Update from Trinity Fields

Well, as with everyone else it's been a very busy time at school. And again, digital literacy means a different thing for us so.....

Some highlights…

The school has a Twitter account- it is quiet and a bit dormant but I am awaiting a September push on permissions from parents for pupils to be able to add content- from different school groups and I would like the school cafe to start this.

Two teachers are on twitter- our PE specialist is doing some Physical Literacy work with Welsh Government for SEN and Music teacher is networking well and putting  grant application for some WG money for teaching literacy and numeracy through music.

We do Teach Meet activities one Monday a term- where all staff present for 7 or 3 minutes on a topic and this has aided a 'can do' culture in the school. More staff are ready to present and share their specialisms and there is a heavy ICT bias, e.g. Clicker 6, iPads etc.

I got the Naace 2015 Impact Award in SEN in March for the Professional Learning Community work on Gesture Based Technology.  Which was nice.

The SEG/PDG projects on eyetracking are in full swing and I've just finished a Post Grad in Educational Leadership project essay on the Eyegaze Project at school that I submitted Monday- had some superb increases in some of the cohorts assessment results this year.

http://eyegazesen.wikispaces.com/home

We've been continuing our work with the Oculus Rift and VR in school, though it killed the laptop again two weeks ago and it's still not back from hospital yet.  I'm hoping to present on this at the next meeting. A big part of this has been pupil led- two pupils have shown the governors and visitors how it works and what it can do, they have also used new things and have now identified programs they want on it themselves through looking on the internet at home too.

http://virtualrealitysen.wikispaces.com/

Also I'm involved with an initial group of South Wales SEN schools who are looking at what Digital Competency a la The Donaldson Report means in an SEN environment, we're reporting back some findings in a couple of weeks on that to feedback to the Welsh Government so just before they overlook us we can tell them what we've done already on it....

Our Video Analysis work is almost done in the new Professional Learning Community- final meeting is on July 9th and hopefully we will be signing up for some video analysis software to enable us to evidence 'value added' for our very hard to reach pupils who may not progress in a conventional formal sense at school.

Phew, it's been busy!  Looking forward to meeting up!

Anthony Rhys
Trinity Fields School