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 don’t know how long this link will remain live but there are so many wondeful little moments in here that I just had to post it. I may be setting my Real Player 11 to work to catch some of these video snippets before they disappear – or Screenflow on my Mac to capture them all!!!! I guess many will find their way to YouTube but you can’t get that in school!!!!

The Story of the Guitar

There’s some nice playing:

And some mickey-taking!!!!

Language warning on some video clips – but it is rock and roll after all!!!

The Scottish Government has, this week, announced that:

The rights of children with additional support needs (ASN) and their parents are to be strengthened through changes to the Additional Support for Learning Act 2004.

Parents of ASN children, including those with a co-ordinated support plan (CSP), will now be able to request that their child attend a school in another local authority, through an out of area placing request.

Where a child has a CSP – the educational plan to meet their needs – parents will also have a right to appeal to the ASN Tribunal for Scotland if the placing request is refused.

Furthermore, when a child is attending a school in another authority as a result of a placing request they will now have access to mediation and dispute resolution from the new ‘host’ authority.

Children’s Minister Adam Ingram said:

“The Scottish Government wants all children, including those with additional needs, to have the opportunity to learn and develop, with access to the most effective and appropriate education services.

“Across Scotland we have good provision for ASN children, however there are times when parents believe that their child’s specific needs would be best catered for through facilities available in a different local authority. The changes we are introducing today will ensure that such requests are considered.

“In August we announced new funding to safeguard advocacy services for supporting parents challenging the provision for their child through the ASN Tribunal. The Tribunal will continue to play an important role in resolving disputes between parents and local authorities.to find the best solution for the child.

“Our key focus is on giving ASN children and their parents the best support that we can and I believe that these positive changes will help achieve just that.”

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill – which amends the Additional Support for Learning Act 2004 – will mean that if an out of area placing request is successful, responsibility for reviewing the child’s or young person’s CSP will transfer to the new ‘host’ authority. The Bill will also extend the circumstances in which parents can make references to the ASN Tribunal.

I note that Learning and Teaching Scotland have recently updated their GlowScotland website to signpost the ‘National Content’ available within Glow. Now, I happen to be able to access Glow due to being a member of the Highland Glow mentors group but I know that the vast majority of teachers have no access to these resources.

So, can these be named as ‘National Content’ when, beside almost all of these resources, sits the message:

National is an adjective (adverb form: nationally) used to describe a product or publication that is distributed throughout an entire nation, e.g., a national magazine. It implies that the item is available for purchase or access anywhere in the country. (Wikipedia)

Not all of these resources are locked behind Glow’s security shield – some of them have been around for years and have, presumably, been paid for by public funds. However, the new stuff is all locked away and I’m left wondering about how the purchase of these resources has been funded. I’m also wondering why I, as a taxpayer, and my children cannot have access to them if they truely form part of something called ‘National Content’?

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 the prolific Ollie Bray for flagging this up.

Definitely worth a look.

Get details here about the required computer specifications and about the great, easy-to-use facilities within this great software package.

Read Curtis Jobling on I Can Animate and why he thinks you should use it with kids.

Tristan Oliver demonstrates the secrets of Aardman’s animated success at a special BAFTA Families event.

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Allow me to introduce you to Ruairidh David Stewart.

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