Leadership Pathways: Creative Resource Management

This online unit was suggested as part of my routemap analysis. With hindsight, I wish I'd chosen a different unit. C'est la vie...

The most important idea that I took away from this unit was that continuing professional development is important to keep a vibrant, happy workplace that is able to change and adapt.

I liked the idea of asking staff to 'bid' for resources - to encourage them to consider the value of their ideas, and the impact on the children and the school.

CPD should be integral to everybody's role - it should form part of job descriptions. This unit suggests that CPD should include developing skills as a teacher, but also different non-classroom related skills too. Provide a range of learning experiences for staff as well as pupils to promote creativity and a positive atmosphere.

Develop an ethos of learning - encourage people to 'have a go'. Find ways around a problem by exploring and inventing. Create an environment that is safe, comfortable and yet challenging so that creativity can develop.

Leadership Pathways: Data & Beyond

My final online unit was entitled 'Data & Beyond', reminding me of Buzz's catchphrase in Toy Story. However, that word 'data' made this unit just about as far removed from fantasy as possible! Actually, everything about this unit is to do with facts and evidence and using it to instigate changes. This is what I learned from the unit.

There are ten tips for making a difference with data. These are taken from the NCSL website:

1. It's your data - use it internally to improve standards.
2. Prior attainment - assemble as wide a range of data as you can.
3. Follow through on the data - collecting data is only as useful as the use that is made of it.
4. Review how your school uses data - does your school's use of data have a clear set of purposes or is it more of what we have always done?
5. Take the evidence seriously - examining the evidence can shed new light on things schools take for granted.
6. Use significant data - carefully identify the data items that your school needs to collect and analyse to inform its vision and strategy and to have impact.
7. Look beneath the data - looking beneath the data to understand the individual experiences of the children it represents is a key part of validating its usefulness.
8. Involve parents - parents can be essential allies in helping their children develop - if they have good information about how their children are developing and what targets they are working towards/
9. Involve pupils - if data is being used to improve individual pupils' performance, it's all the more effective if the pupils themselves are involved and given awareness and ownership of their own learning.
10. You're in charge - being familiar with your data and using it in a regular, planned way, within the context of your overall school's development, will ensure that the data serves you.

Data collection and analysis does not really form part of my role (my colleague leads this process) but reading this got me thinking that maybe it should be! We are constantly told that Ofsted want 'evidence, evidence, evidence' yet this doesn't seem to be something I have been gaining experience in using. From the very beginning of the unit I realised that data is a process that I need to find opportunities to develop my own practice.

I learned some practical advice for data collection:

• Look for the right type of data - will it help you to show what you want?
• Often, the data produced for external reasons is not the data you need. It might be more effective to produce your own data.
• Data can be quantitative - in lists, tables, charts or numbers.
• But data can also be qualitative - opinions, feelings, pictoral, words. It must be rich in value.
• Find the right bits of information which will help us to teach better and, more importantly, the right kind of data to help my pupils learn better.
• A representative sample can be identified.
• Sensitivity must be used when monitoring practice.
• Surveys must be planned and organised thoroughly.
• Note the current model so that the impact of changes can be compared.

Practical advice for data analysis:

• Evaluate the impact of changes regularly.
• Data hasn't got to show what has gone wrong - try to discover what works best, or what will work better.

Advice for acting on the data:

• Data should be acted on in a positive way - make changes which are for the better which will benefit the pupils, the staff and the wider community.

When giving feedback regarding data:

• When giving feedback about data explain why you are saying things - be specific.
• Use data to support anything difficult that you want to say.
• Don't just deliver a monologue - create a dialogue.
• Empathise, but don't sympathise. Don't back down - make it clear that support will be given to help people move forward.
• Make sure your message is clear.
• Consider how you want to open the feedback, and also the effect of how you want them to be at the end.

Learning to collect, analyse and act on data must form part of my next steps in my career.

Inspiring people and blogs

UPDATE
Over the last few months I have read various blogs by various educators and it is hard not to be inspired when you read about the wonderful things that the children are enjoying in their classrooms.

Here is the list of just some of the blogs that I've found really interesting over the last few months. I wanted to share them just in case there's anyone out there who hasn't stumbled across them before. I apologise if I've left anyone out.

Maybe there's an easier way to share these links? I'll have to work one out...!
Webb's Wide World
Mr Mitchell's Blog
Simon Haughton
Mrs Spencer's Blog
Mike McSharry
Tales from a Trainee Teacher
Digital Teacher
Adventures In learning
Bits & Bobs
Chris Leach
Jamie Keddie
Mr Warner
Primary Pete
Steps in Teaching and Learning
Edte.ch
Doug Belshaw
Robert Drummond - Teaching resources, ideas and comments
Primary PGCE - Trainee primary teacher in Somerset
Ian Addison - The blog of an ICT Consultant and Primary school teacher

Leadership Pathways: Effective Influencing Skills Workshop

For me, the Effective Influencing skills workshop was the best part of the whole course so far. It's just a shame that I only had the chance to take it two weeks before the whole course finishes!

The idea that there are many different ways to influence others is something that I just hadn't even considered before.


The workshop made me aware of the different ways that I work currently and the ways that I want to work in the future.


We began by hearing about the three different levels of influence - rational, emotional and political. These different influences have different effects on different people and do not necessarily work on every person and in every situation. But, in an ideal work, to have complete influence over everybody, you need to be in to middle, using all three levels of influence.


We were introduce to nine different styles of influencing.

• Value-driven style
• Goal-driven style
• Need-fulfilment style
• Visioning style
• Rational style
• Pushing style
• Institutionalising style
• Educating style
• Supporting style

These are all push or pull (or both) styles of influencing. Push behaviours are rational, assertive and explicit.  (Energy comes from you to make others have to change.) Pull behaviours are emtional, involve listening to others and being open. (Energy comes from others because you have made them want to change.) Overuse of each type can be counter-productive so it is important to find a balance.


I have always believed myself to be a 'puller' - someone who makes people want to change, but after taking an auditing exercise I believe I have become more of a 'pusher'. Whilst this is not necessarily a bad thing, I know now that I need to be more aware of the influences I use.


Force-field analysis is 'a strategic approach to influencing situations at work'. It analyses and prioritises the driving and restraining forces. More information is available here.


There are always pros and cons to a decision – nothing is ever that simple! The secret of good decision-making is figuring out whether the pros outweigh the cons BEFORE you take action. With force field analysis, you list and score the factors for and against a decision, total the scores and see which comes up best.

If it's a close call and the decision for or against is not clear, you can add an extra step. Review the factors affecting the decision and create an action plan to increase the “fors” and decrease the “againsts”. Simply repeat the force field analysis with the new conditions and your decision will be clear.
 
I found the idea fascinating. I can use this idea to consider any change I wish to make before I introduce it to staff to see how successful it could be. At any stage in the change process it can be used to evaluate the success of the project.
 
The ideas in this workshop actually link up well with the stakeholder analysis in the Leading Through Influence online unit.

Mystery Stories

During our project on writing mystery stories, we watched these Scooby Doo episodes. They fit in well with our fairground/theme park topic and helped the children to 'shape' their story.







The children used the mystery short story rubric at Intel's website to encourage the children to think about the quality of their writing.

This website was used to help to structure their stories.

Some great ideas and planning sheets are available at this Scholastic site.

Hope you find this helpful.

Education Show 2010

I attended my second ever Education Show yesterday. I really enjoyed it and acquired a tonne of information and ideas. It was great to meet some interesting people too.

When I got back, it took me a while to work through all of the free mugs, free pens, chocolates, flyers and brochures that I collected, but I believe I have various things that I will try to explore when I get the chance over the next few months.

Whilst I'm not endorsing any of these resources, I thought I would mention the ones that I plan to investigate further or those that I purchased at the event.

Software:

• I acquired a copy of 2Simple's 2DIY for evaluation. I have heard such a lot about this on Twitter, finding the 2Simple stand was a priority for me. I will enjoy exploring this and hopefully the school will be able to afford to purchase a site licence at the end of the trial.

Websites:

• www.peplanning.org.uk - this interesting looking planning resource is in its testing phase. It's something I will pass to our PE subject leader.
• www.millionaireforschools.co.uk offers eduational quizzes for the children. I like the look of this, but I'm not sure we can afford it yet.
• www.asthma.org.uk/educate
• www.thepuncs.com
• www.iamlearning.co.uk - whilst I'm not necessarily a fan of revision, I was really impressed by the learning through games at this site.
• I renewed our subscription to Education City.

Learning Platforms:

• After spending nearly three years establishing our Uniservity learning platform in school I am reluctant to move to a different LP provider. Having said that, I was very impressed by the simplicity of the service offered by www.dbeducation.co.uk.

Resources:

• I'm a big fan of Polydron resources. I bumped into a director of the company who asked a while ago if he could include some of the videos from our Polydron work onto their website. I told him that I had quite a few more so he should be expecting an email with details soon! (You can see them at our vimeo channel at www.vimeo.com/churchlane.) The Polydron Engineer sets look really promising.
• Classical Comics: I love their version of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and so I was pleased to purchase copies of the teacher booklets for these plays.
• We purchased some PDF ebooks for excellent prices which were produced by www.topical-resources.co.uk
• Filmclub sounds simple fantastic! The school will certainly be looking into this!
• We found some brilliant lino cutting materials which will be great for our William Morris art project in the summer. www.educationalart.co.uk
• I loved Rory's Story Cubes and I will definitely purchase the iPhone app!
• www.GoodMorningChildren.com seems like pretty good value and seems a pretty good way to start each day.
• www.memory4teachers.co.uk - After signing up for a free memory stick last year I was annoyed that I never received it. The salesman explained that there had been supply issues last year. Yesterday the memory sticks were given out at the show!
• www.lightningeducation.com - APP Assessment Angel looks like really good value and a great idea for a manageable solution to recording APP information.
• I'd love to get a Support Your School initiative started at our school.

Money & Careers topic:

• The Primary Enterprise Game produced by Halton Education Business Partnership looks amazing but very expensive. I'm not sure we'll be able to afford this just yet.
• www.credit4life.co.uk is a pfeg approved board game which encourages discussion about credit cards. I would love to buy these, but the cost may prove to be a barrier for a while.
• Raising Aspirations looks like a good resource for promoting higher education to pupils in the primary school.

Residentials:

• We chatted to a salesman from Manor Adventure who gave use some really good ideas for how we could further improve our visit to France next year.

As you can imagine, a lottery win would only just cover the cost of buying all of these resources. But it's great to know what is available, and, if finances allow, what could be bought to help to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools.

Junior Librarian.net

A lot of my time recently has been setting up Junior Librarian.net in school.

Junior Librarian is a complete library system for schools. It allows pupils (and teachers) to borrow and return school books. It allows users to reserve and review books. Our version uses a barcode reader to check books in and out.

It's not cheap, but it is a good bit of kit and, although we are just getting started, I feel that it is going to be very useful.

I foresee it being used in many ways:

1. Library books won't just get 'lost' any more. We should know exactly who has them.
2. We can further raise the profile of reading in our school by using it to recommend books to the children.
3. We can use it to guide our purchasing of books - if a type of book becomes popular we could then decide whether to buy more (or less) similar books.
4. We can discover the books that are most commonly read by boys or by girls.
5. We could use it to raise standards of writing by introducing a book review system.

We purchased Junior Librarian.net as this is hosted online, meaning it can be accessed over the internet anywhere in school and out.

One of the problems I had with setting this up is that I wanted pupils to be able to use the barcode reader to borrow and return books whilst in school. But out of school I want the children to be able to access the system to reserve and review books, and of course this can't be done without a barcode reader. So I asked if it would be possible to generate usernames and passwords for the pupils. I felt like this would be a perfectly reasonably request, and I'm sure I', not the only person who was ever asked for this facility. In the end it took absolutely ages to set this up. I had to download a file from SIMs, manipulate it in Excel and Access and then upload it. For somebody quite unfamiliar with this process this proved to be very difficult. I was virtually making phone calls every day trying to figure out why the file I had created just wasn't working. Luckily the helpdesk staff were really helpful and I finally got this sorted. But Microlib - you've got to invent an easier way to do this!

Year Six pupils loved scanning and labelling all of the books. It was really simple to do and they were really proud of their work.

The next part of the process (after half-term) is to introduce the usernames and passwords so that pupils can make full use of the site. I also want to train the staff to use the facilities of the site so that they can find out the most commonly read books in their class.

Long term, there is an option to upgrade to allow Learning Platform integration. This sounds really interesting - we'll see how we get on with the basic version first though.

Does anyone else have experience of Junior Librarian.net?

Polydron

Whilst I don't want to sound like a salesman for Polydron, I had to share very briefly how delighted I have been with the apparatus, which the class have used to explore components.

Polydron Revolution is a system which allows children to explore gears and pulleys to make moving models.

We began by spending some time looking at pulleys and gears. We considered the directions of the turns and explored the ratio of the different sizes. Then we moved on to bevel gears which will turn horizontal movement into vertical movement.

Next we explored the use of these in simple models. We added wheels and struts to make our designs more complex.

For the following two weeks we explored the models available. We made the models on the instructions and then we added our own modifications.

The children were then allowed to let their imagination run wild and make their own models!!

As well as being lots of fun, the children were really creative in their work. They learned many of the principles of using components.

Here are some videos of our work:

Gears and Pulleys Polydron Revolution 2010 Part One from Wistaston Church Lane on Vimeo.

Polydron Revolution 2010 Part Two from Wistaston Church Lane on Vimeo.

Polydron Fairground Rides from Wistaston Church Lane on Vimeo.

More Fairground Rides from Wistaston Church Lane on Vimeo.

Fairgrounds 3 from Wistaston Church Lane on Vimeo.

The Internet is huge...

I saw this on @2sparkley's blog and thought it was fascinating.

Sharing links with Sqworl

I heard about Linkbunch after reading about BETT on various blogs. Linkbunch allows you to share multiple websites by simple sharing links on just one page. I thought it was a brilliant idea. It would be great for sharing links with children for a research project or for parents when sharing some of the sites we use when studying a particular topic.





I later discovered Sqworl which I think has the potential to be even better.
Sqworl is incredibly easy to use. To create an account you'll need an email address and then create a username and password.

Then you can add links and give a description to each one. A unique page is created which includes the links and a screenshot.

The end result is very friendly-looking. I've created a page to share SATs revision websites at
http://sqworl.com/38hj5n.

The children could design their own pages to share websites that they like, or websites that they have used during topic work.

Tutpup

Since the start of the year I and my pupils have been getting into Tutpup. I read a blog post about it and thought I would give it a try.

Tutpup is a free website where children can play maths games (and a spelling game) against people from around the world. Owned by Mind Candy, the site is advert free and doesn't require any personal information about the children. The only thing asked for is an email address for mum or dad - unless you have set up a class, in which case the children don't even need this!

I asked on Twitter whether Tutpup is suitable for Year Six. The response was a resounding "Yes!" In fact it was recommended that all the children in the school are signed up. I think I'll sort this for the next school year. But in the mean time I set up two classes - one for each class.

The process for setting up a class as a teacher is very easy and quick. In no time at all, all the information was entered and then I just had to wait to use it with my class... In order to join my class, the children had to enter a class code which I had given them. Setting up all the children's accounts took around 10 minutes altogether. This is because it is hard to find a username that hasn't been taken yet. You have to select a colour, an animal and a number. Finding a combination of all three that hasn't been selected already can be frustrated. This one aspect of Tutpup is my only complaint.

Once logged in the children can start playing games! They can join in a game against someone else or create a game to play against another user. One of the things my children love is that you can see which country your competitor is from. "I've just beaten someone from Kenya!" was one of the early shouts from the class.

At the moment, the classes are given around 20 minutes each week in school to use Tutpup (as well as using it as often as they want at home). For the first couple of weeks the children could use it as they wished - try any game at any level. This was just to become familiar with the layout and functions of the site. After that we've been more specific.

Class teachers can print out a report of how the children are doing overall in a particular time table, or in a particular maths game. After two weeks I discovered that the children weren't doing so well at their 6, 7 and 8 times tables. So in week three they could only play these times tables. Later, I discovered that their division results weren't as good as the other operations, so the next week division games were the only ones allowed.

Then we started to push ourselves on to higher difficulty levels.

The children can win awards by using the site regularly and being successful. You can win an award by starting and winning five games, for example. You can also graduate from a level so that they can try games more appropriate to their ability. A win wall displays the names of the users you have beaten.

We have a list of usernames on display so that the children can see the usernames of their friends.

I love the fact that you can print out their results. I love the fact that the site is ad-free. I love the way the children don't need to enter personal details or an email address. I love the way you can freeze the games for five minutes in case you want to talk to the class.

I would highly recommend Tutpup to pupils of all ages.

Some comments from the children:

"I think Tutpup will help me with my 12 times table."

"It is one of the best maths websites in the world."

"It is improving my mental maths speed."

"The compeition elements is a good thing - it gives motivation." (A level 5A writer)

"It is fun going against people from other countries."

"It helps me to build confidence."

"There are loads of different maths games to go on."

"It makes you do better because you want to win."

The Noughties - the decade to remember?

There have been a number of list programmes on TV over the last couple of weeks. For some reason these have always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I enjoy looking back and remembering things that I have seen/heard etc. The most recent shows have focused on the events of the last decade.

It's incredible how quickly this decade has gone. My memory of celebrating the new millenium ten years ago is so clear (although very fuzzy at the same time if you know what I mean). So much has happened in my life - graduating from uni, getting my teaching job, moving out of home, moving house and getting married are just a few of the major events that would feature in my Top Events of the Decade programme.

But right now I'm not thinking about the major events. I can remember those. No, I'm thinking about the little things - the thousands of little things that have happened every year - the songs, the TV shows (and the adverts in between) the films, the nights out, the holidays and the visits. During the last few years Web 2.0 internet tools have provided the opportunity to record all aspects of your life.

These are a few of the tools that have helped me record the last few years of the decade:
Flickr - brilliant for collecting all of my photos. This facility enables me to share photos of places we have visited and record special moments easily. The facility to add descriptions and geotag the pictures means that I can easily remember the stories behind the photos.
Twitter - not only is Twitter brilliant for sharing and discussion and for being inspired, looking back through my profile helps me to remember lots of little, sometimes insignifican, things that I have done. Now I know that writing about mundane events is something that Twitter has been criticised for, but it provides a permanent reminder of things my lifestyle.
Blogger - I have been able to record my thoughts on various aspects of teaching and education using this.
Blippr - a great service for recording which films and DVD box sets I have watched and also what I thought of them. I just wish I knew of a similar service for TV shows.
Facebook - for the last few years there has been no better way of keeping up-to-date with what my friends have been up to. Many of them, however, seem to be getting bored with it - I hope this doesn't last!
Shelfari - perfect for keeping a record of what I have read.
Everyhit.com - now I can remember which songs were out and when thanks to this fascinating site.

Friendfeed is a site that combines lots of these sites so that all of the information appears in the same place.Timeglider is a site which allows you to create a timeline of your life (or your school's life, perhaps).

I just wish that all of $these tools were available in the early part of the decade.

I fear that I am becoming obsessed with remembering things. Maybe it's the thought that I might lose my long term memory. But I feel it's so important to be reminded of the things which help make you the person you are.

Could the Teenies be the decade in which we can record everything and forget nothing?

Polydron 3D Shapes

During the last few weeks, when we have been busy with our Christmas play, I needed an exciting maths project to keep the children focused during lessons. Earlier in the year we purchased Polydron apparatus for exploring 3D shapes.



I decided that I would use this as part of our study of 3D shapes.







We used the prisms and pyramids packs to explore the properties of these shapes. This created lots of discussion about edges, faces and vertices. It was fun to predict this for different prisms and pyramids.



We then used Polydron squares to find the eleven faces of a cube. Only one group found all eleven! In the past, this activity was done using card which the children had to draw their nets on and then test the shape. Using Polydron was so much quicker. We also had time to find the eleven nets of an octahedron in the same way.



We then talked about which 3D shapes could be considered to be 'regular'. These shapes are called 'platonic'. They are tetrahedrons, octahedrons and icosahedrons which all use triangles; cubes (squares) and the dodecahedron (pentagon). Each shape was described with the number of faces which meet at each vertice. Once each one had been designed, we explored the different nets of these shapes.



We also spend some time exploring archimedean solids - solids which are made up of faces of different shapes. Each shape was described using notation like 3.8.8 which meant a triangle, octagon and another octagon meet at each vertice. We had great fun building all sorts of different shapes. We had chance to explore the difference between a dodecahedron, an icosidodecahedron a rhombicosidodecahedron and a truncated dodecahedron. We find out what it means to truncate a shape.



The work was lots of fun and did keep the children focused. They learned about being systematic when it comes to investigating - and the equipment allows them to work more quickly. They learned the properties of the shapes. They considered how to modify the shapes.



The Polydron packs that we used were the Prisms, Pyramids and Archimedean Solids. They aren't very cheap at all, but if you interested, they are available here.

Pictures of our work can be found on our Year Six blog here.

Rose Blanche

In the middle of all of our rehearsals for our Christmas production of Peace Child we delivered a short poetry unit of work based around Rose Blanche by Ian McEwan and Roberto Innocenti. This is a sad tale about the discovery of a concentration camp through the eyes of a little girl, Rose Blanche. (Incidentally, it reminds me of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas which I watched recently - what an ending!)

I wanted to try to inspire the children and ensure that I got good work from them even though their minds were on something else. I enjoyed reading about @arsenalchris's experiences of Voicethread and have used Wallwisher in our school website. So I decided to try these two excellent sites for the first time in the classroom.

Voicethread allows you to comment on a picture. After uploading a picture, you login and then use your microphone to record your comment. As many comments as you like can be added. The picture then plays back with the comments over the top.

Wallwisher allows you to gather messages by adding 'sticky notes' to the wall.

The children were asked to write a haiku based on the one of the pictures in Rose Blanche. Once they had drafted and edited their work, they added their work to a Wallwisher. This was a great way to see all of the poems at once. Something that I wish I had done was to produce a Wordle of all of the poems so that the children could see the strong themes that were emerging.

After adding their work to Wallwisher they shared their poem on a Voicethread. Each child was given an identity so that they could add their poems. The first time using this website proved to be remarkable simple.

The entire unit of work only lasted for a couple of days so I think with more time the quality of work could have been a little better. But the use of these two websites certainly kept the children focused at a time when it's easy for them to lose interest.

Now, as I've said, this was the first time I've used both in the classroom. After Christmas I plan to use them in more detail. Our first unit when we return in January is one based on The Borrowers. I wonder if we can use them in this unit...

ICT Survey

After reading @DeputyMitchell's blog recently I was inspired to carry out my own survey of the social networking skills of the pupils in the year group.

The results were interesting and one thing they did reveal was that there was a big difference the use of computers at home between our two classes. One class had hardly anyone with a computer in their bedroom whilst the other had quite a few.

The questions I asked were the same as the ones asked by @DeputyMitchell.

Number surveyed was 49.
47 children have a computer at home. (96%)
47 children use the computer at least once a week. (96%)
7 children use the computer each day. (14%)
Pupil computer usage:
1 to 30 minutes: 9 children
31 to 60 minutes: 30 children
1 to 2 hours: 2 children
2 to 4 hours: 5 children.

10 children (20%) use social networking websites and 3 children's parents helped to setup their account.
11 children (22%) have a computer in their bedroom. 5 of these have webcams.
20 children (41%) know that their parents check their internet history. (Isn't this poor? Maybe parents just don't know how to do this.)
12 children (24%) know how to delete their internet history. (Interesting.)
20 children (41%) have buddies in MSN.
8 children (16%) have buddies they have never met or they don't know who they are. (Very worrying.)
18 children (37%) admitted to seeing things on the internet they know they shouldn't have seen. (And I'd like to bet that they haven't talked about what they have seen with parents.)

We also asked the questions about toilets that @DeputyMitchell used in his survey.
9 children avoid going to the toiler whilst at school.
5 children drink less water on purpose to make sure they don't need to go to the toilet.

I plan to repeat the survey each term to find out about changing attitudes in the year group. Next time I will also ask questions about use of mobile phones.

E-Safety is something that has featured in the news a lot this week. One thing I have been able to do is invite an LA advisor in to talk to parents about e-safety. I think it would be worth sharing these results with parents too... Lots of food for thought.

Leadership Pathways: Revisiting Community

The second online unit I completed for this course was Revisiting Community. I found this rather a odd title for the unit. I mean, I hadn't actually 'visited' the commuity yet on the course. Ah well.

Overall I much preferred this unit to the last one as I found it contained practical advice and strategies for developing as a leader making clear references to the standards for headship.

The unit begins with a rather deep notion - that the school and its head should be entirely accountable to the community. Blimey; is this unit really going to suggest that the school should be accountable to the local community as well as being accountable to its pupils, parents, governors, LA and DCSF? The thinkpiece article even goes as far as to suggest that the community owns the school. Luckily I realise that this is very theoretical and is not being promoted as fact. I strongly agreed with the idea that the school should be a hub for the community. Hmm... could this be a possibility for my change project?

There was an exemplar of a brilliant ICT project from a school that refurbished and redistributed computer equipment to its parents to enable home learning.

Later in the unit I considered the ways that our school informs, consults with, involves, collaborates with and empowers the community. I realised that we are very good at informing, involving and collaborating with the community. Perhaps my change project could look into ways that we consult and empower the community.

After completing this unit I finally feel like I'm making some headway in selecting the change project which I must begin in order to complete the course. I want my project to be about involving the community, and I could use some of the learning conversation skills that I learned in the previous unit.

So after nearly 9 hours of online work I've completed 2 online units. Only three more to go!

Leadership Pathways: Leading Through Influence

The first online unit I completed in the course was Leading Through Influence. I wish I'd began with a different unit as this one wasn't exactly inspiring. But it did include some good practical advice.

The first part of the unit looked at learning conversations and made you think about how to get the most out of a conversation so that a conclusion is reached and each party can be satisfied.

Next I looked at communication and the way that communication should always be two-way. This was hardly groundbreaking stuff.

The next part was a bit more interesting. It was about psychological contracts. "What on earth are they?" I hear you ask! Well these are unwritten agreements that a member of staff has with the school. This might include leading an after school club, for example. The unit explored the effects of breaking psychological contracts on staff morale. It made me realise that we need to be aware of the psychological contracts in school so that I am aware of the efforts from every member of staff. At the same time I wouldn't want to turn them into written or spoken about contracts. When wanting to make changes I must consider the mutual trust between school and its staff.

I learned that staff meetings should begin with a 'checking in' where staff share ideas and thoughts from the week. They should end with 'checking out' where the main points of the meeting are reviewed.

There were different 'frames' suggested for conversations which could apply to different situations. Workshops are used when the conversation group comes together to share resources and create new ideas and solutions. Consultations are used when the group comes together to share knowledge about the focus and receive feedback. A forum is used to problem solve and debate and challenge. Hotseating is used when a member of the group needs to share their personal learning journey and so the group learns by asking questions.

The process of stakeholder analysis was a brilliant concept. When introducing change it makes sense to prioritise the stakeholders. You consider each person for their power and influence and for their interest in the change. You then decide where best to channel your efforts.

Overall I gained some good ideas about how to organise staff meetings and departmental meetings etc.

Diagram from 'Stakeholder Analysis and Management: Winning support for your projects' by R Manktelow.

Leadership Pathways

Over the last few months one of the things I have been busy with is this interesting course from the NCSL.

The course involves several processes through which you make changes and improvements to your leadership skills.

It began with a questionnaire which needed 10 people to complete some really awkward questions about you and the way you work. I also had to answer the questions about myself. The results were then amalgamated and I received a printout showing the average results with a comparison of my own answers. This all revealled that I actually had quite a good understanding of what people thought of my skills. It also highlighted areas that I could develop as a leader.

The areas were then used to help me choose online units and skills workshops which will help me to improve skills.

I am midway through the whole process now, so it's time I recorded some of my thoughts. Over the next few weeks I'll try to post these.

Printer chaos

During the last couple of weeks in school I've broken the news to staff that nearly £2000 has been spent on printer inks.

What an obscene amount of money!

The first step I have taken in order to try and reduce this amount is to write a policy stating where things can and cannot be printed. In a nutshell, the policy states that our printers in the computer suites are far more expensive to run and so these should purely be used by the children to print out work. All professional work must be printed using our classroom printers.

But after speaking about it on Twitter I have realised that the problem goes deeper. I mean, what exactly are people printing anyway? What was so important to be printed that the best part of £2000 needed to be spent?

The general message from people on Twitter was that we should be trying to print as little as possible. Indeed one Twitter user is trying to make his primary school paperless. Now, I realise that we are a million miles away from achieving that goal, but we must take drastic steps to reduce the amount of printing that we are currently producing.

Useful websites

Now it's the summer holidays I thought I'd share some websites that I have discovered during the last academic year which I plan to embed firmly in the Year Six curriculum next year.

Twitter: I know that this is hardly 'a discovery' as it's been hard to escape from it this year. But Twitter is a brilliant social networking website which school has used to share news about events. This year we have used the site simply as a reporting tool, but next year we plan to use it to engage with our parents more effectively. Our Friends of the school could use it to communicate, too.

Wallwisher: This website will be useful for creating class surveys, but also for sharing thoughts. Next year I want to use it for character studies in English to give the children a way of sharing their ideas. In Maths I can use it for problem solving so that the children can share solutions. It's also great for simply celebrating news events - allowing pupils to offer their own best wishes.

Vimeo: Owing to the number of digital cameras the school has purchased (many through voucher collection schemes) videos of the children's work are becoming more frequent. We have created a channel on Vimeo (which I just feel is safer than YouTube for our children) to share videos.


Wordle: Since introducing Wordle to staff it has mainly been used for display purposes. I intend to use it as a tool for analysing the main messages in a piece of work. It could also be used for examining language choices and investigating the features of a style of writing.

Flickr: We use Flickr for sharing photos from school. Our school newspaper reporters use it to find suitable pictures for their articles. We also use it for work on Photo Story and PowerPoint as it's so easy to find pictures to illustrate our work.

Voicethread: A recent discovery is Voicethread where pupils can have a conversation about a picture together. It is really clever and very easy to use. I think we could use this to explore settings and characters in English and also to use it as a basis for problem solving in maths.

Webspiration: Great for mindmapping and for planning!

Etherpad: This is an awesome collaborative writing website. Up to 8 people can work on the same piece of writing at the same time. We used this to work on radio advert writing and also for writing play scripts. I just think of all the times that I've asked pupils to work as a pair on one piece of writing and then seen only one person doing the work. Never again!

Memiary: This very simple website allows you to share five things that you have done today. Next year I plan to use this as a daily review of what we have learned.

Do you have any new websites that you plan to use with the children next year?