Posted by upbeat | Posted in International Education | Posted on April 2, 2020
ITVC Project (Final Report) April07 ITVC Project – Executive Summary May07
In 2004, I submitted 3 ideas to the Education Directorate in Dumfries & Galloway Council in relation to potential bids to the Innovation Unit at the Scottish Executive (as it was called then, now Scottish Government!). Can’t remember what 2 of these ideas were, but one that got off the ground was the introduction of video conference instrumental music lessons. Long story short, met up with a government official in a service station bedroom that was booked for our meeting (by the Scottish Executive, strange ahem, but true….) Received an award of £83,500 to deliver a two year pilot reporting on milestones every 3 months. We shortlisted 4 candidates from 7 applicants to be the UK’s first ever virtual teacher employed by a council. Appointed an excellent candidate to teach brass instruments remotely from Dumfries to 4 primary schools in Drummore, Port William, Whithorn and Glentrool. The attached evaluation reports of this work may be of interest to teachers engaging now in online learning. Almost unbelievably, this report on our work dates back to 2007. In those days, we had no broadband only ISDN telephone lines. We used ISDN6 to give good acceptable working bandwidth. Broadband arrived for us in 2009. Our work in video conference teaching expanded over the years to the point where we had 60 Polycom VC ‘endpoints’ which became used for so many different learning purposes. We had amazing links with London Symphony Orchestra, The Glasgow Science Centre (Heather the Weather) and Manhattan School of Music. Enough for now, hoping you’ll be interested to read the attached evaluation documents (from the archives!).