BETT 2008: Naace seminars and briefings

Briefings in the Local Authority Lounge

Naace has been invited to offer two briefing sessions in the Local Authority Lounge.

Thursday 10 January

15.30pm Expert ICT advisers considering their own ICT CPD experiences: Skills for 21st Century teachers

Dr. John Cuthell, Director of Research and Implementation, MirandaNet Academy

This briefing identifies the experiential learning of advisers, teacher educators and senior managers in schools responsible for devising CPD programmes in ICT. The model of a typical ICT adviser is changing exponentially, which may have significant impact on what kind of ICT programmes advisers are able to offer in the future. ICT CPD provided for the advisers becomes crucial if they are to be at the core of the transformation and personalisation agenda in schools. The impact on teaching and learning of the £45 million being spent on ICT in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will depend on the collaborative and flexible vision of these key advisers.

Friday 11 January

10.30 am Meeting the challenges of primary languages and transition through the use of web-conferencing

Val Brooks, Deputy Director, Stockton City Learning Centre

This session will cover the practicalities and outcomes of an inspirational project developed to help one local secondary MFL department to teach remotely over a period of six weeks into five partner primary schools simultaneously using live web-conferencing and a VLE.

Seminar Programme

The BETT Seminar Programme is one of the leading events for Professional Development in educational technology. Jam-packed with over one hundred practical and inspiring sessions led by teaching and learning practitioners and experts, the programme covers every subject and level of education. This year’s programme will be mainly practitioner focussed with a number of key agencies also delivering their own messages throughout the programme. Naace has been invited to cover four sessions this year.

Wednesday 9 January: Best Practice

W2 11.45am Collaborative tools in teaching and learning: the University of Plymouth

Peter Yeomans and Steve Wheeler, Naace

This seminar will give a broad overview of the challenges and impact of collaborative tools in learning and teaching. It will aim to introduce some of the theory and pedagogy of wiki-based learning and teaching. It will look at the implementation issues for a school in terms of web-based technology and the impact upon the approach to learning and teaching drawing upon the lessons learned during a pilot project by the University of Plymouth in partnership with local schools.

W9 14.30pm Personalised learning through technology

Terry Freedman, Terry Freedman Ltd. and Miles Berry, Head Teacher, Alton Convent Prep

This seminar will explore how ICT can contribute to a new experience of schooling, assessment for learning, pupils’ ownership of learning, peer mentoring and parental engagement, thus fulfilling the aspirations of the Gilbert Report. The design of schools for the future will be discussed, as will possibilities for teachers’ CPD. Provision for more radical interpretations of personalised learning will also be discussed. There will be practical examples of how technology such as learning platforms, VLE, MIS, blogging, handheld devices and home computers are being used. There will be lots of ideas for teachers to try out for themselves.

Friday 11 January Seminar B

F14 14.15pm Transforming learning through student empowerment

Dan Buckley, Principle Consultant, Cambridge Education

Imagine if you could track the development of competencies such as empathy, resilience and reflectiveness from key stage1 through to adult learning via authentic peer assessment and peer mentoring. This would allow you to open up a wider range of learning opportunities based on what competencies they improved rather than what content they delivered. Now imagine such a tool was already in use in over 30 schools across the UK, and had already gathered over 1000 pieces of assessed evidence of progress submitted and marked by ‘expert’ learners. This seminar looks at a groundbreaking development.

Saturday 12 January Seminar C

S14 14.15pm Let’s Play Project

Paul Vale, Educational Consultant, Naace

The ‘Let’s Play Project’ highlights improving specific elements within the Literacy and ICT strategies:

• A range of curriculum subjects eg maths, history, geography, PE, PHSE;
• Key stage 3 students to work alongside and mentor primary school children to foster primary and secondary links;
• The hidden curriculum areas of increasing self-esteem, working cooperatively and collaboratively;
• Links between Manchester teachers and children with those from countries across the European Union and China;
• Opportunities for teachers and children from the project schools in different countries to communicate with English-speaking teachers and children.