Spotlight speakers 2005
This year, the Spotlight speeches will be interpreted into British Sign Language.
Margaret Alcorn
Margaret was a teacher of English and a secondary school leader for many years before finally leaving school and becoming first a CPD Manager in the local authority, and then a Quality Development Manager. She has been in the post of National CPD Coordinator since May 2004.
Seminar: CPD: Why, What, When, Who and How?
Barbara Prashnig
Barbara was a teacher and trainer for 17 years in Austria; is certified by the University of Houston, Texas, in accelerated learning methods, studied Suggestopedia with Dr Georgi Lozanov from Bulgaria and was trained in Learning Styles and Individualised Instruction at St John’s University, New York. She taught Linguistics at Auckland University in New Zealand for five years, before founding the Creative Learning Company in 1992. Through her organisation, Barbara has introduced her pioneering concept of learning, teaching and working styles into schools and organisations around the world: from Sweden to China, from Australia to Canada, and is a sought-after international presenter and consultant.
Seminar: Innovations in Teaching and Learning for the School of the Future
Seminar: Don't Teach Me - Let Me Learn
John Connell
John was a primary teacher and primary headteacher before working in the Directorate in West Lothian Education Services for five years. He was seconded to the Scottish Executive in 2001 to develop strategy on schools’ broadband and the nascent vision of a Scottish Schools Digital Network. John was appointed to the post of Director of SSDN in LT Scotland in 2004. With the programme now well under way – the interconnect has been in place since November 2003; the content delivery infrastructure was completed earlier this year; the national intranet is under development and implementation is likely to begin during 2006 – the SSDN Unit is now firmly established in Learning and Teaching Scotland. It is tasked with completing the implementation of the intranet and managing all other aspects of the SSDN programme.
Seminar: SSDN - Inventiing our own ICT Future
Carol Craig
Dr Carol Craig is author of The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence. Since its publication in February 2003 the book has attracted a large amount of publicity and favourable comment in the press and is having considerable impact on policy-makers in Scotland. At the beginning of January 2005 she became Chief Executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being – a new Glasgow-based organisation which she helped to set up. Prior to taking up this post Carol had 15 years experience of running her own training and development business and worked extensively in education. She has a BA in politics from the University of Strathclyde and a PhD in politics from the University of Edinburgh.
Seminar: Creating Confident Schools
Dylan Wiliam
Dylan Wiliam is Senior Research Director of the Learning and Teaching Research Center at ETS in Princeton, NJ. During his time at King’s College, London, he worked on developing innovative assessment schemes in mathematics before taking over the leadership of the mathematics teacher education program. Between 1989 and 1991 he was the Academic Coordinator of the Consortium for Assessment and Testing in Schools, which developed a variety of statutory and non-statutory assessments for the national curriculum of England and Wales. In completing his PhD, he addressed some of the technical issues thrown up by the adoption of a system of age-independent criterion-referenced levels of attainment in the national curriculum of England and Wales. His recent work has focused on the use of assessment to support learning (sometimes called formative assessment). He was the co-author, with Paul Black of a major review of the research evidence on formative assessment published in 1998 and has subsequently worked with many groups of teachers on developing formative assessment practices.
Seminar: Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice
Pamela Munn
Professor Munn is an internationally renowned researcher of over 20 years standing. She began as a secondary school teacher of history, teaching in comprehensive schools in London, before taking up a career in higher education. She worked in the universities of Stirling and York, and was Depute Director of SCRE, before becoming Professor of Curriculum Research at the then Moray House Institute of Education in 1994. She is currently Dean of The Moray House School of Education, The University of Edinburgh. She has been a member of a number of national committees which have aimed to influence policy developments in education, chairing the committee on Education for Citizenship and currently chairs the Advisory Group on the Implementation Programme. She was a member of the Discipline Task Group, of the Curriculum Review Group, and of the Second Stage Review of Initial Teacher Education. She continues to research and publish widely, particularly in the area of school discipline. She recently led a team researching teachers’ perceptions of indiscipline and of the success or otherwise of aspects of the Discipline Task Group’s recommendations set out in its report, Better Behaviour, Better Learning. She also acted as a consultant to the group advising the Education Minister on the collection of statistics on indiscipline.
Seminar: Discipline in Schools
Nicholas Janni
Nicholas Janni is a Director of Olivier Mythodrama and leads management and personal development programmes internationally. He was previously a theatre director and a teacher of peak performance to actors at theatre schools such as RADA, GSA and Mountview. His work now draws on and unites the fields of personal, artistic and professional development. In particular he works with all four aspects of the human being: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. His special area of interest is ‘the zone’ as it is called in sports, the area of peak performance where excellence is achieved in all fields and activities. In the management arena this means developing both the right and left brain, relational skills, creative thinking, emotional intelligence, personal authenticity, developing presence, managing chaos and inspirational presentation abilities.
Seminar: Inspirational Leadership