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Reflections on SAGT


Well, needless to say it's early. I'm sat at Edinburgh airport, waiting for my plane home. I've been able to reflect on the years SAGT experience.

As I was presenting for the first time this year, I only had the chance to see the two keynotes. First up was Ollie Bray from Learning and Teaching Scotland. I enjoyed his talk very much. It was great to have some of my own views and ideas confirmed by Ollie as well as gaining a few more nuggets to think about.

What a really liked about the keynotes was that Ollie invited criticism at the start, whether it was via Twitter, email or face to face. Everyone in a classroom should also be inviting this level of criticism from our learners. Needless to say, I obliged ;-)

Looking back at the #sagt09 feed, another key point was one of collaboration. I often talk about the futility of reinventing the wheel. The age of a lone practitioner in his or her classroom is long gone, and there are fewer and fewer excuses to be a lone ranger. To meet the needs of learners we need to collaborate, whether this be with the person in the room next door to us or through one of the many social tools available to us.

I liked that way in which Ollie seeks the views, skills and experiences of young people. One small criticism is he could have involved the views of the 4 young people in the audience. Maybe a simple text vote from them would have confirmed or denied Ollie's excellent points. I would also add that we need to be aware of the skills and technology of our teams. I am guilty of assuming that staff all have access and the ability to access the Internet. Although I agree with Ollie that we don't need to be geeks or experts in order to allow learners to use technology, the continuous CPD that is found through blogs, Twitter and the like is inaccessible to some teachers. We need to support them also. One recent example was a colleague who was beginning to feel increasingly isolated as they didn't have home broadband, or the know how, to access blogs etc. The effect of this is isolation from new ideas and ways of thinking.

In a similar vein, Ollie talked about the need to update our subject knowledge.

The second keynote was given by the mountaineer Andy Cave. I really connected with his talk as we share a mining background and love of the mountains. His main point was very closely linked to Ollie's collaboration point. In order to make learning better, we need to form Teams (or Tribes) that are based upon trust and are able to adapt.

Overall, I am not generally a fan of Keynotes. However, both at SAGT were relevant and challenging. They have both given me food for thought. Excellent work SAGT!
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