We are planning to organise an ICT/e-learning conference for Norfolk in November.  There are plans to ensure that at least one day will have a strong focus on strategic leadership of ICT, which will be aimed at school leaders.  The theme of the conference is likely to be focused around e-learning and e-safety.  Judy Houghton is in charge of organisational matters and the e-learning Team (especially Andy Filder and Sebastian Gasse) will be working hard to ensure that their is the right mix of workshops, inspirational speakers and suppliers for both primary and secondary schools.  We would really like to hear from you, if you have been to BETT last week and saw something that impressed you.  Perhaps a supplier or service provider you spoke to offers a solution other Norfolk Schools might be interested in.  Please email one of use or just leave a comment below to tell us about it.

Alex Savage has also posted some stuff on his blog about all the freebies he managed to locate.  Another commentator (Miles Berry) pointed out that some of the really interesting and new stuff in terms of social networking and open source technogolies are actually not easy to find at such a commercial show.  If you feel that these kinds of technologies are not to be ignored by teachers, please tell us about it.

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During my visit to Notre Dame Pip Cartwright demonstrated his new AIDA tracking and formative marking system. Linked directly to pupils’ portfolios the system allows teachers:

• Track whether a piece of work has been completed
• Look at the detailed requirements for a piece of work related to the SPB
• Mark the work to tell the pupils whether the work is:
• In line with requirements
• Acceptable but there are ideas to improve it
• Unsatisfactory for some reason (with comment given)
• Not yet done
• Go directly to the pupils. eportfolio using the link on their name
• Record suggestions for improvements to their work
• Analyse the progress of the group
• Sort and analyse the data using macros for efficient work
• Create seating plans for differentiation and intervention based on progress in previous lesson(s)
• Share this information directly with pupils, who can access the feedback for their work anytime they work on a school computer.

Pupils complete a request form to ask for their improved work to be reassessed. This means that pupils are responsible to ensure they get the highest mark for their work.They are thus directly involved in tracking their own progress.

The system is also used to reinforce mini deadlines with pupils.They get a date by which a section has to be completed for marking. As a result of the information being easily accessible to them, many choose to address the gaps in their work immediately.



Pip tells me that this is the result of numerous attempts to use ICT effectively in the management of coursework and to track and record formative assessment.Pupils, who have been presented with this, just get on with it and use the comments effectively to improve their work.  It seems they care little about the exact system used, it’s the formative assessment which makes the difference to them.

Pip will be happy to share this with people and their might be an opportunity to do so during the forthcoming Subject leader Meeting and the Catch-up courses for subject leaders