Creating Communities

Primary school teachers can feel stranded in their professional development, primary pupils can feel the leap to secondary school is too big to make over one summer. Social software comes to the rescue in allowing primary schools to create communities with colleagues and pupils anywhere in Scotland or further afield.

This seminar will show the possibilities primary school blogging, podcasting and wikis can bring to pupils, from aiding formative assessment to enrolling high school mentors before the leap to secondary. It will also show how these tools can help develop teacher’s professional skills. At the fore is how to provide even the youngest learners with the most authentic web experience without jeopardising their safety online.

Take away McIntosh’s 10 Tips for Creating Communities

Ewan McIntosh, Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research

David Muir, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Strathclyde

Ewan McIntosh was a Teacher of French and German at Musselburgh Grammar School before taking up secondment with Scottish CILT in partnership with LTScotland. The project he develops, the Modern Foreign Languages Environment (MFLE) is a pilot for the Scottish Schools Digital Network (SSDN).
At Musselburgh Ewan launched the first open-comment open-posting school blogs in the UK and the first schools podcast in Europe. He helped his school pick up a European Award for Languages from the Council of Ministers in 2005, and in the same year was shortlisted for a New Media Award.
Ewan speaks internationally about using Web 2.0 tools in education and educational management, using research from an LTScotland John Dickie Award and classroom practice using these tools.
His blog, http://edu.blogs.com, is updated daily with thoughts and webcasts of presentations and seminars.