New year. New start. New attitude.

2011 - A year of unbelievable ideas, suggestions and flawed thinking from the Department of Education, and in particular from Michael Gove and his Chamber of Ofsted.

Who can forget how funding continued to be stripped from Local Authority schools for use in Gove's Free School initiative; his idea for a Bible to be sent to every school with a personal foreward from him at the beginning (that idea produced some excellent tweets around the meme of 'GovesBible' within the Twitterverse); or more recently the excellent(!) idea that a dress code for teachers would result in outstanding lessons simply because a teacher would "look professional" (afterall, bankers wear suits and oh how they are an outstanding professional model for the public to look up to aren't they).

That's just three examples - but I could have chosen from so many more ridicululous announcements that emerged from the DfE during 2011.

BBC News - In pictures_ Arrival of 2012 (Getty Images)

So, farewell to a bonkers 2011. Welcome 2012. A brand new, straight-out-of-the-bag, still smelling factory fresh New Year. 

Before the DfE gets itself into gear, and starts to roll out yet more worrying idealogy from Gove, I'm going to set myself some personal performance management targets that go against everything Gove believes in. I'll review them halfway through the year, and see how I've done by December...

Target One: This year - during the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turning - I will give the children at my school the opportunity to learn to program devices - if they so wish. I will give them the chance to see and learn how code works, and for those that take to it, like it, and want to go further, I will support them in their learning. I will offer them a variety of devices and software to programme with, and will actively look throughout the year for new and exciting ways to inspire children into the world of coding. 

 

Target Two: I will push the use of digital technology throughout the curriculum even more this year, and make sure that our bank of digital resources are used more and more within lessons whenever it is appropriate. I will push for the children to be given even more choice in HOW they choose to record their work, how they choose to research their work, and how they choose to present their work. I will continue to support staff who want to use technology to improve learning opportunities, and celebrate good practice that occurs throughout the school. 

 

Target Three: This year I will use Twitter more effectively, and make time for those people who have something interesting, exciting, or inspiring to say, those people who raise the levels of what is possible and support others when they attempt something new. At the same time I will step away from - and ignore - those who are only interested in themselves, promoting their own ego, those who are willing to take but not give back in return.

 

2012 offers so many unique opportunities within the classroom; from the centenery of Alan Turing's birth, the London Olympics, the Eufa cup, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee to name but a few. It also offers to the new start at work with new management, and even to the opportunity that the governments curriculum delay offers, because we now have the chance to demonstrate that inspiring learning can take place through the use of technology in classrooms; to show that even though the DfE don't value ICT we, as educators, do.

2012 is going to be a good, and productive, year :o)