Category Archives: College CLNs

Activity generator: participatory ideas to spice up your classroom and engage your learners

Monday 18 November 2013

13:15 – 16:00

Moray College UHI

Target Audience

For anyone looking for ideas to engage college students and build a positive classroom climate. Suitable for lecturers from all curriculum areas and those who have a learner engagement and support role.

This half day experiential event will provide participants with lots of ideas for engaging students from induction through to pre-exit.  We will be demonstrating how to build a positive classroom climate, engage students and how to structure sessions that maintain cooperative behaviours.

Find out more and Book online
Closing date 17 November 2013

Creative Learning: Innovations and Ideas from the College Sector

Earlier this week, College Development Network hosted an event for the College Creative Learning Networks to share learning and ideas from their work in promoting creative and innovative approaches to learning and teaching.

Some really interesting ideas and priorities emerged during the discussion including:

a) the need to examine more closely the links between creativity and enterprise;

b) modelling how creative approaches can be used in more traditional subject areas;

c) extending and developing partnerships and links with the wider community and

d) ensuring that governance and leadership are aware of the centrality of creativity in policy and practice.

The event also provided an opportunity for attending Creative Catalysts to hear about  Scotland’s Creative Learning Plan from Joan Parr of Creative Scotland, and about Education Scotland’s Curriculum Impact Report on Creativity Across Learning from Sheila Page, HMI.

Festival of Dangerous Ideas – free events

Tuesday  18th June
Wild Ideas – Celebrating Failure and Success (1000-1500)
West Highland College UHI, Carmichael Way, Fort William

In the first part of the day, the West Highland Way Walkers who will just have completed their 5 day walk, led by young people from West Highland College  will exhibit the dangerous ideas that grew during their journey in the  wild. In the second half of the day, Outward Bound will lead a session that will explore how they have used the research on Mindsets to develop their work with young people

View Programme and Book Online

Wednesday 19th am and pm

Modern Assessment Tools to Match Modern Literacy Practices in These Dangerous Times

College Development Network, Argyll Court, Stirling (1030-1230)

In order for pedagogy to stay aligned with this seismic shift in communication, how could the ubiquitous practice of digital photography be used as an assessment tool?

View Programme and Book Online

Dangerous Assessment Conference (1300-1600)
College Development Network, Argyll Court, Stirling

Alastair Pollitt from UCLES will put forward the argument that we stop marking exam papers.

View Programme and Book Online

Thursday 20 June 2013
Learning Through Gaming (1000-1600)
Dundee College, Gardyne Campus

As part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, participants at the event are encouraged be as ‘dangerous’ as possible in considering how gaming can influence pedagogy and encourage greater engagement with learning.

Speakers include Chris van der Kuyl of brightsolid, Derek Robertson of Education Scotland and David Renton of Reid Kerr College.

View Programme and Book Online

Local Authority and College CLN Collaboration in the Borders

A joint event between the Scottish Borders Council and Borders College CLNs’ was held on Thursday 25th April with the aim of building links across the college and local authority networks. Participants came from Primary, Secondary, FE and HE.  Phil Orr, Borders College Creative Catalyst and Susanne Batchelor, Scottish Borders Council Creative Learning Manager led this initial session. The first part of the morning was spent looking at creativity in education, locally, nationally and internationally through film clips and presentations.

During the second part of the morning participants worked in groups to generate ideas using the ‘Ideas Trail’ toolkit, developed by UXL Ltd. Each group were given a question about Creativity and were asked to come up with 50 ideas.

  1. How do we create different spaces/environments for creative teaching and learning?
  2. How do we engage partners in creative teaching and learning?
  3. How do we assess/measure/capture creativity of students?
  4. How do we improve the way we teach to further develop creativity in our learners?

The ideas were then narrowed down during group discussions and two ‘Red Hot’ ideas were selected and presented. A general discussion was then held around the next steps and how to continue to develop the network.

Some comments from discussions:

“The creative process is a specialist term which needs an agreed definition so we all know what we’re talking about.”

“I love everything about teaching creatively but I’m really concerned about what exactly to write in my planning folder when my HT (and others I’m sure) expect teachers’ plans to detail every session to the nth degree. Looking forward to discussing it further with others.”

“Listening to like minded people – encouraged that teachers too could share the vision for change.”

“Thinking about my own teaching and that I do teach creatively but there is always room to improve and build on.”

“Networking, learning a strategy for starting creative thinking processes in my class and in other education groups of which I am a part.”

Discussion of where to go from here and take it back into the work place to develop. Opportunity to share ideas of how to overcome difficulties and promote ideas further”

“Continue to teach creatively and look to improve it, also to try to encourage colleagues to be open to creativity”

NEXT STEPS:

From the ideas generated and from the feedback received, the next steps for the partnership CLNs from Scottish Borders Council and Borders College are:

  • To continue the innovation conversation in schools and college through further planned joint sessions and CPD
  • To implement some of the Red Hot ideas through pilots on schools and college
  • To develop materials and use processes to allow the sharing of good practice and the continued development of creativity in teaching and learning in the Borders Region.