Josie Fraser is a UK-based Social and Educational Technologist. Since June 2010, she has lead on technology for Leicester City Council’s multi-million pound Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme. She is responsible for setting, promoting and delivering on a city wide agenda for educational transformation in relation to the use of technology within schools.

She developed and leads on the DigiLit Leicester staff development project, designed to raise digital literacy skills and awareness across Leicester’s secondary schools workforce, to enhance practice and in turn raise learner engagement and achievement. The project is a partnership between the Council, De Montfort University, and 23 secondary schools. In September 2013, the project achieved recognition as one of five global winners of the Reclaim Open Learning innovation 2013 competition, organised by the MacArthur Foundation, The Digital Media and Learning Hub, and MIT Media Lab.

She has worked across education, with government, schools, further education providers and universities, promoting and developing the effective and innovative use of ICT and e-learning policy and practice in the UK and internationally. Working across the broad field of educational technology, she is primarily interested in digital literacy, e-safety, and in the ways in which social technologies can be used to support learning, organisational change and community development.

This talk will explore why open and connected learning is a critical priority for the schools sector, look at some of the exciting work taking place in Leicester’s schools relating to digital literacy, and explain why Leicester is currently leading the way internationally in terms of open learning.