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ICT Reviews and Coordinator Meetings Re-Launch

Had a very busy couple of days arranging and having meetings with head teachers and ICT co-ordinators, and it's going to continue in this way almost until the end of term and beyond. Our team is currently working with a group of schools, providing each with a review of how ICT is currently being used across the whole school. It's been a fantastic opportunity for us to visit schools and colleagues across SE Wales that we haven't yet had a chance to meet and to discuss the current postion of ICT in their schools and to get an understanding for their future needs.We really are looking forward to working with them and eventually getting around all 266 of them!

On Wednesday and Thursday we also ran ICT co-ordinator's meetings at two venues. One in Nant Celyn Primary School in Torfaen and the other in Mount Pleasant Primary School, Newport. Presentations came from Chris Price, Leader of Technology in Nant Celyn who showed colleagues how he used various ICT tools to support an integrated topic with his Yr5 class. I'm hoping to get hold of the presentation he gave and I'll post it here.  

Chris Price, Leader of Technology Rich Learning

Andy Rothwell, deputy head teacher of Mount Pleasant, delivered quite an insight into how they use ICT across the whole school, and the seven year journey to get where they are today. As well as exciting learning & teaching activities in the school, such as the use of gaming to raise boys literacy standards, a big focus has been the way ICT is used to support school organisation, and help teachers access and collate a large variety of planning and curriculum documents. They've just received an excellent report from Estyn and ICT is highlighted in many places throughout the report. I think that Andy certainly 'wowed' the group when he showed them the current work that he is doing on the way the school is tracking the LNF skills, using Google Spreadsheets. One co-ordinator remarked, "Can we buy this from you?!"

Andy Rothwell, Deputy Head Teacher
We also had presentations from the new Hwb Digital Leaders who will be working in the region. Glyn Rogers (Wednesday) and Matthew Geary (Thursday) talked about the Hwb+, the new national learning platform and showed us some screen shots of the platform and talked through some of its functionality. They also explained to the group the role the Digital Leaders will be playing in the roll out of Hwb+ to schools.

Matthew Geary, Hwb Digital Leader

Personally, it was great to have these meetings set up again after moving to the EAS from Newport LA.  Many of the school ICT co-ordinators I'd spoken to over the last couple of months all mentioned how they missed these meetings. A chance to meet up with colleagues from other schools, to network and to find out something new.
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