I intend on updating this post at the weekend, detailing my experiences of BETT 2013, but for now please find below my presentation slides from my Learn Live presentation – Embedding pupil voice and pupil participation in strategies for whole school improvement:

If you would like to contact me to discuss the content of the presentation or would like some support to develop similar strategies to those I use in your own school, please leave a comment on this post or send me an email using the ‘Contact Me’ page of the blog.

Last weekend, 25-27 January 2013, I was fortunate to attend the fantastic StartupWeekend Education London at the Google Campus, a 54-hour session of creating, coding, designing and pitching ‘the next big thing’ in education, hosted by the Nightzookeper team. (Follow them on Twitter here).

For more information about the event, see:

- the StartupWeekend site
- videos from the event
- tweets on Twitter (#SWLondonEdu)

I arrived on Day 2 (after the initial 49 pitches had been narrowed down to 14, by popular vote amongst the numerous educators, developers, designers and other attendees) and was introduced to all of the teams. Deciding which one to join was very tricky, as many of the ideas seemed genuinely exciting. Having briefly evaluated the micro-pitches from the teams, I decided to join the team headed up by secondary school RE teacher, Ruthie Jacobs, who pitched an idea to challenge ‘word poverty’ – addressing the issue that on entering primary school aged just five years, those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have an average of 4000 words fewer in their vocabulary than the 7000 of their better-off peers. This naturally has a negative impact on those children’s future educational and employment opportunities.

We started with just this problem, and no solution. By the end of the weekend, after a great amount of work from our eight-strong team (pictured below), we had created a working prototype for our proposed solution to the issue of word poverty – Word Wars.

It’s at a very early stage but a working prototype of the web app has been released here: http://wordwar.herokuapp.com/

Please have a play and let us know what you think of the concept. We are looking to develop it further based on your feedback. You can also follow us on Twitter @WordWarsEdu

All in all the StartupWeekend event was incredible. It was so impressive to see so many people working really hard to fulfil creative ambitions with the potential to have a positive impact on students’ learning.

I loved sharing ideas, meeting some great new people and was proud that out of 49 initial pitches the team of expert judges voted Word Wars into second place overall, just behind @mrlockyer‘s idea, @useedu.

I really can’t wait for the next event and to see what we can achieve with Word Wars over the coming weeks…

With the annual BETT Show in London just a few weeks away I thought I’d take some time to write about what I’ll be up to during the show.

I will be at BETT on Wednesday 30 January and Saturday 2 February. On Wednesday I will be delivering two presentations:

School Improvement through Student Digital Leadership, Stone Stand C70, Wednesday 30 January, 14:00-14:30

This session, appropriate for senior leaders, teachers and other school staff alike, will introduce participants to the concept of Student Digital Leaders and how they can be used in schools to inspire student-led learning, embed cost-effective and sustainable staff CPD and create innovative leaders of the future.
Chris will outline highly successful projects he has run in fifty Bradford schools and offer guidance about how to establish and maintain similar projects in any educational setting, at any Key Stage. There will be an opportunity for participants to engage in an open question and answer session.

Embedding pupil voice and pupil participation in developing strategies for whole school improvement – Learn Live Theatre C, Wednesday 30 January, 16:15-17:00

A useful session for school leaders looking for innovative tools for whole school improvement, this workshop will explore how Digital Leaders projects in primary and secondary schools can be implemented to engage and inspire pupils to become independent learners, responsible global citizens and leaders of the future. Come along to find out more about using pupil Digital Leaders to embed pupil voice and pupil participation in developing strategies for whole school improvement. Chris will outline the projects he has run across over 40 schools in Bradford and provide numerous examples of innovative and successful pupil-led learning. The session will provide practical advice about setting up similar Digital Leaders projects and there will be an opportunity for delegates to participate in an open question and answer session.

As with all sessions at BETT, both of these are totally free to attend. If you are interested in coming along all you have to do is turn up in enough time to get a seat!

If you do choose to come along, why not let me know before you arrive, so I know to look out for you! You can contact me on Twitter here: @chrismayoh

I am also available for meetings at various times throughout the Wednesday and Saturday of the Show. If you would like to arrange a meeting to share ideas, discuss working together on projects or make a request for me to deliver a presentation or training workshop at your school or event, use the Contact Me page.

I am particularly interested in discussing, and perhaps most qualified to support you with:

- Student Digital Leaders (from KS1 to KS5)
- Other pupil-centred learning opportunities
- Media literacy
- Mobile learning projects
- Anything else which has the potential to positively impact on pupils’ learning experiences

Here are my currently available slots for meetings:

Wednesday 30 January 2013:

12.00-12.30pm – Meeting Dannie (@MonstersCanRead) from Teach Your Monster to Read
12.30-1.00pm – Available
1.00-1.30pm – Available
1.30-2.00pm – Preparation for presentation on Stone Stand C70
2.00-2.30pm – Delivering Student Digital Leaders presentation on Stone Stand C70 (see above)
2.30-3.00pm – Available for discussions with attendees at my Student Digital Leaders session at Stone Stand C70
3.00-3.30pm – Meeting Jennifer Godwin from Softcat
3.30-4.00pm – Preparation for presentation in Learn Live Theatre C
4.00-5.00pm – Delivering Embedding Pupil Voice presentation in Learn Live Theatre C (see above)
5.00-5.30pm – Available for discussions with attendees at my Embedding Pupil Voice session
5.30-6.00pm – Available

Saturday 2 February 2013:

9.00-10.30am – Available for breakfast meetings
10.30-11.30am – Attending Tim Rylands – Back to Their Future session, BETT Arena
11.30am-12.00pm – Available
12.00-12.30pm – Available
12.30-1.30pm – Attending Sugata Mitra – The Kids Are Alright session, BETT Arena
1.30-2.00pm – Meeting Ian Pratt @sciencelabman, Google Stand
2.00-2.30pm – Available
2.30-3.00pm – Available
3.00-3.30pm – Available
3.30-4.00pm – Available
4.00pm-late – Available for meetings, drinks, dinner and theatre appointments!

So, I really hope to see you there! There are so many exciting things going on that I know fitting everything in will be a massive challenge but if you do get chance to pop by and say hello it’d be great.

Well, 2012′s done and dusted and we find ourselves in the almost unwritably ugly 2013, arguing about whether or not to pronounce it ‘two-thousand-and-thirteen’ or ‘twenty-thirteen’. Being something of a maverick, I like to switch between the two.

So, here are my own picks of that recently deceased beast, 2012. A year which saw a number of highs and lows (as one would naturally come to expect, I suppose).

Digital Leaders

Though in constant fear of typecasting myself, one of the things I was most pleased to see in my professional life last year was the nationwide (and indeed, international) explosion of the Digital Leaders concept. I’ll spend no time explaining the Digital Leaders idea (if you haven’t heard me bang on about it yet then count yourself in the lucky 2% of the population, or ask me if you’re genuinely interested in hearing more) – your favourite search engine and the search terms “Student Digital Leaders” or the like will no doubt fill in the gaps. (In the interests of avoiding upsetting anybody I’d like to also point out that Digital Leaders was not my idea in the first place – I borrowed and adapted it!)

Along with my Innovation Centres colleague, Vicki Cox, 2012 saw Bradford welcome its 50th school with Digital Leaders, which now includes both Primary and Secondary establishments. FIFTY! An amazing number really and something I’m pleased to have been involved with – now for two days a week, after an extension of my secondment to the Innovation Centres doubled my time working on such projects. Thanks to all of the teachers, senior leaders and pupils who have made the experience so enjoyable for me.

In addition to this, two colleagues from further afield, Sheli Blackburn of Norfolk and Nick Jackson, who can now largely be found in Adelaide, Australia, shared with the world The Digital Leader Network and Oz DLs respectively. The Digital Leader Network goes from strength to strength with an impressive number of schools now forming an active community, in no small part down to the enthusiasm and hard work of Sheli and the many teachers and students who make time to contribute. If I was to have a New Year’s Resolution it would be to post on this more frequently myself (and to stop telling Sheli I’m going to post things and then not doing it, but I won’t go that far just yet).

Oz DLs is a far newer phenomenon, which aims to bring the same level of success to Australian schools under Nick’s expert guidance. I’m convinced this will be one of the big Digital Leaders developments of 2013.

CPD events

Again not wanting to rewrite posts already written, the stand-out events of 2012 for me included #CampEd12, the Naace Third Millennium Hothouse and the Naace Strategic Conference at which I was fortunate to be in the company of fellow candidates shortlisted for a Primary Impact Award, which I subsequently failed to win (a clerical error I’m sure Naace will be embarrassed to eventually spot. *Joking*). Thank you to all of the people who made these events so special. I won’t attempt to list you all here – you know who you are and I appreciate our conversations, laughs and opportunities to drink into the evening (even if it was only Ribena).

France

In the summer, and with only three weeks’ notice, I was invited by my friend, Steve, to accompany him on a three-week driving/camping holiday across France. Taking in the length of the country from Calais to Cannes, with Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy all getting a look in, too, we had an amazing time drinking cheap wine, eating local cheeses and enjoying the French heatwave, subsequently enjoying temperatures up to 42 degrees Celsius. Pictures to follow, perhaps…

As well as obviously enjoying the holiday at the time it was more apparent when I returned just how a) necessary it felt to get away and rest, and b) how fortunate I am to have been able to do it. On returning to school in September and being greeted by excited stories of pupils’ trips to Birmingham to see cousins or a visit to the park across the road, my luckiness was all too evident. And I’m very grateful for it.

Tales of sadness

Sadly, 2012 also brought about some less positive news. In July, the sad passing of my Great Uncle Ted, the World’s Loveliest Man, was difficult to take, but (looking on the bright side) the funeral provided an opportunity to see some members of my family I haven’t seen in years (why do we fail to make contact until such occasions? I suppose life gets in the way).

Shortly after this, in October, a former pupil of ours was tragically killed in a road accident close to school, in an incident which was widely reported in the national media. With mum, family friends and many of his former teachers still members of staff at our school the news hit us hard and is still very fresh in the hearts and minds of a great many people today, still so soon after the incident. Hopefully 2013 will provide fresh hope and comfort to those most affected by the tragedy.

So, all in all…

A mixed year of things to make me smile and feel proud, to cry and feel lost, but mostly a year surrounded by great people, in times of happiness and in sadness (I don’t mean this to sound like a rewrite of the Lord’s Prayer: Amen. But you take the point, I’m sure).

It would have been very easy to include a great many more things here, but these things just stood out as the most significant.

A toast to 2013 then, a year as any other in which I refuse to predict its highs and lows. All I can hope is that I continue to seek new opportunities to be better and to help others do the same. So, not that it’s a resolution – and it really isn’t – but I shall try to keep this blog more up to date than I did in 2012. I will. Honest…

How does your review of 2012 shape up?

So, it’s been six weeks since the incredible event which was #CampEd12, a weekend learning festival which took place at Hardnaze Farm in Oxenhope, courtesy of the generosity of Helen Daykin‘s mum, Sue, and the organisational prowess of Helen herself, Bill Lord and Dughall McCormick, all of whom played a genuinely appreciated part in making the event come together.

The reasons for my delay in blogging about the event are threefold: I’m quite lazy at blogging; I have had a tremendously busy few weeks; and more importantly, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the event and its impact and only now feel able to write with some coherence.

Now I’ve finally managed to get round to it I’m not going to write a diary of #CampEd12 events (not least because my memory of them is hazy at best) or include my own photo stream, indeed these things have been done already and no doubt better than I could be bothered to attempt, so I shall simply point you in the direction of an excellent blog post from Dughall which also includes a list of other attendees’ posts: Dughall’s blog, and add that the activities I took part in over the weekend included a lovely walk across the surrounding moors, some daytime astronomy and a 36-hour game of football.

Instead I shall attempt to focus on what I learnt from the event and share my thoughts about the future of such events.

Firstly, I had a GREAT time at #CampEd12. If you’re reading this and you were there you made a positive difference to my weekend. Whether we spent lots of time together, spoke briefly or not at all, whether you were six, forty-six or Tony Parkin, you made a difference to my weekend.

As with most things which are tremendously positive, it seems appropriate to think about how to widen the impact of such an occasion. There are undoubtedly a list of barriers to extending the opportunity to attend to many others, which I will summarise here:

1. The event was very middle class. This is not a criticism per se, just an observation, but it poses a difficult question to answer: how can we extend such an opportunity to those who do not necessarily enjoy the cultural capital of those who were at #CampEd12?

2. The event was largely publicised via Twitter. Quite simply, many people do not use Twitter. Those of us who do are often cocooned in a world of like-minded individuals and the net result is a largely positive one, but how do we engage the uninitiated? Should we try and convert them? Or accept that it’s perfectly acceptable to not use Twitter? Surely we cannot operate a slightly fascistic ‘if your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in’ sort of policy? So how do we get to these people?

3. Financing such events is another issue. #CampEd12 was a very low-cost event for ‘delegates’. But this relied on the generosity of the organisers and of those who donated such important things as venues… Indeed future events could potentially be more expensive to run based on inflation, the current financial ‘situation’ and additional costs such as venues, which could be realistically added to future events. Moreover, even the relatively low cost of #CampEd12 is not low enough for some families who have to get by on very little income. The only way to achieve a level of universal access would be to offer these events for free, but then this must rely on sponsors (which may alter the dynamic of the event) or grants (which are often hard to come by).

I’m sure there are other barriers, too, but these appear to me to be the most obvious ones. I can imagine a situation where schools, community centres and suchlike may offer the use of their premises for little or no money, but I don’t know if that’s the answer.

Either way, I really hope there’s a #CampEd13. If there is, I’m there!

What do you think? Is there a sustainable future for family learning events? Can these events ever be open for all? Please leave a comment to join in the debate.