1. My PLN are a wonderful bunch of people – very supportive when in/not in a crisis (as I have been this week). Thank you!
2. I’ve been forced to get to grips with Adobe Illustrator on the Apple Mac as we urgently needed a fleece logo for a forthcoming school trip to Rome. The finished articles looked deceptively simple and were the outcome of a long chain of digital photography, Photoshop editing and conversion to a vector graphic through a great little website called Vector Magic.
3. I found out that SQA Skills for Work encourages a cross curricular, industry linked approach to learning and teaching. I left with a different mindset, but only after seeing the wonderful work that schools and colleges were producing and making contact with extremely talented teachers.
4. Entirely by chance I met my Computing teacher who still works at Portlethen Academy. He is working for the SQA on the new integrated Computing and Information Systems course and during a catch up on the train home asked if I’d considered applying to be on the Subject Working Group developing resources to order. While not the change of location I was looking for this is something to seriously consider if I want to reduce my daily commute in the long term.
5. There is nothing wrong in asking for help. When faced today (Friday) with an unbelievable resolution related to point 1 (as well as a complete lack of support from my SMT) I asked for it to be detailed in writing (which put them on back foot) and my union representative for help. Within 20 minutes not only had he resolved the situation he had forced a policy change to clearly inform teachers in an attempt to protect them from a similar situation in future.
