R&R in ‘The search for the ultimate Minton Trio.’

                                  Kel leaves home tomorrow for new adventures. Go Girl!  

Quite excited about seeing the Magna Carta again…perhaps a visit to where historians believe it may have been signed (although no-one is sure.) Rossco went to Borders with his 30% voucher and bought another book on London. Our Sunday training walk led us to Bayswater Shopping Centre with no sight of a coffee shop open on a Sunday but around the back of the new Aldi Supermarket voilà a new sleek business. A room with a view – overlooking Aldi and the carpark with groups drinking wine and pretending they were in Sth. Yarra. Ross pronounced it a ‘find’ and it is now officially our new Coffee Shop. Dropped more brochures for Belinda’s business on the walk. Another 6 km walk today!

Robyn’s paklite Gortex jacket has arrived. Robyn though seemingly uninterested in e-shopping has finally succumbed to the wonders of the Paddy Pallin Clearance site.  R & R are in training each weekend and are up to 7 km walking, with of course, a coffee shop break halfway.  Ross is trying to squash all the MUST-SEES into the plan (can’t miss out on coffee in the Gherkin or a photo shoot outside Spooks House)  and an itinerary will be appearing shortly.   Sunday – 6.7 km walk from Funkyfurniture with a stop a Mac Cafe in Bayswater after helping Kel negotiate her furniture purchase. Desperately need an iphone and Ross helpfully washed my Nokia with the sheets in our rather thorough Miele – but it works. Ross spent the day downloading podcasts of London sites while I have found B and B in Plymouth. Reading about Boudica and trying to hunt down places of significance we may pass by. Tracked down more trivia:  

• GOG and MAGOG – Until the early 17th century large outline images of the giants Gog and Magog (or Goemagot and Corin) had for a long time been cut into the grass exposing the white limestone beneath. No trace now but it most likely commemorated the Cornish foundation myth, being the point from which the Giant was cast into the sea by the hero Corin.  Visited the Giants guarding the Clock each school holidays in the Royal Arcade. 
• Wish to stay on Plymouth Hoe, best known for the story that Sir Francis Drake finished his game of bowls here in 1588 before sailing out with the English fleet to engage with the Spanish Armada. Will reenact for Mim and Pa. Also intrigued to be able to stand where the Pilgrim Fathers left for the Americas.
• Just north of Plymouth, Dartmoor has inspired many, not least of which was  Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote “The Hound of the Baskervilles.’ Must read after Boudica. 

 Yep! Ross has his new London Map Guide, Great Britain Road Atlas and Robyn has Trip Advisor with a huge map of the UK on the  lounge room floor.  Planning is detailed – last week it was anti-clockwise, this week it is clockwise! Only 6 months to go.                                        

Janet and I opened the laptop and began to develop our blog into a report ready for

the first management team meeting.

There many possibilities and whatever is chosen needs to support

'value-add' to the programs exisiting in each school.

 Thanks for all the supportive blog comments. See you all soon

You gave me your card after my speech at the Pre-Bett conference. It was a
pleasure to met you.

Chair of Trustees
www.worldecitizens.net

_____________
Your school is now registered on the Rafi.ki Online Community which was launched last week. Since the official launch of the community over 200 schools from more than 30 different countries have joined and we continue to register new schools each day!

As you are aware, Rafi.ki is a unique online community for schools that contains cross curricular collaborative projects which your school can use to add the global dimension to your classroom and to find partners abroad. It also offers an innovative and user-friendly platform for managing these links.

You have been registered free of charge for Gold membership. This allows you and your students to immediately take advantage of the various communication tools and resources within the community. By creating school and personal pages, you will be able to inform and interact directly with other Rafi.ki schools and to actively engage in projects and collaborations. Most importantly, the sooner you participate in the community the sooner your school will be able to develop meaningful links with others around the world!

We have created a Welcome Pack for you which includes information on getting started; what you can do on Rafi.ki; current projects; and future projects and features that will be added soon.

If you still are not sure where to start you can watch a video to learn more. There are also a number of step-by-step video tutorials to explain creating a page, communication, and administration within Rafi.ki which you can view here. You can also click on the following link for additional resources on Rafi.ki.

Before getting your students involved, please be sure to download and read the following:
- User Guide
- Teacher Pack for Putting Yourself on the Map Project

We recommend that your school completes the first project ‘Putting Yourself on the Map’ as soon as possible. This allows your school to establish a presence on the community and to learn more about some of the other schools.

If you have difficulties with the initial exploration of Rafi.ki or you have additional questions or queries please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to working with you and hope you enjoy using Rafi.ki!

Warm regards,

Trine Petersen
Project Manager
Rafi.ki

Unit 502, New Loom House
101 Back Church Lane
London E1 1LU

Tel: 0207 702 9629
Email: trine@rafi.ki

www.rafi.ki

It was great to see you last week.  I hope your flight was OK because we heard that some flights were delayed because of the winds.  Keep eyes open for a package to school.  Enjoy the rest of the holiday and I will send you links to websites for G&T.  Elaine Duff, University Brookes, Oxfordshire

Our last entry. We have to miss Elaine and Oxford, sadly, as we are concerned about dropping the car off at Heathrow in time. However, we did catch up at BETT and had a lovely chat.
We feel relaxed and refreshed – must be the huge English breakies, Cornish Brie and good Chilean/French wine to help the reflective processes at night (a la Cairns).

THANKS ALL FOR READING AND REPLYING TO OUR BLOG. Love to hear further comments!

Today began with homemade bread and a truly scrumptious breakfast cooked by Wolfgang. Nicola arrived to collect us and joined us for coffee in our gorgeous B & B -Athole House – huge rooms, cheery yellow and blue – a room with a view over Bath. Can recommend to travelers. Our host Wolfgang, a former lecturer in English Lit. was the congenial host.

We met with Mary Rose. Director, International Research Centre, in her carefully designed office, based on architectural research to provide a quiet, calm, focused atmosphere conducive to research and productivity. Walls of glass, light wood and round tables engender a sense of transparency, collaboration and engagement. There was a sense of purposefulness, and we applaud the deliberate design that aimed to minimise interruptions.
Heather, you need to visit the Swedish Museum of Architecture. Students in Sweden visit places of architectural importance!

Thanks Geoff, we can see why you were so enthusiastic about us visiting – links perfectly with goals for improving student engagement and academic results. Supports speaking and listening strands with implications for improved AIM results, literacy levels, improvement in the use of formal language (Dr. Ruby Payne’s Generational Poverty Model). Also fun. We’re sending back ‘There’s a Possum in the House’ to share cultural favourites.

The morning went in a blur of conversation, building on shared ideas and common bonds – kindred spirits!

Nicola generously agreed to be videoed storytelling and Robyn will attempt to create a podcast using Garageband. Janet and I see infinite possibilities for an International link using the train the trainer model. We have Nicola’s presentation on USB and will present to Management Team – it fits into Boys’ Ed, Kinsethetic Learners, Multimodal Learning. We need 2 teachers from each cluster primary school and of course Glen Iris for a one day introductory session to ‘have-a-go’. The Learning Club Team (Year 7) may also be involved.

There is a possibility that a group of teachers using the International Storytelling Project may visit as part of the Cluster Homestay project and work in our classrooms. Very exciting. Thinking hats on Management Team on how best to develop these links.

International Informational Text/Storytelling Digital Collaborative Project: using podcasts to strengthen teacher professional development
Mary, Nicola, Jan and I have developed an Action Plan which we will work on it on the plane.

Robyn drove brilliantly back through the English countryside back to Bath, handling the car magnificently on narrow laneways. (Robyn)

There’s nothing like suprreme confidence!!! Ross and I are pleased that Robyn felt so comfortable with her driving, we certainly had some minor concerns!! Nothing like indicating cornering and lane changing using the innovative system of windscreen wiper indication. Left truns – rear wipers, right turns – front wipers. Not only is Robyn brilliant at innovation in education I think she may well be head hunted by BMW! (Janet)

This morning we collected our hire car from Heathrow Airport. The car hire company offered us an upgrade to the next category, which was a huge relief, as we now had space for three people and all the luggage!!! The question before this offer was who, or what were we leaving at Heathrow?

The drive through the countryside to Taunton was beautiful, rolling green hills dotted with small villages. Stonehenge appeared out of nowhere, on the side of the dual carriageway. Ross and Robyn felt their first taste of the bone chilling English winter as they toured the site, awed by the ancient, mysterious monolith. Meanwhile I stayed snuggled warmly in the back seat of the car, reading a really good book.

St Georges Roman Catholic Primary School
The purpose of our visit to Taunton was to meet Dr John and Kay Hanson at St Georges to discuss with them their insights into integrating ICT into the curriculum and tools for measuring and recording student and teacher skills.
Peter Hanratty, the Head, welcomed us warmly and proudly showed us around his school, which had seven classes, one at each level. The class size is set at 30 students per class. The school was designed with the classes radiating from a central hall. There was lots of glass and interesting angles. Each room had an interactive whiteboard and two computers. Peter was justifiably very proud of his Phys Ed facilities, which consisted of a large gymnasium and an indoor swimming pool. (We felt very envious) The children appeared very engaged in their learning and very proud of their achievements. The school data ranked their results in the top 100 in the country. (Very impressive!)

Recipe for Raising Standards
We participated in a staff meeting where John and Kay presented their package to promote digital literacy incorporating the student suggestion of rewards aptly named ‘Digital Awards Badges’.

Kay and John worked with 46 schools over a 5 year period with the resulting impact being a 20% rise in standards each year.

Their digital literacy program was a very structured and well-researched package that encourages student negotiated learning and infusion of ICT into curriculum. A hierarchical skill set is clearly defined for each level and are linked to the UK key stages. Students complete self-assessment accredited by the classroom teacher with a teacher friendly curriculum/lesson-planning tool that enables teachers to integrate ICT and target individual needs. There is also a teacher skill assessment tool.

This program demonstrates their passion for raising literacy and numeracy standards, intensive research in areas of low literacy and financial investment. Visiting later this year, John and Kay will be working with Mark Landy and looking for trial schools. The next obvious step would be to compare their student ‘can do’ statements with VELS progression points.

The key to the program was that it was very simple to use and teachers could effectively adapt to it different cohorts, hardware challenges while improving their assessment of ICT skills.

There is much more to this program. We were given a taste of it and look forward to meeting with Kay and John later this year for further discussion. Their passion and expertise is infectious. We love ideas such as RAINBOW groups… and all their ideas are practical and as both are ‘Teachers of the Year’ have huge credibility. A program with huge potential.

We rocked up to the Australian Consulate… experienced underground users now for a reception for the Australian Trade Delegation. Impressive. Great Sav Blanc from Tassie and proud to see StudyWiz (used by Mooroolbark College) winning an award. Great to see Andrew Shaw, up on stage too (Manchester PS uses his TeamBoards and Easi-teach software.)

Mac Lovers… our brush with fame was meeting John Couch, Vice President of Education Services at Apple and discussing iPhones and Steve. Janet assured him that the cluster would buy all Prins one each.

Met University of Ireland professors responsible for teacher training. Possibility that graduate students on a year’s leave after completing their degree would visit us for a homestay/professional teaching week. They are placing our Red Earth Pack as a resource in their library.

And Geoff, we met Jane from Bath who visited Mooroolbark College in September after your visit to Bath. We are meeting with them as well as Nicola on Tuesday. Brilliant. The world gets smaller.

David Buckingham from the Aust. Consulate and Katherine Coultas, ICT Investment and Business were delighted to have us and are confident our contribution will make a difference to the profile of Australian Education. We appreciate BESA sponsoring our accommodation for the 5 days, the Cluster for funding an extra ticket to the BESA Conference and Dinner and Darryl Fraser for contributing to our costs. Although we are self-funding the extra school visits to Bath and Taunton we have gained so much. We have relentlessly promoted Victorian excellence and are bringing back the best of British expertise and links to schools in Kent, Essex, Northwood, London, Africa, Chile, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Africa and Columbia.

Teachers who visit London during their Christmas holidays should put BETT on their agenda. It’s free. One day isn’t enough but with careful planning should be profitable .