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Unmissable online or in person
Whether you're watching speakers on YouTube or sitting in the auditorium, this year's Scottish Learning Festival is set to inspire.
Firmly established as an essential event on the educational calendar, the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF) 2010 is taking place on September 22 and 23 at Glasgow's prestigious SECC on the banks of the River Clyde.
Organised by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), the theme of this year's SLF is Curriculum for Excellence: Enhancing Experiences, Raising Standards. With an impressive programme of inspirational keynote speeches, seminars and showcases, this is one event that is not to be missed.
As Curriculum for Excellence reaches full adoption, delegates at SLF will be considering how they can develop innovative and relevant experiences for learners through planned activities which will lead to sustained, motivating learning and high levels of achievement for all. SLF will provide support for practitioners to develop their skills, knowledge and creativity further, to identify their own priorities, to capitalise on the opportunities offered by Glow and to develop solutions relevant to their own circumstances.
Assessment is a key aspect of the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence and SLF will explore how assessment practices support the new curriculum, promoting improved learning and teaching together with greater autonomy and professional responsibility.
Keynote speakers this year include Michael Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Eric Booth, an award-winning actor, author, entrepreneur and arts education specialist; Richard Gerver, author of Creating Tomorrow's Schools Today; and Professor Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University.
In addition to the keynote speeches, there will be a variety of spotlight speakers covering a variety of engaging topics - from meteorologist and former BBC weather presenter Heather Reid OBE, discussing science and climate change within education, to Graham Donaldson, former HM Senior Chief Inspector of Education, talking about his wide-ranging review of teacher training in Scotland.
LTS is committed to ensuring that those who cannot attend in person can still benefit from the event and a number of online options have been set up so that people can access information from SLF quickly and easily.
Social media channels will be key to extending the reach of this year's festival and delegates can follow all the news from the event on the @LTScotland Twitter page and by searching for the hashtag #SLF10. 'Tweeters' at the festival will be asked to use this hashtag wherever possible when conversing about the event online.
For those who are missing out on attending any of the keynote addresses, videos of all the presentations will be uploaded onto www.youtube.com/user/ltscotland (the LTS YouTube channel) allowing people to view them at their leisure.
Roving citizen photographers will also be encouraged to upload their images of the festival onto Flickr, again using hashtag #SLF10.
SLF Live, available via the Scottish Learning Festival website, is a one-stop shop that brings together all the online discussions about the festival from a variety of channels. Top news from the SLF Twitter feed and Facebook page will be featured here, as well as an overview of what people are saying about the festival on education blogs and images of the event from the LTS Flickr page.
Once again this year, the Glow Group SLF Extra will enhance the festival experience by providing a virtual venue for users to discuss expectations and experiences. This is the ideal portal for those unable to attend to log on and get a real flavour of the key discussion topics.
Andrew Brown, Head of Glow at LTS, says: "Many of the planned events at this year's Scottish Learning Festival have a Glow theme and all are designed to demonstrate to delegates exactly how important Glow is in supporting the new curriculum. We will also be joined by a variety of practitioners who will showcase how they are putting Glow to great use in the classroom with fantastic results.
"Last year, the SLF Extra area of Glow offered Glow users the chance to take part in SLF whether they were able to attend in person or not. I'd encourage all Glow users to log on again this year and benefit from the range of information that will be featured."