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I have been mulling over six ideas for work with schools for some time, and this week I have written to all my local schools to see if they think they are worth exploring.

I hope that some of the ideas will resonate with schools, though nothing is certain. Some of the ideas can be explored best by me working with the school but equally there are others that a school can pursue without outside interference!

I have put a new page up (guess what?- it is called “Six ideas”!) with some details and over the next couple of days I will be adding more information and links to support each element.

It would be great to have some feedback/comments!

I had some interesting discussions today with a group of teachers thinking about Gifted and Talented provision in the context of childrens’ writing. Blogging provides a perfect tool for promoting writing- if you give a child a blog they have control over the environment, control over their writing and can work to develop an audience for what they have to say. There seems to be no disadvantages- except maybe that schools must be careful that they have appropriate safeguards in place- but then that is not really a disdvantage it is just what we do. I have some personal experience of developing this at http://shepeaustow.net. The cost for a suitable package was £300- for this they got their own hosted domain and the initial setup of a Wordpress multiuser blog. The school also had some support in initial training to use the system. Have a look at the current state of play.

This week I have been writing to some of the head teachers of schools that I have worked with in the past to make sure that my work is closely matched to school needs. It is a difficult balance to steer between courses that are directly targeting school improvement priorities (as in the Lincolnshire CoTS agreements) and those that come in with something a bit different. Hopefully my plans will satisfy a bit of both! Have a look at the courses listed so far (tab at the top).

Here are my first attempts to organise a blog. Not much to look at yet, but everyone has to start somewhere!

One thing to have come out of talking to school leaders: the traditional course is becoming less popular. I have previously described my offerings as courses but am changing this to ’support’. While a course can be useful for inspiring people or delivering a lot of information to a lot of people, more useful perhaps is something much more aligned to what is going on in particular schools and classrooms (learning spaces?!).

So while my work has always been custom and school based I am now thinking ’support’ not ‘course’! Naturally, common themes emerge about what is needed in school so the ideas listed under the support tab (at the top) reflect some of the more common options at the moment.