I’ve just spent the last two days at the Drumossie Hotel, Inverness where I had the pleasure of talking with a considerable number of Gaelic teachers from around Scotland. There were delegates from Highland, Western Isles, Argyll & Bute, Glasgow, and East Dumbarton………..and probably some more.

I’ve been involved with various Gaelic teachers and advisors over the past few years due to the usefullness, in languages, of much of the software that we use in additional support needs. i.e. good multi-sensory, multimedia packages such as Textease and Clicker 5 which lend themselves to bookmaking, sentence construction, annotation, etc – and in any language you want. It’s so easy to record your own voice messages to these applications and teachers can use existing resources and make their own tailored to their own pupils.

I delivered 5 sessions on Textease – its use as a great interactive ‘blackboard’, how it can be used as the foundation and repository for ‘virtual topic boxes’ and its ease of use as a desktop publisher and presentation tool. Most teachers tell me that they had no idea the software could do all these things. A reflection of the prevelent notion that I often hear – that it’s a wee word processor for the infants!!!!!

My recommendation is that you take another look at this especially if you now have a digital projector in your classroom – you’ll not find a more flexible and easy-to-use package to prepare and deliver punchy teaching presentations.

The ’stuff’ I mentioned during the presentations can be found here.

I didn’t manage to attend SLF this year for a variety of reasons. I was really disappointed at not having the opportunity to link up with colleagues at the event but I am pleased that so many reports and links have flooded into my various feed collectors this week.

Firstly – the Keynote speeches and interviews with the speakers can be found here.

The very important and growing initiative that is Teachmeet. One of the short presentations at this year’s Teachmeet was Robert Jones making use of GoAnimate in maths. This fantastic summary of all of the features came in from David Muir.

See GLOW games at LTS GlowScotland page. Thanks Andrew Brown for the pointer – Wordpress, disappointingly, won’t allow embed code for me to post this myself.

The ever-present Ewan McIntosh provides his contributions in his own prolific manner.

John Connell comments on the ‘I can generation’ points in Charles Leadbetter’s keynote.

And there’s more………….maybe later!!!

Neil Winton’s work on Wikis to support CfE looked very interesting.

[slideshare id=618815&doc=slf2008-wikis-simplified-1222378097204472-8&w=425]

Sandaig John provides a look into getting Web 2.0 tools into Glow.

Ollie Bray and Seonaid McGillivray presented on their Guitar Hear transition project…..

[slideshare id=618643&doc=slf-assessment-1222372278823468-8&w=425]

Derek Robertson posts on the Dr Kawashima Challenge run at this year’s SLF.

Thanks to Judy O’Connell for posting this video from James Paul Gee. Take 10 minutes out to listen to this vision of 21st century learning if you can.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1526294&w=425&h=350&fv=flvPath%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.edutopia.org%2Fmedia%2Fjames_gee%2Fjames_gee.flv%26pPath%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.edutopia.org%2Fmedia%2Fjames_gee%2Fjames_gee.jpg]

My wife, who is expecting our second child, passed her due date yesterday without incident so we must now be getting very close to the event!!! As a result, last week was spent in anticipation and I could only manage local visits. This week looks to be shaping up in much the same way. Apologies to those of you waiting for a visit!!

I’ve been using the time productively though. We’ve registered our other ‘new baby’ -  WriteOnline from Crick software and are readying ourselves to deliver some training in its use as well as getting it out to some pupils. This on-line word processor with speech output, prediction, and topic word-grid support allows a pupil to work at any Internet enabled computer. So working between home and school should become easy. There’s no software to install and what the pupil has at school will be exactly the same as they will see it at home.

Actually there is much more to this application than we first realised. There’s online storage space for files, free resources on many common curricular topics, and facilities to enable both pupil and teacher to comment on work in progress.

Can’t help feeing that this would sit beautifully inside GLOW to provide an excellent all-round writing support tool that would enhance inclusion on a number of levels. Must speak to Learning & Teaching Scotland about this!!!

We’ve also been looking very closely at Clicker 5. Although this has been around for quite some time now it’s only recently that schools in Highland have been getting it on refreshed equipment in any numbers. We will be delivering training in the use of this software very soon – watch out for news in the CPD calendar. Clicker 5 has a vast array of ready-made materials that are free to download but is also supported with add-on packs that cover early language development, ESL, common topics, as well as many inclusion features for pupils with additional support needs. It’s a real step up from the already excellent Clicker 4.

I was intrigued by David Gilmour’s post today relating to requests from NQTs for training on school email systems and his suggestion that many of our younger colleagues are more at home with messaging systems.

Feedback from an introductory training session on ICT for this year’s East Lothian NQTs apparently included the request that we should have covered how to use the school email system, in place of introducing Glow.

Maybe this is a sign of the times, as increasing numbers of younger people make less use of email, preferring instead the immediacy of MSN? If so, these people are going to be out of their comfort zone if they find they can’t keep in touch – with colleagues as well as friends – via MSN while in school.

Taking things a step further, we may be seeing a new generation bringing new expectations of what communication tools should be on a school PC desktop. Glow Chat may just have arrived in time.

Glow Chat will certainly provide a great service across all Scottish schools once we’re all connected. This got me wondering about how many of our teachers here in Highland actually make use of, or even know about, the instant messaging facility within FirstClass. Teachers in Highland can message any other online user and hold one-one or group chats.

Just click on the icon and you’ll see the Instant messenger option is available to you.

So – if you’re a chatter rather than a mailer there’s a mechanism for you!!

I had not been aware of the fact that no formal evaluation had been commissioned for the early stages of GLOW until I read John Connell’s commentary (2 posts a & b) on Jaye Richards’ research paper, Will the Lights Stay On? Glow and Embedding ICT into Secondary School Curriculum Subjects: A Quantitative and Qualitative Design-based Classroom Study. Given the diversity of potential uses of the tools within Glow it’s encouraging to note no intention of trammelling teachers into prescribed uses of the facilities.

I believe that one of the best decisions we took in the earliest days of Glow was the agreement not to commission any evaluative research to run alongside the implementation and roll-out of the national learning platform, since to have done so would, inevitably, have skewed the ways in which we would want people to use the tools in their teaching and learning. By defining too early what success looked like, we would have pushed the project down routes that might have restricted the imagination and creativity of teachers and learners in how they might choose to use the platform.

Jaye’s study has been published via her own blog and on the GTC website and is well worth downloading for a read.

I’m trying to maintain a list of Glow-related posts as updates at my drop site, candleinthewind. Let me know if there’s something interesting out there that I’ve missed and I’ll add it in.

I have been very lazy this summer – in respect of the blog anyway!! I’ve been decorating, and tiling, and preparing for a new arrival in a couple of weeks time. Since I last posted, Mark Cavendish has gone on to record a record four stage wins in the Tour de France. We have women’s cycling and swimming gold medals as well as a swimming bronze and canoeing silver at the Olympics and we’re only a few days into the Chinese spectacular!!!!!

I have been at the computer though – looking at a few interesting online tools that I think schools will like and I’ll try to post on these over the coming weeks but there are busy times ahead.

The ATS Service Development Officer’s post is still to be appointed so August to October is going to be a bit of a whirl for me.

I have set up, for Highland teachers, who may wish to join with me and a few others, a professional/social networking site to enable folks to get a feel for the Web 2.0 technologies that are emerging and will, eventually, be available through Glow. It’s a small affair but I think may serve its purpose – I’ve certainly learned a lot through setting it up and keep finding new things each time I look around. There are places to share words, photographs, videos: you can even keep a blog withing the site!!!

This Highland Teachers network is open to a limited number of staff and can only be accessed by obtaining a password from me (alan.stewart@highland.gov.uk). I’m hopeful that anyone signing up for this will use it to gain experience by logging in regularly, commenting of other’s posts, and contribute ideas/resources themselves. It’s definitely a participation sport!!!!!!!

I recently set about creating a small scale, private social networking facility, using Ning, to offer Highland teachers the chance to communicate via a chat room, create interest groups, share photographs, video, and any other useful teaching resources. The term proved to be very busy and there was little time to launch this until now.

This type of facility is similar to some of the tools that Glow will offer when it eventually reaches Highland schools. I am very much of the opinion that we need to start ’skilling’ ourselves up in this area now rather than waiting for the Glow versions of these tools to become available. I have found quite a few tools that we might well use now in preparation for when our candle is eventually lit – you’ll have to sign up though to find out what these are!!!!

Given that a network of this nature requires people to, first of all, populate it and then continue to engage with it, I do hope that a number of you will join me in this experimental journey of discovery. We’ll only know how well it works and how useful it might be to us by giving it a go.

To keep the site private I have set it up in such a way that entry is by invitation only. That means that you’ll have to email me (alan.stewart@highland.gov.uk) for login details. At present I am the only person with the administrative permissions to invite new members but it would be good if one or two other administrators/moderators could be identified to ensure better speed of response and variety of input. In the meantime I will restrict membership to Highland teachers and known friends of the education department who may have useful input to the experiment.

There are a few Google adds down the side of the site – if this takes off I’ll pay the small fee to have these removed.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Andrew Brown, newly appointed Glow Development Manager for Learning & Teaching Scotland, reports on updates to the GlowScotland website. Andrew is a very enthusiastic individual whose contribution to Glow is already significant. I’m certain that many more will benefit from his strong commitment to the project and his new role within Glow.

The updated site aims to keep everyone fully informed about all aspects of Glow as it rolls out across Scotland. As you can see from the page listings below it’s possible to get information about local as well as national activity. It’s also now possible to subscribe to the GlowScotland website via an RSS feed.

There are links to news updates posted an the glowscotland blog as well as access to training materials and information about how to prepare for Glow. A very useful article was posted today giving access to Pathway Brochures to help make the most of your visit to the Scottish Learning Festival in September – an event Head Teachers ought to attend if at all possible. Booking information can be found here.

Glow’s not coming our way for a while but things are happening elsewhere. As someone who was, at one time, tasked with involvement in Glow I like to try to keep a close eye on where things are at…………..

Was quite amused by this chance find when I ran a Google search for Glow in Highland!!

You may find that you can’t follow the link below in school!!!!! but I’ve put up a few bits of info from this week’s edubloggers and elsewhere so you can get a feel for what’s happening out there where the bulb’s shining a little brighter!!

http://drop.io/candleinthewind