East Lothian students can now use their @www.edubuzz.org email addresses to create accounts here on WordPress and create their own eduBuzz WordPress blogs.
We recently discovered that attempts to do that were failing. Everything appeared to work properly, but the sign-up confirmation emails never arrived.
The reason for that has now been identified, fixed and successfully tested.
Congratulations to students, parents and staff who have helped two East Lothian primaries get some excellent feedback from HMIE on their Edubuzz school web sites.
Athelstaneford Primary
4. How well do staff work with others to support children’s learning?
– Commendably, staff and children share their news through the very attractive and interesting ‘Blog’ on the school website.
6. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
– Children’s achievements are recognised well and celebrated at assemblies, and through attractive displays around the school and on the school’s website.
Read the full Athelstaneford Primary Inspection Report on the HMIE web site.
St Gabriel’s Primary
4. How well do staff work with others to support children’s learning?
– The school website is very well used and is maintained by the children, the staff and Parent Council.
Read the full St Gabriel’s Primary Inspection Report on the HMIE web site.
After a well-earned rest, the eduBuzz blogs are now about to become busier than ever.
The parental involvement consultation is complete, and has identified class-specific web pages
as having great potential to increase parental engagement. A number of schools are working on getting these going.
Another driver for class blogs in some schools has been experience of running a school site, which has rapidly
become very large. At Law Primary, for example, it’s now planned to move class-specific posts to new class blogs.
We’re starting to see more in the way of international developments, with four classes at Yester Primary using blogs
as a basis for “Healthy Passport” link-ups with French and Finnish schools. Two West Barns pupils will also be using
individual learning blogs to report from 6 months in France, while their class teachers will be able to use them to keep
them in touch with class work.
This year’s Scottish Learning Festival, at Glasgow’s SECC in September, will feature a talk by Ewan McIntosh
featuring eduBuzz developments in East Lothian.
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/slf/seminarsandkeynotes/seminars/wereadoptinganadoptionstrategyforsocialmedia.asp
We are delighted to officially announce that we have managed to recruit 4 new ICT support officers to provide technical support to schools. Three of the officers have just started and one more will join them by mid February. The new officers who will join Stephen McNeill and Katie Walls are Chris Brown, Derek Wilson, Terry Brown and Catriona McKay. This will bring the number of ICT officers to 6.
We are now looking for accommodation for the new officers in schools and have already emailed schools to ask whether there are suitable rooms for this purpose. We are happy with the response so far, but if you would like another chance to make a suggestion, here are the requirements:
The room doesn’t have to be big but needs to be better than a cupboard as this will be the officer’s base. The room should preferably have a window and be covered by the alarm system. There should be space for a desk and for some storage. The room needs to be equipped with power and preferably have network points. Finally, as the officers will be carrying a fair amount of computer kit, it would be ideal if the room could be easily accessed i.e. lots of stairs could make things more difficult.
If you have a room in your school that may be suitable, please get in touch and we can arrange a visit.
Around 200 teachers took part in a survey just before Christmas to provide feedback to the IT department and Education about the level of technical support currently provided to schools. The Survey was conducted nationally by SOCITM (Society of IT Managers) and this time round involved 8 Local Authorities from Scotland and England.
A full report will be published in February and will compare our service with that of other Authorities. The results of the survey will be circulated for information and feedback. I would like to thank those members of staff who took part in the survey, the feedback has already been invaluable to us. I hope we can use this opportunity to consolidate the aspects of the service we do well and develop areas identified for improvement. I hope we can repeat the survey in two years to enable us to continuously improve the service.