#sfy2 #ashmount #schoolsforum #unlibrary Islington Schools Forum

I am posting this message for two reasons:-

1. For one small group on the latest Anke Holst course at the unlibrary to have an example of the sort of thing one can do. I am sending this message as an email from my ordinary desktop account to Posterous. The message text then goes on my posterous blog davidbarry.posterous.com where anyone can look at it, and find it using google. It also gets posted automatically to my twitter account. I could, if I wanted have sent it to a wordpress blog, if I had one, and to my facebook page. So I send one message and people can read it in a number of ways. In fact whatever way they want to read it. Note how I have tagged it for Twitter.

2. And in fulfillment of an election promise. I have just been re elected to the Islington Schools Forum. The Schools Forum makes decisions about school finance in Islington. It also makes recomendations to the government. Its a really important body but not many school governors really know what it does. In my election "campaign" literature I promised if re elected to start using social media so that people would be able to find out more easily about the doings of the Forum with it's big impact on their children's education. Today I am going to a meeting where we are going to discuss the way in which the education grant to Islington is calculated, and to see if there is a way we could get a better deal for our children. More on that later!

#sfy2 #crouchhill #ashmount #socialmedia Ground Breaking

Well the ground breaking ceremony for the new school building at Crouch Hill Park happened today. Jeremy Corbin MP who was supposed to be there had to give his apologies as he explained that the whips have allowed him on to a select committee for the first time in 25 years (Justice) and so he felt he could not miss his first meeting. So the honors were done instead by Councillor Phil Kelly, the current Mayor of Islington, (who looked resplendent in chain and ceremonial robes) Catherine West, the leader of Islington Council and err me. Its the first time I have ever used a special shovel for a symbolic tree planting act. A new experience! Then after a tour of bits of the site and meeting some old friends we had coffee and sandwiches.

And over coffee and sandwiches I found out:-

That Islington Council are working on developing a social media strategy

That Wilmott Dixon, the contractors are ALSO developing a social media startegy and have started a facebook page related to the project. Great interest in using Twitter. So my plan to bring together a group to see how we can use social media as part of the development of the project was well received. So now I need to get going and actually assemble the group.

#sfy2 #CrouchHillproject #Ashmount #unlibrary Well this is only my second tweet today

and Anke did set a target of three a day! (For the people, like me, on the sfy2 course)

However today WAS busy but productive. The unlibrary meeting allowed me to develop the Ashmount School/ Crouch Hill Park Social Media Project a bit further - and I made a really useful new contact. Crouch End Cupcake.
The agenda planning meeting at TravelWatch was good too, and I think we will have some interesting stuff coming up; but I cant really talk about it until the agenda public.

Finally tomorrow is another big day. In fact a really big one. we are having the official ground breaking ceremony for the Crouch Hill project, tomorrow at 11.30. its taken seven years to get this far, so Yippeee!

#sfy2 Things to do: people to meet

Well I have a busy day today; I am off to the unlibrary for the weekly meeting where I will have something to say about progress on a new social media project. I imagine Anke will be there.

Then I shall be going to London Bridge Station for a look at an exhibition about the enormous and hugely complex rebuild they are doing there in preparation for a Board meeting of London TravelWatch next week.

Then back to the London TravelWatch offices for a agenda planning meeting for the Consumer affairs committee - which I chair.

tomorrow I will have another untypical day, but more of that later.

Another evening at the unlibrary #sfy1

I shall shortly be shooting off to the penultimate evening workshop for Anke Holst's pilot course on social media...

I have had to miss a couple of these. A great pity as there is no doubt that getting together in a face to face group is an important - almost essential - ingredient of collaborative learning mostly facilitated using networks.

But still I shall be there tonight.