:Soul of Society

It’s been a very busy week and a bit with work. I’ve been in both Orkney and Shetland for their learning festivals, two very impressive events. In both cases, all teachers in the authority are invited to attend a two day in-service, and have access to a wide and relevant programme. I was there doing my Glow-vangelist bit, and I thoroughly enjoyed my first chance to run a Glow session on my own. I think I’m starting to know what I’m talking about.

Aside from working with the teachers, one of the benefits of the events was getting to know my LTS colleagues, as many of the Curriculum for Excellence team and other LTS types were there too. Although many of us are based in the same building, we’re so often out in authorities that we don’t know many of the people we work alongside. Even when we are in the building, being on a different floor means I rarely see those who’re based upstairs. It reminds me a little of school, where we didn’t have a staffroom. We’d cluster in our staff bases at breaks, and that’s only if we hadn’t sequestered ourselves in our classrooms to catch up with marking. As a consequence there were people who worked on the other side of the campus who you only saw at in-service days. Certainly, when I’d been there two years, I still met staff members who’d been there for longer than me, who would ask me if I was new. It does raise a slight worry about how the cross curricular aims of CfE can be met when you don’t even know who you’re working with.

Perhaps Glow can help with this. It seems faintly ridiculous on the surface to suggest working online with people whose classrooms are a hundred yards away from yours, but secondary teaching can actually be a very solitary business, where perhaps the only contact you have with your colleagues on a given day is a wave in the corridor as you’re welcoming your class. If you’re in a working group with your colleagues, or you’re planning a cross curricular project, working online could be more convenient than face to face meetings. The idea of discussion boards appeals, especially when it’s so hard to find times when everybody can be in one place together, and document stores make organisation of resources easier. There’s the added bonus that working online means your project or group doesn’t have to be limited to your school – if it’s relevant to you it might be relevant to other schools in the council or even the country, so why keep it small if you don’t want to? Where time and availability have been barriers in the past, there can be at least some progress if we work online.

But back to the Learning Festivals and getting to know people…It made a real difference to be able to speak to people whose faces you’d seen, but whose role you had no idea about. It was so encouraging – each and every person I talked to was full of enthusiasm about their role, and grateful for their secondment, It certainly made me feel more confident about where CfE is coming from because the range of experience and ability within the writing teams is phenomenal. I always expect to turn into a cynic about these things one day, but so far, so positive.

Anyway, I digress. The point I’m trying o get across is one I’ve touched on before – no teacher is an island and we should realise that. We’ve got a great resource in our colleagues, with their own experiences and skills, and it’ll be a shame if we can’t get into the spirit of collaboration that CfE encourages (and that Glow brilliantly supports). And if we’re still islands, at least we can be a large archipelago with good links between each other, or peninsulas tethered to the same land mass of share ideas and resources

On an unrelated point, I was interested in something one of the ladies at dinner had to say about us technical types. She began by saying that when she first encountered people in education who were of a technical persuasion, she always noticed that those people were, how to put it nicely, erm, socially awkward. She went on to say that she’d noticed a gradual but definite change over the years, and in general now the technical types she comes across are just as social (or anti-social) as the general populous. Having grown up in the period she’s talking about, I haven’t really been aware of that shift, but I wondered if that rang true for anyone, and if it’s down to the user-friendliness of newer technologies – are the grassroots programmers and computing scientists still like the people she remembers?

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Spore’s getting a lot of attention on the web and in the wider world. Neil Winton made clear its addictive nature and commented on its educational potential, and it’s being discussed on the Consolarium on Glow. Neil made the point that it could be said to deal both with evolution and ‘intelligent design’ models of life, and as with anything touching on these areas, it’s dividing opinions. There are Christian bloggers applauding it for its God-centred approach, but at the same time there are sites like Antispore calling for it to be boycotted for teaching children evolution.

 My friend Kenny, a filmmaker and editor, took himself off to a well-known Glasgow tourist attraction to film a response to Antispore – I found it entertaining, and I thought others might too.

edit: Thanks to Neil for pointing out that Antispore is, in fact, a Rickroll cover site (see comments). Don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed – heh. I’ll leave the link so you can investigate yourself. Nonetheless, watch Kenny’s video, because ’tis cool.

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Today I ran my last race for the year, the Strathcarron Hospice 10k in Denny. My usual running partner was off doing the Great North Run, so I was wandering about the starting muster on my own, attempting to keep within the patches of sunshine. A fellow solo runner came up to me and struck up conversation. We talked about previous runs, I let her borrow my phone so she could let her kids know when to come to the end of the road and wave at her, and we realised we were both originally from the same town. It turns out she’s an early years specialist at St. Ninian’s Primary School in Stirling. So of course, I ask her what she knows of Glow. She hadn’t used it, but her Headteacher is a technophile, so she’s going to go back and ask about it. She seemed really excited by the idea. She was also sure her daughter’s school was using Glow, and mentioned how impressed she was that she was able to use chat rooms to get help from her teachers.

So there you go – on a day when I really wouldn’t have expected to do my Glow evangelist bit, it happens anyway ☺

P.S. I ran the race in memory of my Dad. He stayed at the hospice a few times last year, and I can’t express how wonderful a place it is and how amazing the staff are. If you’re in the Falkirk area and you’d like to donate to the hospice, follow the link above to their homepage – any donation at all is gratefully received.

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