Your stepping stone

The Journey to Excellence is one of the most innovative websites in the education world, whether in Scotland, the UK as a whole or beyond. Produced by HMIE and its partner organisation Learning and Teaching Scotland, this pioneering online digital resource looks at education practice from the perspectives of young people.

The Journey to Excellence aims to help Scottish schools make the step change from being 'good' to being 'great'. Firmly focused on improving children’s learning, it is about success for all, about ensuring that all children achieve their potential, whatever barriers to learning they face.

The final part of a five-part series, the online resource focuses on front-line activities – what really goes on in classrooms and playrooms that makes a difference to the learning and lives of children and young people.

The Journey to Excellence features the voices of children and parents, school staff and their partners, successful Scots and renowned educationists.

The footage, which is filmed by Edinburgh-based Learning Curve Software, specialists in education support materials, presents a rich and growing source of excellent practice from across Scotland.

The online resources are organised under 10 dimensions of excellence, the key drivers for improvement identified in UK and international research.

Movies are of different kinds.

Informative movies explore the key features of each dimension of excellence.

Illustrative movies demonstrate what excellence looks like in schools and pre-school centres across Scotland.

Perspective movies present the views of famous people and educational thinkers.

Users of the website can download these movies, and edit them if they wish, for use in their own presentations or as a stimulus for discussion with colleagues.

Sitting beside the films are research summaries and articles which explore key concepts in current educational practice.

Also included are case studies from individual schools and pre-school centres which demonstrate the journeys they have taken in pursuit of excellence.

If instead of entering through one of the dimensions of excellence you prefer to search for materials relating to your own current areas of interest, you can carry out a keyword search using the 'movie finder'. This finder identifies the movie clips which are most relevant to your own needs and concerns.

The team designed the online resource so that individual practitioners can use it for personal professional development and school and authority leaders can use it to develop customised group training sessions.

An innovative feature is the inclusion of 'learning trails': pre-packaged selections of movies and articles which provide a way into a number of educational themes and topics.

These selections provide rich sources for scenarios and topics which challenge assumptions and stimulate debate.

The built-in flexibility of the online digital resource enables it to respond rapidly to emerging educational priorities.

Filming is already under way for the second phase of this three-year project and resources are regularly updated.

The site has already gained a host of regular visitors, from Scotland and from countries overseas.

Posted on 16 June 2008 under issue 21, features.
Tagged as hmie, improvement.