Wednesday 31 January 2007

I spent most of today on a train... a very nice train and of course you can get a lot of work done when you spend six hours on a train...

I went to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham to do the after-lunch slot at the ContinYou 'Learning Families - Healthy Communities' Conference. It was a fantastic opportunity to network and share... they had a great lunch... and I did a great session!

There were some amazing people there with wonderful sories to tell. The SHARE School of the Year was Robin Hood Infant and Nursery School,a wonderful little school from Nottingham, and the SHARE Authority of the Year was the Isle of Wight, clearly somewhere doing interesting things... Leeds won that award last year!

What were my highlights of a great day with some brilliant people...
  • I met Roy Smoothe, a charismatic young man, who produces these materials called Smoothe Mixx, a blend of inspirational, motivational and educational messages to music.
  • I met Neil Solo, another inspirational character, who works for Barnardo's and runs an African Caribbean Fatherhood Training Programme.
  • I found out about ContinYou's Young Leaders in the Community Programme which links to the National College for School Leadership's Student Leadership Programme to work with students of today to develop leaders of the future.
  • I got hold of a copy of the CEDC's 'It's a man thing! Reading together' pack which aims to encourages dads to read with their children.
  • I discovered The Basic Skills Agency's 'Learning with Grandparents' programme which encourages grandparents to actively support their grandchildren's learning.
  • I also met Julia Damassa, a storyshaper. Storyshaping is an interactive way of making stories and sharing them out loudusing storyshapesa nd handshapes. But it was actually Julia's t-shirt that attracted me and I'll tell you what it said when Julia sends me one.

All in all it was a great day... a day when you realise that all we have to do to release the magic is to SHARE! Thank you ContinYou for everything I learned today.
Chris

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