The SSAT National Conference took place last week at the ICC in Birmingham (a venue rightly compared to Escher’s Relativity!).  I was fortunate to be able to attend as a punter on the Wednesday and as a presenter on the Thursday as we launched the SSAT National Digital Leaders programme!

The theme of the conference was ‘Excellence for All’, and I have to say that the SSAT delivered , each aspect of the conference itself was excellent.

Wednesday started for me with Dylan Wiliam extolling the importance of assessment being the key to good teaching.  He was as inspiring a speaker as ever, as those of you who watched his recent TV program would know.  In particular I was impressed with Dylan’s ability to demonstrate his techniques within a ‘classroom’ of 400 educators, and also his incredible use of research evidence to support his teachings.

Wednesday Keynotes came from David Hemery, former 400m Hurdles Gold medal winning Olympian, he was telling his story and promoting www.21stcenturylegacy.com , part of London 2012′s legacy programme for schools.  He was followed by Sugata Mitra, telling his engaging tale of children teaching themselves using the Internet, from his hole-in-the-wall Mumbai slums experiment to his recent work in Gateshead.  This was an engaging tale that at first seemed to question the need for teachers at all!  As with all the speakers, more to follow in a future blog-post.  I would add that I was fortunate enough to chat to Sugata over coffee following his talk, a charming man.

Wednesday at the conference ended for me with Mark Dawes and Paul Hynes discussing how to use existing buildings to support 21st century learning.

Wednesday evening was spent at Shimla Pinks for a curry with friends and colleagues that have been involved with the Digital Leaders programme, including Kristian Still, Bob Harrison, Len Daniels. Great stuff!

The Conservatives released their White Paper “The Importance of Teaching” on the Wednesday, Thursday began with the Minister for Schools Nick Gibb (Michael Gove was somewhat busy and did not attend as planned).  Interesting to hear first hand some of the rationale from Mr Gibb, but I have to say he was somewhat clinical about it all, and was given a specific grilling on the plans to scrap funding for Sports Partnerships in school.

The drab Mr Gibb was followed by the sparkling Tanya Byron, who had many a delegate slightly smitten by the end of her passionate talk about bringing schools up-to-date in this digital era.  She set things up perfectly for our Digital Leaders launch later that day, telling us all to “Embrace the technologies that pupils use e.g. Phones, or shut up shop and go home.”

Final morning keynote came from the excellent Dan Pink, former speech writer to Al Gore.  Dan gave an insightful talk about giving staff and students time for autonomy so as to foster engagement.  Dan offered the presentation advice of brevity, levity and repetition, so I’ll stop talking there!

At lunch I got a great demonstration of RealSmartCloud, the Google Apps / WordPress / Realsmart based VLE.  Thanks to Si Brown for the demo, it was great to see learning at the heart of a VLE, definitely something I’ll be investigating further.

After lunch I saw a presentation about raising achievement at KS4, it was good to see that we have been doing many of the tips for years!  This was followed by Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham.  Andy gave a fairly passionate speech about his education beliefs and his thoughts on the White Paper.  But he was noticeably lacking in policy, whilst this is understandable at such an early stage in this parliament, it is still important that Labour get into the habit of being in opposition, before the Conservatives pass through many wide-ranging reforms with little or no resistance.  Spontaneous applause rang round the hall as he questioned the sports funding decision.

Final task of the conference was the nerve wracking job of helping to launch the Digital Leaders programme nationally.  My eternal thanks to Kristian Still, Bob Harrison, Len Daniels & Paul Hynes for pushing this project to the point where we can invite schools from across the country to take part.  I look forward excitedly to seeing it flourish.

The aim of the conference was to look towards providing ‘excellence for all’ by investigating what & how students should learn and how to push down the barriers to learning.  From David Hemery’s question of “what it would take to take the first step” to the work of Dylan Wiliam & Sugata Mitra & Tany Byron pushing my thoughts about the role of a teacher in the 21st century it was a great few days.

I will delve into my thoughts in greater detail in a series of posts this week relating to each speaker / session that I attended.  If you’re interested in any of the above now then many of the keynote sessions are available to watch online.

EDIT:

Post 2: Dylan Wiliam

Post 3: David Hemery

Post 4: Sugata Mitra

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Embedded below is the presentation that I will attempt in the Pecha-Kucha style on Tuesday 15th June at the Frog Learning Platforms Conference 2010.

For further information on Digital Leaders check out the following links or get in touch with me on Twitter or via the comments below.

http://www.mrstucke.com/tag/digital-leaders/

http://kristianstill.co.uk/wordpress/category/curriculum/digital-leaders/

http://digitalleaders.co.uk

http://vital.ac.uk/

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This post is a bit of a diary / mind-empty on my progress so far in launching a Digital Leaders programme in our school.

Poster

As per my previous post, Kristian Still asked me to become involved in developing the Digital Leaders idea into my school and others in collaboration with Vital.  

A strange set of coincidences has blossomed this project into something greater than I could have imagined already.  The open letter in my previous post to ICT suppliers received a positive reply from Len Daniels at Toshiba.  I met with Len and Bob Harrison, Educational Advisor to Toshiba to discuss the project.  The coincidences started here as Bob is also School Governor for Lostock College, the school we will potentially be merging with in September.  He had also seen Kristian and his Digital Leaders present at the SSAT Conference last year so was aware of the programme and their considerable success.

A positive meeting followed and we agreed to work together on this project, we also agreed that working in collaboration with Lostock from the start would be advisable.  This had always been my plan a little down the line, but with the situation we find ourselves in it made sense to get more staff and students collaborating together earlier rather than later.  I was also honoured to be asked to become one of the Toshiba Ambassador schools, and I look forward to the chance to collaborate with these other innovative schools.

I took the concept of Digital Leaders to the Senior Leadership Team at my school and to Vicki Nuttall (Head of ICT) at Lostock, along with my ICT & Media departments.  Every member of staff that was approached about the idea was genuinely positive and excited about the project.

I launched the project just over a week ago, inviting applications from pupils.  My only stipulation was that the application should be digital.  I’ve had a great response so far, lots of pupils intrigued by the project.  Everything from emails saying “I want a laptop” to presentations & videos outlining their skills.  The pupils have another week to complete their applications, we will then be planning interviews.

Through Bob Harrison’s interest and contacts we are now also working with Vital on the project in the North-West and also with Trafford College.  Vital’s funding will allow us to work more closely with Kristian’s team in the South-East, hopefully we’ll have a great case-study of Digital Leader’s by the Summer.  Toshiba’s inclusion means that with their support we can loan each DL a shiny new Toshiba NB300 netbook.  This will give them the opportunity to really embed ICT in their learning, to support their classmates and teachers and to investigate the notion of 1 to 1 provision in our school for the future.

Finally, last week the Digital Leaders team met up for the first time at The Open University’s offices in Oxford.  This was a chance for the schools across the South East (& myself) who Kristian has got on board to sit down together and put together a course for Vital.  The idea being that any school wishing to follow our lead can register on Vital and take the bare-bones of a Digital Leaders programme off the shelf.

An inspiring 24 hours was had putting together a framework with some inspiring teachers.  You can follow them all on Twitter here.  It was great to see such energy at work and to have some detailed discussions of what we see Digital Leaders being, both as individual pupils and as an entity of it’s own.

We came up with 5 cornerstones that we want to see from our young leaders:

1. Exclusive but open
2. Mixed year group access
3. Mixed gender
4. Committment
5. Shape ICT in school

And we split the programme into 4 main areas:

1. DLs as Staff Trainers
2. DLs as Digital Journalists
3. DLs as Technical Support
4. DLs having fun and learning new skills and tools

More on these once we finalise the details.  Personally I’m really excited to choose Stretford High’s Digital Leaders and to start developing them as young leaders.  I’m excited to build links with Lostock College & Trafford College, our 3 institutions are on a potentially exciting path together and these few pupils could have a big impact on the future of the schools over the next couple of years.  I’m also excited at the possible collaborations and interactions with Toshiba, again for the pupils involved and myself also.  I hope to have 6 pupils that by this Summer are on their way to considering careers in ICT / Media.  Who are helping me and the other staff out at school, in turn developing the teaching and learning they and their peers receive.  And I look forward to working with a great bunch of educators over these coming months.

Everyone that has come into contact with the concept of Digital Leaders has been excited by it, I hope I can do Kristian’s original vision justice.

If you want to know more about the Digital Leader’s then you can visit the staff blog at http://digitalleaders.co.uk or you can visit our DL’s blog at http://traffordschool.digitalleaders.co.uk (the pupils will start blogging here one they begin their roles).  Hopefully by next month you will be able to find the Digital Leaders Course on the Vital website.

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I am excited to have been invited by Kristian Still to be involved with developing the idea of ‘Digital Leaders’ in school.  Digital Leaders is an initiative started by Kristian Still at Hamble College in Southampton.

To quote Kristian: “The Digital Leaders are a group of students from Hamble Community Sports College that lead innovative ICT practice and regularly meet as part of the Digital Media and Gaming Club. They contribute to ICT innovation and curriculum development and contribute to school ICT policy.”

Kristian has styled this on the GenYES initiative in America.  Digital Leaders could be considered ‘Digital Prefects’ – developing their own leadership skills whilst promoting IT across the school, setting a sterling example to younger pupils as they go.  The wider roll-out of this scheme is being promoted by the Vital Project, a nationwide initiative to promote ICT in schools from the Open University.

Since being asked at the weekend to partake in the scheme my mind has been racing.  My current thoughts are that I may open applications to the position of Digital Leader to Years 9-11.  I would wish the leaders to be either already taking ICT or Media at GCSE/BTEC level – or planning to do so.  I like the idea of Leaders being appointed for one school year only, and reapplying for their posts the following year.  I hope to find around 15 leaders for the rest of this school year.  I would like the team to meet perhaps once a week, looking at their ICT/Media work, initiatives that I am working on with staff, and some of the more fun aspects of our digital lives.  We have strong Media & ICT departments and I hope these pupils and this initiative can drive them on further.

Ultimately I would hope that our Digital Leaders could act as flag bearers for both ICT and Media as an option at KS4, and also I hope that they can have a great impact helping me develop the IT skills of our staff and our pupils, pushing eLearning across our curriculum.  They will also help develop the Media output of our school, something I will come to in a forthcoming post.

Kristian scored something of a coup with his project last year, securing sponsorship of his program with Lenovo.  They helped fund a Lenovo Netbook for each of the digital leaders.  If I could secure this kind of backing myself it would give the scheme a fantastic kick-start.  I will be emailing some of our suppliers the document attached below, if anyone is reading this and would like to get involved I would obviously be delighted to hear from you!

Open letter to potential sponsors:

[gdocs type='document' id='0AXGlkOUObI0pZGh0Y3JzY3dfMjIxY3JoempucXo']

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