Profile

I graduated from the University of Westminster with a degree in Product Design and Engineering and enrolled on a PGCE course at the University of Greenwich. My first post was at Thomas More School in Purley teaching design and technology. Meanwhile I started to write features for Designing Magazine which became more regular as did my contact with the then Editor Debbie Howard. My time at Thomas More was great as it exposed me to systematic product analysis through Mr McHugh a teacher at the time. I was soon “headhunted” by Langley Park School for Boys. I spent a year and a half working with the department whilst maintaining contact with Debbie Howard, who in the meantime, along with good friend and business partner Gill Shaw set up Bluefish.

Soon after they have a new employee, I am almost immediately sent over to Conran’s Design Museum to help formulate and deliver a Nationwide Architecture in Schools project. During this time I also started to work with the idea of a product analysis system and handling collection, ultimately developing ACCESS FM. I decided on the descriptors very early on but could not really spell out a word that made any real sense, so I decided to use an anagram generator on the Internet and out popped ACCESS FM.

ACCESS FM was presented at countless conferences, to teachers, advisers and inspectors from the South East all the way up to Scotland. I showcased at the NEC Birmingham for the National Design Technology show, was invited to the annual NAADIT conferences and worked very closely with Gina White HMI and the now head man at DATA, Richard Green. Soon after I developed a higher order thinking skill called LINKS FX which was unveiled the following year at the NAADIT conference.

I left Bluefish after a brilliant two years because I desperately missed teaching. I really enjoyed visiting schools through my role at Bluefish and loved the creative freedom they afforded, but I hardly ever got to see the long term benefits of what I was teaching. I joined Ravenswood School for Boys in Bromley teaching design technology. The school is run by Doctor Berwick, an inspirational Head with fantastic vision not just for Ravenswood but schools across London and as a result leads the London leadership strategy for London Challenge and furthermore has the honour of having the school appear in Ofsted’s Outstanding list four times in a row. I was awarded Head of Department six years ago and also went on to acquire AST status. My department now thrives on the use of ACCESS FM and LINKS FX with the department being awarded “Outstanding” by Ofsted on four consecutive occasions. Furthermore the department has entered a student into the National Young Engineer for Britain awards for the past five years and won an award on every occasion.  Last year I was fortunate enough to be given an invite to attend a series of meetings held by DATA , led by Richard Green  held at the Design Council. We were able to discuss the future of Design Technology education within the UK and furthermore spend some time discussing and formulating new ideas.

Later that year , along with two members of the department, I set up a new training business in the local area, teaching teachers how to formulate their own websites, pod-casts and e-portfolios. More recently I was invited to Canada ,where I helped set up and run an observation programme within the Western Quebec School Boards developing centres of excellence. Within this time I was also asked to formulate a system of study for their multi-million dollar post 16 National Welding program. I have since produced a pro-forma that will be used across the centre in the teaching, grading and evaluation in that topic of study.

In October 2010 I was awarded the title of TES, Times Educational Supplement’s National Design Technology Advisor and have had numerous articles published since this date, in both the magazine and via their extensive website. Only two weeks later I was interviewed for a design technology education feature in The Donga, Korea’s largest national newspaper. Early 2011 I was invited to join a team setup by Pearson publishing house to develop a new interactive educational product which is presently being piloted across the South-east of England.  I was awarded the position of Professional Progression Coach at Ravenswood School just a few months ago and have since developed a system of coaching and mentoring which will be available via this site as an Ipad specific application. A new and very exciting publication aimed squarely at A-level and degree design students is nearing completion and will be produced in association with Accessfm.com soon.

Spencer Herbert.