The Scottish Schools Digital Network
This is the big thing in ICT in Scottish education at the moment. A collaboration between LTS, RM and the Scottish Executive. The aim is to provide all teachers and pupils in schools in Scotland with access to a safe and secure web based environment where e-learning can flourish and collaborative working develop in order to enhance learning and teaching through the use of ICT.
As a local authority we are working hard at the planning stages of SSDN in order to ensure that all our staff and pupils have access to SSDN and are able to make best use of it. The action plan is nearly finished and the customer agreement is currently with our legal services department. If all goes well then these things should be finalised by the start of the summer holidays.
We have also been involved in some of the early piloting of SSDN. The phase 0 pilot allowed us to see how easy it would be to transfer data from SEEMIS over to SSDN. This worked well and gave both ourselves and RM some comfort that the DX side of SSDN was going in the right direction. Phase 1 piloting of the portal should take place soon after the summer holidays. This will be the first opportunity for us to see what it looks like so we are looking forward to this opportunity.
Training in relation to SSDN is an important issue. We are currently considering how best to identify those who can take a lead role in this area. If this might be you and you work in one of our schools then please get in touch so that we can have a chat about the process we are going to go through. The training of trainers starts in January 2007. By Easter we should have a better idea about how we will proceed with training.
Our new on-line in-service catalogue has allowed us the opportunity to move away from a traditional view of how we create a catalogue and to think much more flexibily. we are using the system from Gateway (the people who do PlanIt and Progress). We are currently training staff in how to use the new system and it should go live in the middle of June. There are a few teething troubles as you would expect with any new system but it is looking good. We have also used this opportunity to start to raise awareness of SSDN through the rebadging of many of our ICT courses. Every little helps!
Until the next time…
May 17th, 2006
