To get us started I was invited up to Shetland to spend a weekend with Javi and Stewart Hay - a legend in international education - and so I went last month with one of Hawick’s S6 pupils, only now have I found the time to write a few thoughts about this down on the blog.

Despite a stormy sailing on the Friday night we made it to Lerwick and settled down for some breakfast and the discussions began - with the rain still battering down outside. We were being hosted by Stewart, who is also hosting two students for the year. One from the Czech Republic, and one South African, both are studying at Anderson High School. It was striking just how massive an opportunity - and a challenge - this was for the two of them, but equally how confidently and happily they put themselves across during discussions on a variety of topics.

Over the weekend we considered a lot of the issues that the groups in the Global Ambition project will be tackling, and I think it was a great way for our S6 pupil to get started, it certainly gave him a lot to think about. We also had the chance to meet briefly with the group from Anderson High, a group of pupils who have a radially different lifestyle to those from Hawick, yet in so many ways very similar.

Admittedly we have been a little slow to get going with the work in Hawick but things are really under way now with pupils piecing together their personal profiles and along the way hopefully thinking about how they fit into their community - and what that word even means.

Over the coming weeks and months I expect to be writing a bit more here about how the Hawick group progress. Finally though I’d like to say thank you to Stewart and Javi for hosting us, we’re looking forward to working with you over this year.

The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men’s health issues and donated to The Prostate Cancer Charity which will have an enormous impact on many men’s lives and the awareness will help us to fight prostate cancer on every front - through research, support, information and campaigning.

Did you know…

• Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. 35,000 men are diagnosed every year and one man dies every hour.
• 1 in 11 UK men will be diagnosed in their lifetime .

The culmination of the day for me was TeachMeet, the last one for Ewan McIntosh for a while at least as he is off to pastures new. The gauntlet has firmly been handed over to the community to arrange the next one. I’m still keen to get something organised in the Borders and have proposed the 20th of February 2009 as a date for the 11th Edition. There is of course a page on the wiki where things are being discussed, but it needs you to get involved so it can really happen, so get over to the wiki and sign up!

And, of course, if I do make it to Glasgow I will definitely be heading to TeachMeet08* on Wednesday evening. If I do make it along I’ll be adding myself to the list of speakers - possibly just the 2 minute nano-presentations - to talk about goodness only knows what

If I do end up going I’ll have to miss a few classes, which I had really hoped not to do so early in to my time at my new school, but at the same time I’m really hoping I’ll get to go.

* Yes, this does mean I’m not putting on a small scale version in the Borders on the same night. BUT, I am still hopeful of getting something sorted out in the not so distant future.

Anyway, serendipity struck tonight. Just after looking through “Thirst” on slideshare (via Ollie) one of the recommended shows was called … you guessed it “Design is Everything“. It is perhaps a little above S3 level but it has plenty of talking points and I may try to get a modified version made up - or even better get my class to do one.

I’d like to see what design means to other people too, so on flickr I’ve put a similar image to my poster. I’d like you to add a note to the image and add a few words, just like my pupils will be doing with post-its. Here’s the link.

I would like there to be a TeachMeet in the Scottish Borders sometime, mainly for selfish reasons as I do not think I’ll be able to make it to the Scottish Learning Festival this year. I realised that unless I (un)organise it then it is unlikely to happen so here I am asking you for your help.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be a fair few people in the Borders and surrounding areas who will also not be able to make it to SLF this year, but I don’t know how many though, and crucially I do not know how many people there are who would consider getting involved as well as just turning up.

If I go ahead and try to sort something out I will need help - I don’t know where I would find a suitable venue, I don’t know my way around well enough yet! I was thinking somewhere in Galashiels.

I also have a few questions, I’ve put together a short Google form which you can answer, or of course you can leave comments here on the blog.

My big question though is this - one option is to have it running on the same night as the event in Glasgow, with a possible link up. How do people feel about this? My own personal feeling is that it would be great for the people who wanted to get to Glasgow but can’t, I also think that it might be good to encourage new people along if it were mostly ‘locals’ - but the risk is nobody comes… What do you think?

Anyway, I’ve been nearly a week at my new school and I’m loving it. I’ve got a great timetable, with some really great classes. By the end of tomorrow I’ll have met all of my classes and have finished my first 8 period day!

So far I think things have been going well, I’ve not really pushed the use of any new technology, more concentrating on getting to know everyone and making sure that my classes, and me, can get settled in. What I have been doing though, at least last week is starting each S2 class with a quick starter exercise where the pupils have to unscramble letters to find the names of tools they should know. This has been really useful to get everyone in and settled until the whole class is there, it also gave me the time to get a seating plan written out. I’ve got a series of starters for other classes as well and this is something I want to work on so that I have something for the start of each period.

Anyway, time for bed. Now I have my connection back I’ll be online much more in the future.

Doug Belshaw wrote a great post last night, 4 quotations that will guide me next academic year, and it focussed my thinking a little. I’ve had loads of ideas running through my head ever since I got the job at Hawick about what I want to try and achieve. It’s easy to go into a department for just a few minutes and think that you can make changes, when of course you never get the full picture in such a short visit. There’s loads of good practice going on in Hawick and while I want to make changes and do a lot of my own things my first aim is to really make the most of the experience that is there already. Here’s another quote for you, one that has been all pervasive in my year at East Lothian : “We learn from our experience…..if we reflect upon our experience” John Dewey.

As I said Doug’s post focussed my thinking a little. Mainly about what I want to do with my first few months at Hawick, and I’ve now got a more organised set of targets. Doug also got me a little more focussed on another idea which I’m working on. I’ll tell you about that in a future blog post, I hope you’ll all be interested in it.

* A pc or laptop Click here for system requirements
* A broadband connection
* A School e-mail address (either a pupil or teacher e-mail address will do)

First go to the registration page for Autodesk’s Student community. When the page opens you will need to complete all of the required fields.

Important: At this stage you will need to enter your school e-mail address and also create a username and password. You should also enter an e-mail address in the ‘preferred e-mail’ field that you can access from home. All future correspondence will be forwarded to both addresses, using both means you can download the software at home.

Autodesk will now send you a verification e-mail. All you need to do is open the e-mail and click on the link to verify your account.

Now go to the Autodesk Student Community homepage and use your new login details to access the student community.

Once you have successfully logged in go to the software downloads tab and choose Autodesk Inventor Professional 2009(English) from the dropdown menu. Then hit the download button.

There are a few download options but I would strongly recommend that you choose to DOWNLOAD USING THE AUTODESK STUDENT COMMUNITY DOWNLOADER. You will now be faced with a dialog box, select ’save file’ make sure you save it to a location on your PC where you can easily find it.

Once the download tool has been saved on your PC you are now ready to install it. It should only take a few minutes to install, once installed open it up and log in.
Finally, reselect the program you want to download (Inventor 2008) and the download will begin. The download tool will also display your serial number at this stage. Make sure you record it so that you can insert it at the required stage of installation.

The files to download are quite large but it will happily run if you leave it overnight - just remember to make sure your PC won’t go into hibernation.

Once it has downloaded simply follow the on screen installation instructions, there are a few important things to note though:

During the configuration stage of installation make sure you change the units from inches to mm and choose ISO for the default setup.

If you are having any problems with this process then please feel free to leave a comment, or drop me an email. I have to give credit to Robert Clements for this post, he wrote it originally a few weeks ago, but I’ve made a few changes and posted it here because it’s pretty useful.