I had an excellent discussion this week with Catriona Oates of Scottish CILT. Like many others, Catriona is looking at how national organisations (such as SCILT) can add value to the culture of teacher-led CPD which is proving so valuable. We discussed a lot of examples such as the various TeachMeets and the recent Flashmeet about which Catriona kindly blogged. One of our conclusions was the need to facilitate online communities on Glow to ignite discussion topics and sharing of practice. Our conclusions?

• renewed determination to find, or be facilitators, for Glow groups such as CPDLead and SCILT
• use CPDShorts to focus on some key areas for debate / professional learning
• use CPDFind to bring colleagues to both of these things
• The MFLE community in Scotland (through LTScotland online service) was a leading and early success story for Scotland in the area of online CPD. Time to relight the fire?

CPDFind now features an endorsement feature. The National CPD Team has always maintained that the best people to endorse CPD opportunities are you the educators in Scotland. You can now identify which CPD has influenced your practice the most and give it your own personal, gold star!

How does it work?

Visit the descriptor on CPDFind. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see

Enter your Glow username and password and fill in the short form

A gold star (representing your endorsement) will appear on the bottom of the endorsement.

Later visitors to this opportunity will be able to select your gold star and read your endorsement. Each gold star represents one endorsement

Please note this is not anonymous rating like some other web sites. CPD can only be endorsed by named educators on Glow. This way you can be sure of its veracity and even start to identify colleagues who have the same interests as you.

I am grateful to Graham, Ralph and Gayle of LTScotland who made this feature a possibility. Like all our offerings we would very much welcome your comments.

I spent this morning in the company of colleagues from the Highland Council (mainly Dave McCartney, Terry Kerr (CPD manager) and Louise Jones) looking at the various CPD offerings on the Highland Virtual Learning Centre and highland.gov web sites. We focussed on how national CPD tools can enhance the already forward-thinking, online practice in Highland. Specifically:

• a trial of how CPDReflect could be used to exemplify and deepen understanding of the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Framework. This has recently been substantially revised for CfE
• how Glow and CPDShorts could be used to bring collegiate CPD to existing excellent awareness raising CPD on the Highland toolkit and framework
• how CPDFind could be further used to promote all types of CPD in Highland Council
• how the excellent CPD sessions from the recent CfE Showcase could be revisited through regular GlowMeet events over the coming session

I look forward to going back up in December to help take these innovative ideas forward.

This is a guest post from Catriona Oates of Scottish Cilt

Tuesday 3^rd November

Big excitement! Last night I participated in my first flashmeeting – an online meeting, organized by teachers who wanted to share their experiences of teaching Modern Languages; in particular this time, their experiences at the London Languages Show. The time and the agenda were set by the participants in advance, agreed, it seemed at their previous online get together.  So – what exactly is a flashmeeting?  Essentially, it is a video conference, which starts out as a blank sheet of paper. Contributions, ideas and agenda items are added by the people who want to be there, to hear what their colleagues have to say and to share something themselves. A maximum of 25 people can participate and a waiting list is organized in case of cancellation.  That’s how highly valued these places are:  and remember, it took place between 8.30pm -10.30pm on what seemed to be the first day back after mid- term, AND they’d all spent the weekend at the London Languages Show. Who says teachers aren’t committed!  Within the lucky 25, we were joined by colleague Steve Collis from Sydney Australia and Doug McAllister from Missouri, USA.

There was huge enthusiasm for the Languages Show at which many of the participants had presented, in particular for the sessions Chris Harte and Lisa Stevens presented. The Show and Tell session organized by Joe Dale was also a highlight for many.  Several  of the participants commented on how this Languages Show had been the best one so far, on account of the social networking ( mostly via Twitter) that was going on – an interesting comment as exactly the same was said about Scottish Learning Festival this year and I found this to be the case myself.

The agenda was as follows:

1. What were your impressions of The Language Show and or The London Show and Tell event?
2. What do YOU want to get out of the **MFL Show and Tell 09** in Coventry in 2 weeks time?
3. How do you use your VLE and what sort of resources do you have on it?
4. How are you implemeting the new KS3 curriculum and what effect is it having on engagement and KS4 uptake?
5. Do you have a local SLN and how has it helped with the introduction of the New Framework?
6. What practical advice would you give to a languages teacher needing to record their GCSE speaking tests for the first time as mp3 files not on cassette?
7. What’s all this I hear about Storybird?

The meeting functioned much along the lines of a Glowmeet, with the bonus of being open to anyone. There were chat functions, voting functions and a good web sharing function that I didn’t get the hang of. There was lots of really good chat going on and when I asked people what they thought would be a good focus for a possible Scottish Languages Show, Creativity; Thinking Skills, Active Learning and Cross-Curricular approaches were some of the suggestions that came back. Sounds like a good start (We’re working on it – no promises!).

 The Languages Show is obviously a very big part of these teachers’ professional development, as are the follow through activities they plan around it, like last night.  Some very interesting comments were made around the subject of CPD. Several teachers said that they had learned more about teaching in the couple of years since joining twitter than they had in ten of twelve years teaching, on account of the professional exchange and sharing that goes on there. I could say the same but for me the proportions would be a couple of months to seventeen years!

No CPD certificates were issued as a result of attendance last night, and there was a queue to get in. When you consider the number of courses that get cancelled due to poor numbers, for whatever reason, this raises interesting questions.  With budgets, curriculum and many other things changing all around us, we need to be ready for changes in our approaches to CPD. This is teacher –driven and teacher owned CPD. There is a place for national CPD providers within this context, but not quite sure of what it might be at the moment. One thing is for sure: we don’t want to find ourselves on the margins looking in and admiring what is going on!

Don’t just take my work for it, here are some other blogposts written just after the event:

http://simonjhowells.blogspot.com/

http://dmac1.edublogs.org/2009/11/02/my-first-mfl-flashmeeting/

http://domsmflpage.blogspot.com/

Great to see so many colleagues and to have the chance for lots of great conversations at the Shetland “Curriculum for Excellence: Let’s implement” event last week. It was a pleasure to be part of these two days of workshops, team meetings and chat based at the Anderson High School. I had a great meeting with Maggie Spence and Sarah Henry of Shetland Council about CPD and leadership development, debated the value and purpose of keynote presentations with Eddie Broadley, discussed leadership and Learning Rounds with Fiona Carlisle of HMIE and shared thinking about CfE and how it’s all going with Hilda de Felice of Learning Unlimited.

And if that wasn’t enough – we also had glorious late autumn sunshine.

I have just had a smashing (not to say privileged) few days visiting the CPD festivals in Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Orkney Islands Council and Highlands Council.

One striking feature of all 3 events was the decreasing reliance on external CPD providers and the increase in local, practitioner-led CPD. For much of the time, I was ‘manning’ a table with a rolling display and sets of the eminently collectable CPD postcards but I also managed to fit in some visits to keynotes and seminars. I had a number of rewarding conversations as a result. Here are just some of them:

• with a number of supply teachers including Lorena (see la historia de Lorena)
• with Margaret Alcorn and Ian Smith (the latter of Learning Unlimited) on the links between professional learning communities and Learning Rounds
• with Carol McManus of Orkney Islands Council on how CPDFind can be improved to support local authority CPD
• with Neil Stewart of the Glow team on how we can make more use of CPDFind to raise awareness of the growing amount of CPD using and on Glow
• with Morag MacDonald of Storlann and how tools such as Glow and CPDFind can support their valuable work in Gaelic education
• with Eddie Broadley (area adviser at LTScotland) on how CPDReflect might be used to support development of curriculum maps
• with senior Highland Council colleagues on how CPDReflect might be used to exemplify their Learning Teaching and Assessment Policy

Many thanks to all for their warm welcomes and particularly to Donald MacLeod, Carol McManus and Terry Kerr of the CPD Network.