60,000 head teachers now belong to the world’s biggest education professional’s forum, Talk2Learn. Relaunched yesterday, the site hopes to encourage another 190,000 professionals to sign-up. And here’s why:
The website - provided by the National Council of School Leadership - offers a secure interactive environment for ‘school leaders’ to talk about job issues. Trained facilitators from education backgrounds support discussions within the community, helping users to get the most out of the site by flagging up when particular debates are going on and linking up school leaders with shared interests. The site has a number of features including live chat facilities, shared live whiteboards, voting functions, document sharing and collaboration, email notifications and brainstorming tools.
NCSL’s Director of Online Learning, Tony Richardson said: “Talk2learn has been a huge success story. It’s making a real difference to school leaders by giving them the confidence and knowledge they need to solve tough problems in their schools and experiment with new ways of doing things. Most importantly school leaders no longer need to feel alone in their professional lives – whatever the issue they are facing they now have a massive wealth of expertise and support at the click of a mouse.”
In a similar move, the General Teaching Council has announced plans for an integrated website. It will give over half a million members of the education community access to important information on policy and working standards. The GTC site is due to launch in April 2005.