Hello and welcome - breaking the ice - May 2010

Hi everyone and welcome to 'breaking the ice'.
I'm Sue Burgess and along with Hamish will be supervising your studies. My teaching background is in English and Media and I’ve also been Head of Faculty, Assistant and Deputy Head (Teaching and Learning)in a variety of secondary schools. Currently I’m a national consultant for Functional Skills; subject consultant for English and Media for Ofqual; one of a small team of colleagues appointed to deliver the education programme of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and run my own ‘wellbeing clinic’ –counselling, Aromatherapy, Reflexology, Indian head massage ... working with corporate and private clients.
I look forward to talking with you online and encourage you to use the discussion forum as much as you can.
Speak soon.

Hi Sue,
I'm Duncan, I am leading teacher for Gifted and Talented education at a primary school in Gloucestershire.
Hope to speak more soon
Duncan

Greatly looking forward to this month's Hotseat with Mehtab Culling and looking to invite other stimulating Hotseat participants. Do let me know if you have someone in mind who you would like to talk to.

Hi all, I am Peter Mattock and I am the Second in Charge of Mathematics at Fitzharrys School in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. It is a secondary comprehensive with an attached sixth form.. In my role as Second in Department I have responsibility for more able mathematicians and am also one of the two G&T lead teachers for the school.

Look forward to chatting to you all over the next (hopefully) 3 years.

Pete

I'm Nieves.
I am currently researching the educational provison in Primary Schools for gifted children. I want to identify what are the key issues that make a primary school a nurturing school for the gifted. If anyone can recommend me a primary school that challenges and caters well for the educational needs of gifted children I would very much appreciate it. I live in Essex.
Nieves

Hi Peter,
I received your question (thanks) in my mailbox yesterday so you've found a way of actually alerting staff to points in a way that I didn't know existed. ie the system can send a message to the admin people.

OK.....starting a thread yourself isn't (as far as I know) something you can do....so to speak. To give everyone editorial rights and the ability to create, add , cut, delete etc could be in some cases rather difficult. Historically when I was using Plone some years ago with students we did try it for a very short time and it proved really disastrous.....now Im not saying here that it would be, but that it could be and it could make life very difficult for others if a small error was made by someone in editor status ie the whole area could be wiped out with a click of a mouse....it's that easy to do it and that's what happened some years agao at Anglia Ruskin .

What I can say though is that to start a discussion the best way is to simply use the 'add comment' box and begin a new thread - each is indented and the replies connected with that comment can be added to the orig comment, that way it's easy to read down through the conversation.

I hope that's ok and clear with you? :-)
Alternatively we can if you like start a new conversation if you think it would merit it by simply asking either Sue of myself and we'll try to keep all the connections and links connected (really simply gardening the online space)

It was just that part of the course is about our contribution to online discussion. Clearly if we cant start them that might be difficult. I have no problem putting it on here, but might it not become a bit difficult to keep track of if everyones discussions are on here?

Hi all
CfBT have come out with a new paper, written in part by Joan Freeman, about 'Worldwide provision to develop gifts and talents'. Well worth a look. Link to it (and others): http://www.cfbt.com/[…]/pupil_groups.aspx