Thanks Maggie!

I agree with Brendan we should be using what is already available (and free!).
The web 2atolls are all already out there. Additionally most pupils have a mobile device of some sort and instead of harnessing this we ban them. In the current climate we cannot afford to continue this way, the culture does need to change and it needs to be led from the top.

I agree with Brendan too, the technology is there. If you are a teacher it is your responsibility to learn and keep up-to-date with technologies that will help in the learning and teaching of our pupils.

I'm with Maggie - ICT is a tool - an aid to performing tasks and a means of learning. There are some skills needed, but we seem to have managed to get ourselves stuck in a mini miasma of ICT skills. The skills will change remarkably rapidly. Let's face it who needs to know 79 different ways to use Powerpoint.

As far as being teacher led.... maybe we need to learn from the experience of the last 30 or so years that show how few ICT skills children learned from schools and teachers. However, that does not mean that class teachers don't need support to help them use the available options at their disposal. As a primary teacher I have colleagues who would laugh at my music skills, but can help me use the bits I'm comfortable with. I can do the same with them for some ICT.... I'd like to think I'm still learning.

The reason US companies like Facebook have a base age limit of 13 is because of US Children's On-line Privacy Protection (COPPA) legislation. http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm This imposes restrictions on the operators of sites for under 13s aimed at preventing them collecting children's personal information (such as names and email addresses) without first obtaining verifiable parental consent. It would appear that many sites prefer to opt out of offering the service to under 13s to avoid this overhead. It does not follow that the sites themselves are necessarily unsuitable for use by children.

Maggie said it all. ICT is like a pencil: sometimes it is the appropriate tool; sometimes it is not. De-mystify, allow access to hardware and appropriate on-line resources, and enjoy letting the young people teach you how to use ICT more creatively. And teachers should be allowed the professional responsibility of deciding what is appropriate, not LAs. Just stop being scared of it...(that is directed at LAs!).

Totally with Maggie! Still too many people afraid of technology, but that can also be an excuse for just being lazy and not bothering to engage. Some very negative attitudes out there and as a result children are being denied access to tools in the classroom that they are constantly using at home. Used to be that the schools had the computers and very few were at home. That's totally changed now and children are accessing communication tools of various types at home and have a multitude of skills that are just not being seen in the classrooms. Schools need to engage with the world we live in - there is no way back and if we don't then children are going to become even more disengaged with learning.

we need to change the culture of the secondary mindset to more closely align with that of the primary sector. When we stop defining ourselves as subject specialists and start to define ourselves by our profession, ie. teachers, we can shift to a mindset which embraces pedagogy and even a heutagogy which focuses on learning and how to learn rather than the subject content. The content is not king, rather the learning approaches which have to take precedence. Then we can move onto a pedagogical focus common to all areas of the curriculum, technology for learning. The goal would be to effect cultural shift towards a learning environment where use of technology is the norm, rather than the exception.

Compulsory modules during PGDE/BEd teacher training in use of technology to enhance learning. Existing teachers encouraged to undertake CPD including professional recognition from the GTCS ( I found this a very usefu exercisel in helping me to gain some perspective and focus on the use of technology for learning, rather than just the technology). Much more focussed annual CPD review meetings between faculty heads and teachers to match CPD in using technologies for learning to those staff who need such help.

A lot of teachers in primary and secondaries still view ICT as an 'extra' and not really core to how we perform our duties. If other industries and professions held this mindset they'd be ridiculed, bankrupt or extinct! Imagine a surgeon who didn't access MRI.

I have been trying to keep up with all the comments being added in all the different areas to see if anyone else is aware of the essential use of ICT is for pupils with additional support needs.

For some pupils access to the curriculum is impossible without ICT and/or they may have no means of communicating without ICT. The availability of both male and female Scottish voices which have been funded by the Scottish Government is just one instance where pupils can make use of ICT to support their learning and/or communication. These same pupils needed to have Glow made accessible but text to speech was never added - despite being aware of the need for this since before it went online. Pupils with physical difficulties also need access and in many cases Glow was a closed book. And speaking of closed books, without ICT many pupils would not be able to access the text books used by their classmates (see www.booksforall.org.uk) or be able to sit exams independently (www.adapteddigitalexams.org.uk). To be able to make use of what is available schools/authorities need to ensure that the requisite software and equipment is available to allow equal accessibility to all pupils and that staff have the time and the skills to use it and create the necessary resources. Maybe this comment should also be in Area 2 - Confidence and Area 3 - New Practice!

Maybe ICT should be raised to the same status as Literacy, Numeracy and Health & Wellbeing. It could be argued it encompasses parts of all three. Integrating ICT across the whole curriculum, instead of perpetuating its current status as an 'extra' would improve skills and confidence in both teachers and learners and potentially aid development of literacy, numeracy and health & wellbeing.

How much priority is given to the role of ICT co-ordinator in schools? Is it as much as that of Literacy, Numeracy and Health & Wellbeing co-ordinators? Is the role filled by a recognised expert on the staff, or it is included in the remit of an member of the leadership/management team? How much time is given over to developing whole school approaches to using and developing ICT ?

The culture within Local Authorities where IT leaders control the IT network, access and budgets has to change. All need to have knowledge of the pedology and the educational benefits of sites, software etc. Training for all staff within schools must be priority. There are many teachers I know willing to use these tools but aren't trained or encouraged to do so. We need the focus to be on the classroom (Prim/Sec) rather than on the IT bod in Council HQ worrying about his wee empire.As always Maggie I hits the proverbial nail. In short, get out of the way and let the teachers teach using the tools they need to help their students gain the skills they need for the not yet invented jobs.

Is more training really the answer? There hasn't been a shortage of training over the years I've been working in education. The problem is it hasn't made much difference.
I think it's a safe bet that the majority of people commenting here didn't get their skills from sitting in twilight sessions. They developed their skills through a mindset that led them to investigate new ways of doing things rather than waiting to be shown. It's this culture we need to change - we need to encourage more teachers to be self starters.

Again, it's the dosh, isn't it ? Whilst doing more with less remains the mantra, we will struggle to take anything but small steps forward. There are plenty of savings to be had both locally and nationally which could give teachers the time investment they need. Mergers, shared services, less money at the centre (quangos) and more shifted to the frontline would be a start.

Thought I'd share this as an example of the problems associated with ICT use as it is currently practiced.

I have heard from a very reliable source of a LA that no longer allows access to wordpress/wikispaces/blogger/etc because now that GlowBlogs and GlowWikis are available, there is no need to access the millions of existing blogs and wikis. Schools can make their own...

To put that in context, it's like taking all the existing books out of a library, giving the classes pens and paper, and telling them to write their own books.

Sadly, this is a true story... :-(

Promote a culture of using ICT whenever it can be and is helpful. Let pupils take laptops, netbooks and ipads etc to school as well as paper and pens.

So many times ICT is treated as a bit of an extra or even as "cheating" somehow, yet for many of the children I work with it is the only way they can access the curriculum. We need to see IT as a routine part of classroom activity, not as a tool for making a neat copy or a golden time activity. Let the children access their learning in the way that is right for them.

Totally agree with sandra's comments of 20th Sept. I work in ASN & without access to IT, some pupils cannot function on a par with majority of other pupils. Use of ICT should become the norm, not an add on. Cost, as ever, remains a big issue.

The key to this objective will be the leadership that we collectively give to the use of ICT in learning. Why is it that so many of our pupils only have e-learning experiences at home? ICT must be seen by teachers and educators as a key component in their delivery of CfE. We could spend £millions but without the culture change througout the system, we will not maximise the opportunities this gives us.

I have to agree. Filtering is a huge issue, and a lottery at that. I have a nice screenshot from an authority I used to work in with the charming message that "The category "Educational Institutes" is blocked." In another authority, my pupils couldn't get onto the authority's own Pupil homepage.

So what if you want to open up a blocked site? Fill in the online request form. You might get lucky and get the site unblocked - maybe even tomorrow. Or you might not. Your request may be declined. More likely howeve=r is that you will never hear about it again.You could also keep resubmitting requests, but this could end up getting you a 'bad reputation' among the IT support people - and we all know how that can end

There is an associated issue with this too - who is best placed to decide if a web-based resource is suitable for teaching or not? A teacher who has come up with a way to use it, or an IT support technician/manager who whilst very skilled in their field may never have done a days teaching in their life? I bet the IT guys in the NHS don't pick what medicine the doctors are allowed to give out. Is it surprising to hear that I would be in favour of a national filtering system? At least then it's a level playing field.

On a different note. the culture should be about bringing everyone together rather than keeping people apart. This should include schools(state & independent), colleges, universities, parents, teachers, other staff, 'community learning partners', nurseries, etc, etc. Tools are less important here than changing a mindset. Communication, co-operation, collaboration - 'togetherness' - should be encouraged at all levels. Leading figures in education or even industry should not be excluded from the community just because they don't/no longer teach at a school. Do they have something of value to say? Can they help pupils to learn? That should be the marker for who can be part of the community. The focus really needs to shift to the learning & teaching.

I came into teaching in 2004 from 25 years in IT: my experience in using the web, technologies and media was a powerful tool which I used in support of children in and out of the classroom. I have spoken at a number of public events (including the SLF) on this, in particular the aspect of engaging with pupils on their own terms to extend the trusted relationship between teacher and pupil to new levels. As of six months ago, my websites, blogs, wikis and social media networks were used by many people, not just my own students during their time in my classroom and afterwards.

My skills in this area gave me confidence to operate these facilities for my pupils and colleagues to support development of truly effective and life-changing resources and techniques. Unfortunately, this confidence was seen by others as arrogance beyond my station in the school hierarchy. Since May, I have been defending myself against allegations which, although they varied from time to time, amounted to the use of inappropriate language in (socia media) contexts considered to be in breach of my contract and the GTCS code of professional conduct. Whilst it remains my firm belief, supported by legal opinion, that I have not been in breach of my contract or the GTCS code (and this may yet be tested at law), sanctions have been applied which resulted in a final written warning: I immediately shut down all of the services, sites and networks. The risk of further sanctions being applied is simply too much for me to take.

Until there is a culture of trust and an acceptance (by, for example, head teachers) that classroom teachers may bring authority and world-class expertise in technical and other areas to education, I cannot see how we can free the innovation and creativity needed to make effective use of the web, social networks and new media in Scottish Education.

I post this at risk of losing my job. I do so because it is relevant to the debate - it is the right thing to do.

On the debate around filtering - whether local or national.

Adding any form of gate keeper by definition causes a bottle neck for resources and tools, and I think we can all agree that the online environment transforms itself constantly. For a gatekeeper to say for example YouTube is safe (or is not) may be undermined the very next day by changes to their content policy, or simply by the way users populate it.

I have always been outspoken about the need for schools to have open access to resources online and used YouTube as my example. However recently I have, in my personal use of the site, noticed far more questionable content and even advertisements appearing. I realised that the sands shift so quickly that an accountable policing of access to areas of the public web is untenable.

I believe that the only solution is to teach responsible use to pupils and make the end user the filter. That way the filter is ultra-responsive, moment by moment, rather than waiting for a national body or an individual with fears for their own job security to make key decisions in what resources they can or cannot access. This also prepares pupils for the real world of work and home life.

As many comments have identified - public and press perception of this is make or break and where the battle will actually take place. The culture of trust will have to extend well beyond Education.

Tracking the areas covered by the discussion so far I've not picked up much on the use and potential of ICT to support assessment. I'll declare an interest straight away as this is my area of work at the SQA.

We've been active in this area for a while now and believe we're making some really positive progress working with our centres and other agencies. Many of the points that have been made about use of ICT for education generally apply to its use for assessment too. The key specific point for assessment is that in the interests of fairness and validity, if learners do and will increasingly learn using ICT, then the way they are assessed needs to reflect this too.

Beyond this, our own work and that of others in this area indicates that use of ICT can bring a range of benefits including making assessment more flexible and engaging learners in a way that conventional modes of assessment don't. It can also allow us to assess things that we really value but haven't been able to assess up to now. We have developed an approach to assessment of group work using a wiki and blog, for example, that is now in its third year of use for a qualification in the care area. There's more information on this and all of our e-assessment work at www.sqa.org.uk/eassessment.

Whilst it's well understood that assessment shouldn't lead learning, there is also a well recognised backwash effect between assessment and classroom practice. One opportunity may be for us to capture this so that increasing use of ICT for assessment is seen to support those who already use it for teaching and learning and encourages those who don't.

Martyn's comment above has a wider relevance to this area. If you want colleagues at all levels fully to embrace ICT in education, it is necessary to make its use almost the default position. And if you want those in management to embrace it fully, you have to make it the default position for the parts of the system which are critical or a statutory obligation. And that applies in spades to SQA-related matters.

The classic example here from a related area is the way in which the government's decision a decade or so ago to lauch the ScotXed system drove every EA swiftly to embrace an electronic MIS - and now practically everyone is using one system: SEEMIS. A crippling problem that has bedevilled the implementation of Glow has been the fact that it has been optional and brought in in a very 'softly-softly' way. If we are serious about Glow, let's not make it optional. Let's build it intextricably into the system in all sorts of ways, including for assessment. If there are teething problems, well so be it. That was the way it was in the early days of ScotXed and now that works very smoothly and all sorts of major policy decisions depend on it! If we leave all the development to be bottom-up and teacher-led, we will still be grumbling about the same issues in another decade. 'Build it and they will come' has its limitations as a strategy!

I try my best to use all sorts of things to engage the challenging kids -I have a blog post in this week's Scottish Book Trust with the full version in pedagoo.co.uk. I am particularly keen to use these things because I'm deaf, lame and according to my students 'a legend' but a bit mad.... 8-) I'm keen to hear what people really think because I honestly feel the biggest problem is the fractured way each authority approaches things like web site filtering and supporting their staff/students. Some are great (take a bow East Lothian!) others..sch as Dundee who allow mobiles or Aberdeenshire who allow wifi access in school to students phones/laptops. Others are too Stalinist and throw up the walls or refuse to consider the educational benefits of sites preferring to 'be safe above all else'. I really hope that we can help persuade MR and his merry gang to push for a NATIONAL approach rather than individual councils being allowed to do their own thing which in some cases is often not the right thing for staff and students.

I’ve recorded an audioboo as a contribution to the consultation on the use of ICT in education taking place currently. In it, I suggest that children are not the experts in the use of technology and that as teachers, we should be able to become sufficiently digitally literate to enable its effective use in support of our teaching practice, grounded as it should be in the pedagogy and theories of education. Read more at http://nealsson.net or access the audioboo here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/498095-using-social-media-in-education

I have seen schools rich with resources- hardware and skills support, yet technology is still regarded as an add on, a 'must do'. Technology should be regarded as a tool to use as and when needed- in meaningful contexts.
In addition to a basic set of resources, there should be an ethos of 'how can we...?' , instead of 'we can't because...' . We teach our children to persevere and to be innovative - we should also model these skills, and not be afraid to try.