3/5: eduBuzz: East Lothian online publishing increases 5000%

This is the third of five parts in a personal learning log review of 2007. It might be of  help to you, might not be. Bear with me, and normal service will be resumed...

I was employed from August 2006 to see how Learning and Teaching Scotland could help enhance a teacher-sharing project, Exc-el, in East Lothian Council. I joined a team that, throughout 2007 created such a passion for online publishing we netted a 5000% increase in sharing practice and ideas online, from 20 teachers sharing their expertise, to over 1000 teachers, managers, technicians, students and parents working together in a new service: eduBuzz.

January 9th, and after three months of research, training events and talking with the teachers of East Lothian, we were looking at changing most of the old Exc-el formula - eduBuzz was born. Six months later we had just over 1000 bloggers in East Lothian.

July 18th: I was able to share how we created this excitement and increased morale, in part down to the technologies team, at the Building Learning Communities 2007 conference in Boston. On October 12th I was invited to expand on this in a keynote the Building Learning Communities 2008 conference on the theme of how online teacher development can help change attitudes and culture, and on August 12 published the adoption strategy outline in time for a Scottish outing at the Learning Festival.

January 19th: The first structure for TeachMeet Roadshow training events was floated. This now forms a highly successful basis for training teachers in constantly moving technology in East Lothian and beyond, including those working in the Higher Education sector who turned up on July 1st to see how the form of their professional development could change for the better.

On January 21st, I set out why schools shouldn't have school websites, but have more messy networks of blogs. In December, we hear that Musselburgh Grammar School has, four years after and small group of students and I started to blog there, moved completely over to self-publishing for its school website.

February 15th: We sneaked through a change to take East Lothian education resources into Creative Commons.

June 14th was an opportunity to guage how we were doing with a visit from education and technology visionary Stephen Heppell. Far from focusing just on technology in East Lothian - something one just can't do since it's part and parcel of a fulsome education being delivered to students, from active playful learning and critical thinking approaches, to the use of students' own gaming consoles for learning and learning environments.

The latter had been of interest in particular since hearing about the Stovner school in Norway, on May 23rd about which I spoke, in an East Lothian context, to our Head Teachers on June 19th. Since then, the whole notion of why we come to school in the first place and how many students should 'attend' at once has been challenged by my visit on July 17th to the MET Schools in Providence.

I no longer work in East Lothian Council, after five-and-a-half years of teaching French and German, working with the ICT Team and then developing national projects from that work. I'm already missing my classroom, and know I'll miss working with such a great team at the Council HQ.

Related posts:
1/5: Hit or miss? Spotting innovation that's worth spotting
2/5: The changing ways of the public sector 
4/5: Building a business
5/5: Having a bash - social media gets social