CMI webinar: What a good idea ....

I have just joined a Chartered Management Institute, CMI, Webinar via You Tube. The trainer ran a competition on the last 2 slides, to win a free personalised assessment, by posting a photograph (the last slide). Which included the CMI logo, to be posted onto FB or Twitter with the trainers hashtag and the Statement "My biggest takeaway from today's webinar is …..", the best 5 completed statements will win an assessment. What an excellent idea and just imagine what messages GG could give Leaders to post onto their social media accounts!

Especially relevant with new programme webinars on offer at the moment.

New Programme Posters

We now have 3 gorgeous posters we can use in training and in our units, they cover:

• an overview of the badges for each section by theme
• an overview of each of the programme themes
• an overview of how to achieve a theme and a gold award

They can be customised at the Online Print Centre with your unit or other logo. They are really bright and colourful, eye catching, and will appeal to girls. Find them at https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/making-guiding-happen/celebrate-every-girl/programme-poster/

Using the new Checklists for training

We now have 3 really useful Checklists on the website coming from the "Doing our Best Standards":

1. The five Essentials (there is no page 3!)
2. Making guiding happen
3. Safety & safeguarding 

They have been produced with implementation of the new programme in mind and each claims that the "checklist will help you bring it to life in your unit", each has a series of tick boxes.

At the last County Day I laminated 5 sets of the 5E's list and provided non permanent markers & white board cleaners (next time I will pack wet wipes). As part of an "Educational" wide game in the afternoon I was 1 of 20 bases. Leaders had to do a self assessment, in groups, and not always with the people they manage units with on how they were doing implementing the checklist. Where they didn't give themselves a tick, they then discussed an action plan to be able to earn themselves a tick. I was amazed how many leaders came to talk about the 5E's (wish I had laminated more sets of the checklists), also the quality of the discussion was really high quality. Where leaders had to work with leaders who they didn't know to make a "team" there was some really good ideas being shared. We (thank you Mary, who helped explore the outcome with each team before wiping clean the laminated checklists) uncovered a few myths that still seem to be floating around e.g a brownie can't earn an interest badge until they have made a Promise.

I did wonder if the checklists were an output of the Quality pilot. They are a really useful training tool and I can see how I could use them in a number of different training environments. To locate them on the GG website search "doingourbest". 

Gloucestershire County Day 2018

This year we were in Tewkesbury, fully booked and with a really good atmosphere about the new programme. County Day was a continuation from inset week, starting with an overview session and touching on change management. I was doing one of three Brownie trainings lasting 2 hours and focusing on the remaining 3 ppt from inset week - Awards, Using the Section books & Programme Planning. The IT was simple to connect, lap-top to projector, once I had the cable and the correct icon on the smart board to get to HDMI 1!
I had 40 chairs, in 3 rows, and it was very evident that any activities requiring movement were out - discussing with your neighbour was the best that could be managed! I asked for questions as we went along, and there was plenty of them so the 26 slides were just about right. There was lots of opportunities to share experiences, and there was a scout leader in the audience who was able to compare the scout approach with GG approach, which was useful. Concerns were raised around:

• paying for the badge books
• working with a number of skill groups at once
• supporting girls to achieve interest badges
• finding the time to record achievements on GO
• photocopying
• recruiting more leaders
• finding the time to accommodate UMA's & skills builders.

I managed to pass around a variety of resources during the training:

• Transition requirements
• Recording template
• New programme guidance notes
• sample theme & interest badges (in a handy see-through pencil case)
• new Region resource "Night in the Library"
• a plug for UK Parliament week 
• Educational Framework
• Participation on a Plate
• promoted #EveryGirl as a source for ideas & PR.

I felt the session went well and I had a number of leaders who commented on how useful it had been.

I had a lovely surprise at the end of the day - see photo!

New Programme Training:adapting the GG ppt's.

These are the lessons I learned from adapting 3 of the GG ppt's (Awards, Using the section books & Programme planning):

• there are 3 refresher slides I "borrowed" from the overview ppt - the programme, the themes & the stages
• whilst the slides maintain their numbering, however I moved them around, the slide number in the bottom left corner couldn't be edited
• to adapt the ppt to be a section training I had to change the images to ensure they were brownie related, I was able to "borrow" from other slides, without resorting to the clip art on the website
• I didn't appreciate how much repetition there is across all the ppt's
• I had to perform a similar process on the training plan and decided to transfer the key notes from the notes field of the slides, to the revised training plan. Likewise by deleting the 3 section photos I didn't want, I made space to paste the scenario onto the slide for the section I did want; saving the need to distribute by paper.
• I would have liked more scenarios for each section rather than just the one provided per section
• the quality of the activities are light-weight e.g how to identify the icon's for each section "by making a human chain" are completely unusable when you have 40 leaders in the room all from the same section!
• It took about 3 hours to get a ppt & training plan to match with 26 slides for a 2 hour training.