Andy is Headteacher of Thorpe Hall School, Girls and Boys (350 on Roll), independent, non-selective, Nursery to GCSE in Southend-on-Sea in Essex, UK.

Andy's Top 10 Tools as at 1 October 2009

1. Twitter: I have a great set of people to follow and learn lots everyday about learning tools and other tech stuff. Twitter is a major driver in taking my learning into new and unexpected areas; I'm learning about stuff I didn't know I didn't know.

2. VLE (It's Learning). We installed this in my school in April and it is proving very effective on so many levels.

3. YouTube. I like to embed YouTube vids in the VLE as a stimulus for discussion and debate at school.

4. Chrome. I find Google Chrome very good at prompting and refining my searches - saves times and leads to better quality results.

5. iGoogle - RSS feeds on iGoogle and other news pushes enable me to follow favourite blogs.

6. iPhone - with twitter ap, email, SKY news, safari etc. There are few questions to which the iPhone is not the answer! I can access my Google calendar.

7. SoLearn - Jane's Social Learning Space - creep, I know, but the 'on the web' tool is excellent and answered a lot of need in being able to follow current thinking about things like ePortfolios.

8. ISANet - is a Ning site (you know it!) and is the main forum site I participate in.

9. Blogger - I have two blogs, one for advanced saxophone players and one called 'Pupil engagement in education'.

10. Outlook 2007 - a good way to organise my email and with smooth contacts aggregation the programme encourages me to email more than I would if it was harder.