For the first time, Scotland’s Colleges is offering a series of new and exciting webinars.

Scotland’s Colleges has been involved in leadership and organisational development activity for many years.   We have worked with a range of leaders and practitioners from the college sector, the wider public sector and industry.  The focus for much of this activity has been on sharing good practice, learning from experience and developing new approaches in a variety of themes including strategic leadership, human resources development, leadership of public services, strategic marketing, negotiation, ICT for learning, leadership of the curriculum and approaches to excellence in quality.

In a recent report the 157 Group and the CfBT Education Trust indicated that at this time of huge change there are many demands on resources and it is important to respond to these challenges.  It is also important to focus attention on leading learning to ensure emphasis on ‘leading innovation, excellence and improvements in teaching and learning’ and providing examples of ‘effective leadership at all levels supporting, encouraging, empowering, stimulating and motivating staff’.

We now have an opportunity to engage in a series of webinars focusing on just that – leading learning – and we invite you to join in.  Our webinars will be held during the week of 13 June to 17 June and will provide opportunities for you to engage with a variety of leaders in their field focusing on issues of relevance for leading in colleges, in its widest sense.  Topic areas include leading in assessment, technology, entrepreneurship, resource development and learner engagement.

There will be opportunities for you to engage with the speaker after each session and to share information with colleagues.

If you’re not available during that week or on a specific date – we’re recording the sessions and they will be available for you and your colleagues to access on this web page at a later date.

Join us in this new development – we look forward to sharing with you.

Links to webinar recordings

Please click on the links below to access previous webinar recordings and our blog section.

Jarrod Robinson, Sports Co-ordinator, Boort District School, Victoria, Australia

Jarrod will take us through a rapid fire session on the use of Web 2.0 tools and apps that anyone could use in their classroom.  With an emphasis on ease of use, cost effectiveness and impact, this will inspire viewers to quite simply try things out, with, we are delighted to say, continued support for you through Scotland's Colleges and Jarrod's leadership. This is a great chance to fire questions at an award winning practitioner of ICT in the classroom.

John Connell, Education Business Development Manager, Emerging Markets – Public Sector, Cisco

John will discuss some of the implications of the developing global knowledge economy for education, across all sectors, and will look at how digital and networking technologies are shifting control of learning firmly from the teacher and the institution to the learner.

Mick Jackson, Founder and Chairman, Wild Hearts

Mick will discuss the importance of creating an entrepreneurial mindset for learners and the role that the college sector can play in delivering a more enterprising culture for Scotland.  He will also highlight the benefits of a social enterprise and look at the resources that can be used by colleges to help create a more entrepreneurial opportunities and learning activities.

Walter Patterson, Educational Consultant

Walter will be discussing the outcomes of a recent survey of FE and HE institutions which was commissioned by the SFC to establish the ‘appetite’ for shared IT services among the respondents, identify the key business drivers and examine relevant models for the aggregation of services.

Michael W. Carroll, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law

Michael is one of the founding board members of Creative Commons.  He is recognised as a leading advocate for open access over the Internet.  He has written white papers and has given numerous presentations around the world on this issue.  He will be discussing how the information environment, and how we share information resources within it, is changing.

Laurie O’ Donnell, Consultant – Learning, Technology and Innovation

The massive investment in ICT over the last 15 years, across all sectors in education, has not delivered the outcomes that were expected by governments and education leaders. So how we do get out of this cycle of over promising and under-delivering?  Laurie argues that one of the main causes of this failure to deliver success can be located in the strategic leadership of technology in education.

Richard Strudwick, Enterprise Education Specialist, London

Richard has worked on various projects in training, youth support, development and facilitation in the UK, Australia and further afield.  Through his work he has developed a real understanding of the needs of young people and the enormous benefits associated with understanding enterprise, investigating self-employment and cultivating an enterprising attitude.  He will be sharing his experiences with us.

Tom Barrett, No Tosh Ltd

Tom Barrett is one of the UK’s best known classroom teachers, working in the elementary schools sector. He curates and shares thousands of practical ideas from teachers across the globe on his blog edte.ch, and puts into practice the very best thinking on educational technology to inspire and engage children in their learning.