Digital Leaders

Digital Leaders — No Comments
4
Mar 10

Vital Eats Your Time

Having agreed to organise a small group around the theme of Vital – I am finding that spare time no longer exists. If I am not organising the course on the OU Moodle, I am talking with our e-resources manager/graphic artist or DL teachers. In the evenings I am calling / emailing or Tweeting communications to the other staff involved. So here is my point. Management of time and expectation is essential, it was not until after I had agreed to run the project that I found out that measured time was calculated from time logged into the OU Moodle. Next time, I will ensure I know fully how our achievements will be measured before I agree. On the up side, I am really excited about meeting and working with ICT staff across the region on the concept of developing a Digital Leaders brand and school digital leadership programme. I think we have something special. If you are interested then drop me an email or visit the staff blog www.digitalleaders.co.uk.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Digital Leaders / Digital Learning / ICT / Leadership / Management — 1 Comment
2
Mar 10

SSAT Next Generation Learners

Although I was at the SSAT conference to meet and present with Bob Harrison today, I also benefitted listening to two powerful presentations on the use of space within schools. The first from Ty Goddard and the second from

Mark Lovatt, Deputy Headteacher, Cramlington Learning Village.

Further to Bob Harrisons 21st Century Leaders test, I outlined how we were deploying the Digital Leader skills to the benefit of our school. Hopefully this cameo role may al least encourage school leaders to visit www.Vital.ac.uk or even get in touch. Incidentally, we asked how many school leaders were aware of the Vital project, sadly very few.

Ty Goddard, British Councils for School Environments gave a particularly emotive presentation. Following a brief outline of what / who / how overview of BCSE, Ty Goddard offered an insightful review of how school/classroom space design could be engineered to further impact the learning that happens there, a theme later echoed by Mark Lovatt. A learning space that incorporates both indoor and outdoor environments as well as cultural influences. Ty Goodard shared the work of Kenn Fisher, research I aim to follow up starting with the link to Rubida.

Ty Goodard went onto share international learning space examples, some large investment projects, some simple but creative redesigns and proudly UK examples. His parting message to delegate was that the British Councils for School Environments is well equipped to support schools on a building design or redesign projects. For schools (and government) to exploit that service  and  to make better use of the expertise within his team.

CLV offered an interest case study, outlining how both a new build and a redesign of an existing 1930s build was planned around the style of learning the leadership team wanted to encourage. Taking a reverse model, the leadership team first asked ‘What do attributes do our students need to be successful learner,’ and second, ‘How to best to design the learning space to facilitate that aim.’ Both spaces posed different re/design questions (budget / scope / Key Stage) yet CLV manage to map commensuarate solutions to the enquiry based teaching approach they wished to adopt.

The Key factors included;

Increasing classroom transpacency – more windows into classrooms

Bite size desk, jigsaw desks or round tables

Removal of the teachers desk and inclusion of a gyro mouse in every classroom to displace lecture style teaching with move interact proximity facilitating.

Noneclature – school = village, attitude and learning = 5Rs

Curriculum walls, with detachable teaching materials eg Thinking Hats and taxomony barometers

Learner to Learn curriculum in KS3

Mark Lovatt also welcome school visits during their open day, he also noted the school conference. I will notify him of this post and hopefully he will share the dates.

Finally my thanks to Bob Harrison for inviting me, and Paul Hynes (SSAT) for the opportunity to share the Digital Leader programme with the delegate.

One last, slightly related point. If you are an ‘teachnology’ specialist, look out for a wonderful teaching opportunity on the horizon @ Ormiston Bushfield Academy. Forward thinking Headteacher Eric Winstone is considering an innovation / technology / teaching (but non-timetabled) specialist position on his staff to encourage the embedding of technology across the curriculum. What an exciting post that would be, I could only describe it as AST post for teaching and learning with technology.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Digital Leaders — No Comments
25
Feb 10

Digital Leaders Update

This is somewhat of a cross post, one that also appears on our new Digital Leader UK blog, outlining the progress we are making with the Digital Leaders project forVital.ac.uk.

Craig Sumner has been working hard on the Hamble College DL blog. Nearly as hard as the DLs themselves. The MU set up appears to be very popular, we already have a number of posts ‘pending,’ these students are keen to get themselves published! The permissions create clear lines of responsibility and this in turn promotes teamwork and internal leadership. When the theme is finalised, it will be shared with the remaining school blogs to support a corporate brand.

Communication with Vital.ac.uk is very positive and we are hoping that all interested schools will be able to meet in Oxford on March 11th/12th for our development meeting. In the MySpaces section we have a moodle course where we will draft the course and share ideas, Digital Leaders Space SE Co-development (Digital Leaders Group). We have room for two more schools if anyone from the SE is interested!

Popularity: 12% [?]

CPD and INSET / Digital Leaders / Digital Learning — 2 Comments
15
Feb 10

Scale up, not down

First of all, a big congratulations to the Digital Leaders @ Hamble College who impressed Vital’s Helen Caldwell. On Wednesday, Helen inform us that we had been issued a grant to help bring teachers from various SE school together to help define the Digital Leader project. To then expand the project and to help like minded schools start similar DL projects at their schools within the SE area. Currently we have 4 schools/colleagues interested, some staff I know, some I look forward to meeting but its still open. We have room/funding for probably 6 schools in total. Its all rather exciting, and certainly the DLs that met and enthusiastically presented their experiences to Helen last week, are “chuffed to bits.”

Meanwhile, I continued my personal conversations with like minded teacher and ICT innovator Daniel Stucke, Director of E-Learning at Stretford High School, Manchester. Clearly out of area, but keen to get the wheels in motion at his school. Our conversation led him to a chance encounter with ICT consultant Bob Harrison who incidently bumped into the DLs at ‘work’ at the Open Source Schools Conference last year. Now, Bob just happens to be one of the ICT consultants contributing to the Vitals Strategy and governor at the school with which Daniel Stucke’s school is potentially merging…. the dots just seemed to be connecting all by themselves…

So with Bob’s expert knowledge and encouragement, Daniel approached the NW Vital project and has been successful in his own rights, funding pending for his own Digital Leader project, so hopefully we will have 2 areas in the frame.

Excited by the imminent collaboration on Digital Leaders with @kristianstill, Toshiba via @bobharrisonset and also Vital. Daniel Stucke

To finish this almost unbelievable tale, I get a call from Bob on Friday AM. Bob outlined his tempered views more traditional CPD – you know the type – tick the box and collect the certificate type CPD, and his thoughts as to what a Digital Leader programme could potential offer a school and not just my school, or the schools in our region, but all schools. I had to pause for thought, come up for air.

Bob has encouraged me to think BIGGER (which made me reflect on a conversation I had with Tom Barrett a few weeks ago and the advice he received from Google – scale up, not down). Without question I am very passionate about the DLs, I have seen first hand the positive impact they have had/made at our school; on the CPD expereince of staff, on the confidence of the students as DLs, on improving the DLs relationships with their teaching staff – including myself, on pulling ‘teachnology’ into the classroom and on showcasing the school, but it was only 2 weeks ago that I was discussing the possibility of a regional programme with Vital.

So, I am cautiously moving forward, reassured by Bob’s confidence. I intend to dedicate time over half-term to the scaling up document for Digital Leaders (Wiki or Docs?). I am going to be asking Tom for his thoughts as he is 6 months thinking ahead of me and because I trust and value his opinion. Feel free to contribute – and if you want to know more about the Digital Leader programme, just search the Digital Leader category.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Digital Leaders — 1 Comment
30
Jan 10

Vital Project

If you are a teacher who believes in challenging and inspiring young people by giving them responsibility and real life experiences, then I need your help. With the potential support of vital (funding), we are hoping to share the Digital Leader program with colleagues in the SE regime (and beyond if your interested). The more schools interested, the more we can do to innovate the programme. Who/what are Digital Leaders? In a nutshell, it is Student Voice for ICT with a production twist. Digital Leaders meet, innovate and publish through Digital Leadership, as well as being expected to be a ‘leader’ within school, similar to the common variety prefect but utilising the power and engagement of all things Digital.

The Digital Leaders are a group of students from Hamble Community Sports College that lead innovative ICT practice at Hamble College and regularly meet as part of the Digital Media and Gaming Club. They contribute to ICT innovation and curriculum development and contribute to school ICT policy.

One particular focus is the use of digital media to cover LIVE events for school and educational groups such as SSAT, Hampshire Information and Advisory Service and Open Source Schools. This coverage is then shared internally through the VLE and externally with parents via the school website.

Digital Leaders are position of responsibility and students apply, and reapply annually for the leader posts. Digital Leaders are given IT privileges, opportunities to develop their software and hardware skills and contribute important role with the ICT strategy for the school.

Loosely based on the GENyes programme, our leaders have grown in confidence and expectation. Students have covered live conferences, support CPD, lead CPD and about to design a Digital Leaders E-trainers qualification for future generation Digital Leaders.

If you are interested then leave me a comment.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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