Wordle – Open Thinkering

The Big E-Learning Questions

Posted on April 2, 2009 by Doug Belshaw

Northumberland Church of England Academy’s ICT vision statement, as seen by Wordle

Further to my previous blog post setting out what I was going to do at interview, I’m delighted to report that I was successful! Many thanks to my Twitter network for their support. As of next academic year (September 2009) I shall be ‘Director of E-Learning’ at Northumberland Church of England Academy.

This is a significant promotion for me and, as the Academy comes into existence as I assume the role, means I’ve got (almost) a blank slate with which to work. Hence the need for me to have a clear and coherent plan as to the E-Learning ecosystem I want to create.

I’m embarking on a series of blog posts over the Easter holiday period which, provisionally, I’m going to title:

Attendance: what are the pros and cons of SIMS, Serco and Phoenix?
Behaviour: what are the e-options for real-time monitoring and tracking of student behaviour?
Communication: which tools are available to enable anyone within an organization be able to appropriately communicate and collaborate with anyone else?
Design: what are the standards upon which pedagogically-sound learning design can be constructed?
Engagement: which technologies lead to confident engagement in learning?

I have perhaps phrased some of the above clumsily so I’d welcome your feedback! 🙂

elearnr: what have I been up to?

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Doug Belshaw

As the first term of the school year nears its end, the time has come to reflect on the blog that’s accompanied my new role. The start of this year saw me become E-Learning Staff Tutor at my school, a newly-created role for which the job description was only finalised two weeks ago!

It made sense to me to set up a blog to accompany this role, for a few reasons:

It’s a useful way to disseminate e-learning resources, links and guides to staff at my school.
It means my work can have an impact beyond my school via blog readers and RSS subscribers (up to 129 of the latter so far, according to Feedburner).
It’s a handy record to show the work I’ve been doing as Ofsted will be coming knocking sometime this year.
It serves as a point of contact above and beyond email and gives me a ‘home’ (as I’m without an office!)

This shows you what I’ve been blogging about, mostly (courtesy of Wordle):

…and this is a complete overview of posts reflecting the sessions I’ve run this term (in reverse order):

I hope you find them useful! 😀