ChrisRyall

Another meeting day – but very useful. We met with our data managers, asst. head with responsibility for assessment, head of sixth form and a trainer/developer from Cosby Clifton Computer Consultants.

Cosby Clifton develop a very useful the AIM High report writing software package with works on top of Capita’s SIMS school information management system.

The meeting led to the following outcomes:

• Improving our reporting system, with Aim High being used to collate and present a review of our half termly progress checks.
• The possibility of reports using Aim High so teacher’s can review pupil progress for any student at any time – in a easier to digest format than SIMS.
• Back ups are automatically saved when importing reports from Aim High briefcase – this feature has been around for a few versions, but will be enhanced in version 6.3
• The fact that Aim High can do a lot more than we currently use it for.
• The possibility for parent’s to view Aim High reports over the Internet using a new product from Cosby Clifton called Schoolabora (?)
• Using Aim high to improve our sixth from reports (making it easier for staff to enter comments and review past reports), including using it for UCAS references.
• A great chance for a variety of staff to discuss how we can improve reporting for staff, parents and of course pupils.
• The realisation that our office is quite a nice space for meetings

I don’t usually recommend products, but Aim High is a great, affordable, customisable, powerful add on to SIMS which for us is currently a good solution for our reporting needs. Their support, responsiveness and availability is superb.
If you’re interested in improving your school’s reporting I would certainly recommend that you consider using Aim High.

MC Hammer famously sang, “U Can’t Touch This“.

Today felt a bit intangible, it comprised of:

• Setting up a simple discussion forum to use in registration with my tutees to find out what they enjoyed about Open Learning Week.
• Taught a lesson! (the first for a while!) – Lovely year 9s, Maths. We learnt a bit more about taking responsibility for our learning, chatted about the GCSE course, looked at ways to improve our note taking and then got started on triangles!
• Worked with a colleague on how to connect his laptop to his phone using Bluetooth. A wonderful, informal, personal, relevant piece of INSET – fun & useful!
• Brainstormed stupid ideas for an upcoming year 9 ICT lesson – you won’t believe me if I told you!
• Started to refine plans with a senior leader for an improved reporting system, for which we have a couple of meetings tomorrow tomorrow.
• Helped a subject leader find a cable and showed them how to get a projector up and running in their classroom.
• After being visited by a colleague with a problem writing their reports I used a remote desktop connection to one of our servers to restart a database service which was preventing our report writing software from working. It’s amazing what you can accomplish through a mobile phone call to a network administrator who is in a muddy field
• Quick training on using SIMS messaging for our wonderful receptionist.
• Worked with an AS student to improve one of his Applied ICT eportfolios, flashy bouncy Dreamweaver menus, yum!
• Helped a colleague find a good Google map for a course he is attending tomorrow.
• Spent a lesson with a year 12 DiDA student to help her meet a deadline for Thursday, flashy rollover images in Dreamweaver, fun!
• Ate one cheese panini and drank two cups of coffee and two cups of water.

I’m not quite sure which of those things are just being an ICT teacher, and which things fall within my job with no name – but importantly I got to enjoy them all guilt free and had a wonderful day! Not much evidence, a bit intangible, but a great day of teaching!

A couple of more mundane things. I must confess that the SIMS part of my job is the least exciting – but does have the potential to make a large, positive impact on teaching & learning.

I’ve put together a brief handout on using messaging within SIMS and we’ve activated the feature for a couple of curriculum groups, SEN teachers and senior staff. We’re going to throw it all in the air and see how people use it!

SIMS Messaging Training Guide

Also, we had some School SAFE training which was very well led and a good combination of legal and practical considerations. That got me thinking and doodling about how to improve communication within school over “near miss” incidents and behaviour information which does not lead to a detention. I also sketched out some ideas for imporving the staff area of our school website, particularly with a view to share professional development.

Finally, I made a little template ready for all the other little training guides I’m no doubt going to produce.

This will be become a very common theme: what I have done to improve our school website, www.gcus.net

After upgrading the software a few days ago today it was the turn of the theme to be renewed. Lots of small changes took place, including:

• Changing font sizes, using wonderfully relative ems – particularly for headings of articles, content on the front page and in some blocks on the sides.
• Changing the titles, positions and contents of the side blocks, particular to improve their consistency throughout the site.
• Adding new icons to the central section of the first page, the icons were found via the wonderful Vista Icons site.
• Tidying my css (the code which controls the appearance of the elements on the web pages) in preparation form more improvements.
• Abbreviating some headlines and removing the shouty all capital letter parts to improve layout and readability.
• And of course, added some colour!
  

Now the colour part is of course the most contentious part, and everyone has an opinion on it!

Myself and Mrs Ryall (my most reliable and helpful critic) felt that the text was disappearing a bit too much into the white background and the whole site had a too washed out feel (very Google 1995-6 I know!). Some people love the colour, some people don’t. Some people have preferred or hated a different shade, some people would prefer it white…

I even experimented with spots in the background, and it looked worse! Don’t worry soon you’ll be able to vote and leave your comments about the colour on the website itself.

Things to do: add a poll to the site and possibly allow people to choose their own theme!
Along with the cosmetic changes I also started to reorder some menus and move some content around to match this brief and very rough plan for the content of the site.

Like any business sector education suffers from its fair share of acronyms. The ones above refer to:

• SIMS – Schools Information Management System, is a product from Capita which we use to manage our student data.
• SEN - Special Educational Needs
• IEP - Individual Education Plan, but now we’re looking at ILPs, Individual Learning Plans

Part of my job is to develop our use of SIMS. Today I spent some time with the staff responsible for our students with particular learning needs, adn we came up with the following ideas.

• How can we use SIMS to better communicate and manage students IEPs and specific targets resulting from review meetings?
• Can we improve our collection of information from staff relating to students with particular learing needs?
• How can we extend our best practice of IEPs to ILPS for every stduent?

Naturally, our use of ICT has some input into these questions, so as a result:

• Our network administrator has activated the alerts and messaging feature within SIMs for me to trial with some staff – this now leaves me with a training job to fulfil.
• I have a copy of IEP Writer, an additional module for SIMs, to explore and evaluate with a view to using it as part of our academic review process and to build and use ILPs with each student.
• I need to prepare some training for our Learning Support Assistants and some administrative assistants in the use of the SEN module in SIMs.

As I mentioned yesterday, every small step or discussion seems to lead to two or three more actions! Although the job doesn’t have a name, it isn’t hard to find things to do
Luckily one of our assistant head teachers has booked some SIMs training for next week which should help me along.