Date post: | 12-Jan-2015 |
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Education |
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Making happenHow lessons learned from deploying a smaller scale
authority-wide web publishing system in East Lothian schools
may help.David Gilmour, East Lothian Council
What is edubuzz.org?
•A learning community
•A window on East Lothian education
•A web publishing system
What’s the connection with Glow?
• Creating a learning community
• Improving sharing
• Modernising learning
• Removing barriers
But what did we do about…
• Staff who “don’t do ICT”?
• Staff who don’t see the possibilities?
• Schools afraid to be different?
• Suppression of innovative staff?
Where are we now?
eduBuzz is popular• Every school
is involved• Up to 10,000
visits per month
• 1000 web sites
We’ve real evidence of benefits.
HMIE “Good Practice” at Law PrimaryEffective Use of ICT
– Staff wanted to be more innovative in their use of ICT. They created a school blog to provide information on all aspects of school life and to encourage a regular dialogue between home and school. Staff worked closely with the local authority ICT team to set up the site and then took on responsibilities for maintaining it.
– Pupils were given a key role in providing the content. Pupils at the upper stages displayed and gave an account of their achievements and the range of activities that they had taken part in. Across the school, pupils used the site to provide feedback on school events. At P6 and P7, a pilot programme for homework was introduced with homework tasks and links to helpful educational sites posted on the blog.
– The blog also helped parents to keep in contact with their children who took part in the P7 residential trip and let them know about the daily activities. Development and use of the blog has helped to promote pupils’ language, ICT and independent learning skills. It has also proved to be a highly effective way of highlighting and celebrating pupils’ achievements.
Law Primary Inspection Report, HMIE, Sep. 2008
How might this help with Glow?
Diagram reproduced from the encyclopaedia of informal education [www.infed.org]
• Similar problem situation
• Possible transfer of lessons learned
How did edubuzz
start?
• Research to improve learning in East Lothian
• A need to stop re-inventing wheels
• The idea of an online learning community
Early research
showed we had to…
• Avoid “deficit model”
• Start from where people are
• Avoid the usual “initiative approach”
What lessons have we learned?
Lesson 1: Train
colleagues together
• Avoid training disparate groups off-site
• Train whole schools or departments in school
• Provide plenty of informal follow-up support
Lesson 2:Don’t just automate existing
tasks
• Look for where technology enables new potential benefits
• Be aware of the risk of being constrained by existing thinking
• Why are newsletters monthly?
Lesson 3:It’s not
an initiative
• Top-down initiatives generate push-back
• Avoid invoking the initiative “frame of reference”
• Focus instead on benefits by supporting “bottom-up” ideas
Lesson 4: Reduce
barriers to adoption
• Train to create simple products
• Tailor support to individual teacher’s needs
• Consider training the students
Lesson 5: Take time to explain benefits clearly
• People will adopt technology when they perceive it to be easy and helpful
• Look for problems technology can help individuals to solve
Lesson 6: Focus on benefits
• Recognise the risk that benefits can be missed
• Don’t “Do Glow” for the sake of it
• Stories of real benefits achieved will spread and engage others
Lesson 7: Encourage evolution
• Look for organic growth
• Nurture new ideas
• Learn by doing• Don’t over-plan
Lesson 8:Create a support network
• Encourage links between schools
• Exploit the network to provide inter-school support
• Trust people with the rights they need to be able to help
Lesson 9: Exploit transparency
• Make it easy to see what other schools are doing: and steal ideas!
• Peer pressure helps change “the way we do things”
• Creates healthy competition
Lesson 10:Establish
continuous improvement
culture
• You can’t get it right first time!
• Encourage open feedback and ideas
• Small improvements can provide large benefits
Stay connected
David GilmourEducation & Children’s ServicesEast Lothian CouncilEmail: [email protected]: 01620 827114Blog: http://edubuzz.org/blogs/david
edubuzz.org/blogs/eastlothianglow