As promised here is a brief report of our very productive meeting.

We brainstormed a number of ideas relating to the use of ICT to support teaching and learning. Here they are in no particlular order.

Our school website www.dunbar.org.uk/dgs is already having a very significant impact upon the the school and yet we all recognise there is still a great deal of work to do.

We are exploring the idea of having a web-based personal learning plan for every student, which would allow students to develop a secure web-based folder in which they could keep information about their learning preferences, learning strategies, personal targets, interests, schools reports (which could be uploaded by the school) - perhaps with read access for parents.

This took us onto the idea of a virtual schoolbag in which students could keep all their school work from throughout their school careers. This would be particularly helpful for those students who have a tendency to lose information or to be disorganised. It would also reinforce the notion of education being a progression and students could actually see the extent of theirlearning as the years go by.

We were most excited by the idea of students having their own web pages. Duncan intoduced me to the idea of wblogging and I was immediately attracted by its apparent simplicity and potential.

We are very interested in trying to make students 'learning at home' (rather than homework) to be more relevant for students and to extend beyond traditional closed tasks or worksheets. By engaging students in open-ended investigations and projects there is a much greater likelihood that students will actively engage in their own learning.

A key apect in modern Scottish education is the concept of core skills - one of which is 'working with others'. Duncan spoke about the collaborative projects which are undertaken by his students. I believe that school students would respond very positively to the opportunity to complete collaborative 'virtual' projects. I bounced the idea off a group of less than enthusiastic 4th year students and they expressed real interest in the notion.

We would like to establish a pilot project for volunteeer groups of students to undertake a weblogging initiative. The conversant software seems to have real potential for schools. My only concern is the security angle for young people and we would probably need to have some means of ensuring only those individuals who have password clearance can read the web logs.

Finally, we agreed that the two key criteria must be that the system does not place any burden upon teachers and the system is VERY user friendly for students.

I would welcome the thoughts of current undergraduates and school students.