Our new Digital Leaders will be updating our blog soon.

Our brief: Why School Environments Matter.

That was it. No statistics, no school environment information, no further details, zip, nada.

Two Digital Leaders meetings later, a poem co-authored on a wiki, a video camera and a youtube account, this is what our students created.

One of our poem co-authors contributed a little more than most, so well done Victoria attributed in name in the next BCSE document and one student stayed a few hours after college to ensure the editing was finished on time, good work Ashwin.

One thought that tweeked the teacher in me was, with so little BCSE input, such an open brief and such a very short time frame really challenged the students. Their mutual success relied on a creative sparkle and ability to work together. One students sparkled on ideas, another on her writing ability, one of their acting skills, another on editing skills. Talents were uncovered and others reinforced. Could this be recreated in a regular Hamble College classroom?

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

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 Danielsat 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.

Perins is a co-educational community school based in the attractive Hampshire town of Alresford. Alresford is home of the Watercress line and Thomas the Tank Engine comes to visit us twice a year. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perins_School) we have 4 quite famous ex pupils: 

• Alexa Chung (Channel 4 and MTV presenter)
• Russell Howard (Mock the Week panel member)
• Dan Kieran (author of Crap Towns!)
• Chris Geere (pretend teacher on Waterloo)

 Perins School has specialist sports college status and High Performing status.  It has just over 1,000 pupils aged 11-16 (students continue their education at 6^th form college). It became a trust school in 2009. 

Perins School has a well developed e-learning scheme that is now in its third year of operation. The aim of the scheme is to enhance students learning and understanding by supplying them with a range of effective 21^st Century tools that will foster independence, collaboration and personalisation.

The scheme has six main areas:

• the development of a electronic curriculum using a Moodle Virtual learning environment (http://moodle.perins.net)
• Notebooks for teaching and non teaching staff (based on a 3 yr cycle)
• Support of  internal and external communications network
• Notebook for students scheme –offered on entry to year 7 (currently  a 3yr cycle)
• Individual e-mail address and access to school network resources
• Access to an electronic curriculum on the VLE for all core subject at KS3 and for all subjects at KS3 by 2010-11.

Supporting the Digital Leader Scheme
Gideon Williams (williams@perins.hants.sch.uk) is the Director of e-learning at Perins School; a post he has occupied for quite a long time. His role is to co-ordinate the development of e-learning across all aspects of school with a particular focus on the school’s VLE, http://moodle.perins.net and the students notebook scheme; now in its third year. Gideon still maintains a fairly full timetable teaching amongst other things AS Level, OCR Nationals, iMedia and ICT innovations. In his role as a Lead Professional ICT teacher, he works closely with other Moodle schools within Hampshire. When not on Twitter  (sorry marking), Gideon is particularly interested in developing gaming technology in schools; in his continued (and still unsuccessful attempts) to compete with his 9yr old son. He is a proud Scot and supports all teams Scotland and anyone who plays England.

I’m delighted to be a co-ordinator for digital leaders and hope to drive this forward at our school. I was formerly Head of ICT at Wolverhampton Grammar School where I taught for nine years. I’ve had a teaching career which spans more than twenty years and am originally from Durban, South Africa. My father was from Wiltshire and I’ve always wanted to live in and work in the U.K. as I do now.

During my eighteen year career as a teacher in South Africa, I was Head of the following departments: English, History, P.E.  and ICT. I was also a Media Centre Manager and served a short spell as a Deputy Head. At  WGS I was the Data Base Manager and taught Computing and ICT courses at A level and Key Stage 3 and 4 ICT. My role involved the development of ICT at WGS and assisting with the implementation of the ICT systems. I believe in a combination of traditional and web-based teaching methods and was responsible for the implementation of the FROG Learning Platform at WGS.

Fort Hill Community School is an oversubscribed secondary school in Basingstoke, North Hampshire with ~720 students. Though steeped in history, Fort Hill is a forward thinking school always striving to develop a ‘Learning For Life’ curriculum.

The school has gone through a technology transformation in the recent past (in terms of provision) with a new MAC Media / Music suite, a sitewide 802.11n wireless blanket with netbook trolleys that turns every classroom into a potential ICT suite, revamped ICT suites, some awesome software provisions eg Dartfish, AEGIS 3, Adobe Master Collection, and the latest whole school addition, a bright new VLE and website built in Frog, that will deliver our mission of a ‘One Stop Shop’ for all learning, teaching, administration and community requirements in Fort Hill. The VLE has really grabbed the students attention and provided a great opportunity to nail Government targets through the Parental Enagement Portal.

As a result we are now ready to make the transition from tech to teach, or te(a)ch, to promote our latest CPD endeavours to convert the new tech into tangible enhanced attainment through advanced and engaging teaching and learning methods and tools.

John Wareham, ICT Development Manager, and a couple of enthusiastic and tech curious teachers are together leading the charge to embed new and exciting ways to transform the curriculum and to stimulate our students.

With the te(a)ch CPD sessions demonstrating cool webware and with ongoing projects and programmes in place such as Microsofts Digigirlz, an Extra Curricular Media club (BBC News Report etc) and with break and lunchtime ICT clubs for students, a natural platform already exists to introduce formal Digital Leaders and to help support e-learning at our school and maybe wider.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to be part of an esteemed team involved in shaping our children’s future learning through a Digital Leader Programme. Thanks Kristian.

Wildern School is an 11 – 16 co-educational comprehensive school serving the Hedge End, West End and Eastleigh areas of Southampton, Hampshire. It currently has in excess of 2000 students on roll.

Wildern School is known for its extensive development of the use of digital technology, much of which involves the use of Apple technology.

We are excited at being a member of the digital leaders community …… we want to be boldly going forward because we don’t do reverse

We’re really excited about the Digital Leaders programme as we have lots of amazing students who are chomping at the bit to lead ICT learning in our school community.   One of the aspects of Digital Leaders that really excites us is that students will be able to share their ICT experiences with staff and help them make the most of ICT in their lessons.

We’ve had a bit of a play with some games based learning and creating tools such as Atmosphir and now Kodu Games Lab.  We’re going to be rolling out Kodu Games Lab to students soon inside and outside of lessons … exciting times!

A key role for Digital Leaders at our school will be moderators of the school learning platform, Moodle as we have a busy, vibrant community and our Digital Leaders will need to model excellent behaviour on Moodle as well as encouraging usage on the VLE.   We also want students to contribute to the front page of Moodle by writing news stories about what’s happening at school.

I must admit I didn’t know a lot about the Digital Leaders project before I signed up but I’m glad I made the leap of faith. It looks a fantastic program and I’m really looking forward to working with a great group of people and helping to roll out digital leaders in our school and at others across the country. I have had the pleasure of teaching so many talented pupils with amazing ICT skills and this project could be such a great conduit for their passion and enthusiasm.

Daniel Needlestone – Rickmansworth School