Learning, Teaching and ICT

 I think we all had a great time at the first Falkirk TeachMeet - I know I did, anyway!

It was great to see it all coming together as people worked very hard behind the scenes to make sure that everything was just as it should be. Katie  John Cassie Rich Peter were all beavering about two hours before ‘kick off’. A mention needs to be given to the staff at Carronvale House, Larbert . The venue was great and we couldn’t fault the service and value for money

There’s loads of other people to thank, too. John deserves a special mention for doing a brilliant job as M.C. The presenters were all great – and Con had us laughing in the aisles as he entertained us with his singing during his talk on how twitter is a great tool for CPD

A great big thank you again, too, to all our sponsors ……..   and the loan of the Smart Board from Steljes was just brilliant!

Unfortunately I didn’t get round to timing my presentation (and probably blethered some unnecessary nonsense as well)  so I only told half of the ePortfolio story that I’ve been working on with a small group of P6 children recently.

I suppose that making a 7 minute presentation requires similar skills as the art of  summarising what you want to say on twitter? I still struggle to join in with twitter converstations because I usually fail miserably to get points over in just 140 characters.

Here’s the gist of my presentation from TeachMeet Falkirk. It’s followed by some snapshots of the children’s ePortfolios …. and an explanation from one of them as to what he perceives an eportfolio to be about.

Play the presentation below to hear the Primary 6 perspective ………. ePortfolios in Plain English?

At the time of publishing this post, there’s only just over 1 week remaining until the first Falkirk TeachMeet! This is a follow-up to the previous post I wrote about what has been involved in the organisation of the event. A few of us are meeting up at the venue this Thursday to have a think about practical issues such as plug point locations and seating arrangements and general agenda issues.

Thankfully, others had stepped in almost as soon as the wiki had been set up with offers of help:

 Sinclair Mackenzie   organised a Flashmeeting and posted on the wiki that an edit will be made available for replay immediately after the event. So far 8 people from far-flung areas of Scotland - and at least one other from the other side of the world - are going to be able to take part during the event – and many others will be able to easily access it later via the replay.

On the evening, the Flashmeeting will be run by David Noble

Katie Barrowman has organised a Glow Meet - I’m not sure if that’s the first time that this has happened during a TeachMeet event?

Because of all this technical stuff going on, I was asked to find out things. I popped along to the venue and here’s what they told me: 

I think it all means that the flashmeeting and the Glow meet can go ahead?

Fingers crossed

But there were other decisions to make about our first Falkirk Teachmeet. For example, John Connell questioned the insistence that all presentations should be based firmly in classroom practice in this excellent blog post. Before reading this, I hadn’t actually thought too much about the rules and regulations involved when organising a local TeachMeet event. It was comforting to be able to call on the other helpers so that we could make collective decisions. We felt that we had to make our own rules to suit our unique circumstances. The majority of the Falkirk Teachmeet attendees are new to the concept and only heard of it via an email that I had permission to send out to all schools and various groups.

We decided to change the three of the normal rules:

•  Those who wanted to attend the TeachMeet after reading about it in the email were asked to simply reply and I added their names to the wiki. We didn’t want them to feel they had to sign up directly to the wiki, in case they saw as it as a barrier to attending if they were not familiar with editing online spaces.

• When we noticed that some of the ‘new to Teachmeet’ attendees were signing up to give 7 or 2 minute presentations, we decided to limit the number of presenters. It’s great to see that these new people are volunteering to share their stories of what they’re doing in class and it didn’t seem right that they might leave their first TeachMeet without having had the opportunity to present.

• The third decision was to bend the presentation rule that states, “everything must be happening in a classroom now“. This rule appears on the TeachMeet wiki in the organise your own section and the page was last edited by Ewan McIntosh (one year ago according to the wiki history tab?). The rule appears to have been interpreted to mean that ’YOUR TALK MUST BE ABOUT EXPERIENCES OF WORK IN CLASSROOMS.’ … well, that’s what was copied and pasted by someone on to the Falkirk TeachMeet page and very recently on to the new East Lothian page. On the face of it, therefore, it seems quite controvertial to allow people who are not currently in class to talk ……. and to talk about about things that are not actually happening right now. But in our defence, the decision was made by something Ewan said when he commented on John Connell’s post mentioned earlier:

“…….Perhaps what’s required additionally to the realists’ innovations of TeachMeet is that equally essential headspace to think what would happen if? Let’s call it DreamMeet. You must talk about things that are not happening in classrooms We could have some fun reversing some of the TeachMeet constraints, and it would give me an excuse to put my head back around this particular unconference’s door!”

So – I hope that what we manage to do with Falkirk Teachmeet ’09 is to have a mixture of things that are happening in real classrooms right now …. and a bit of that ‘DreamMeet’ proposition thrown in for good measure:-)

It’s now 2 months since I wrote a post about how I was ‘toying’ with the idea of arranging a TeachMeet event here in Falkirk – and a lot has happened in that short time. In a couple of weeks, almost 60 people will come along to Carronvale House to take part, and many teachers from Falkirk will have their first experience of this new style of CPD (some of them have also volunteered to share teaching experiences with others in a 7 minute presentation).

I’ve been reading on twitter that others have also been contemplating organising a local TeachMeet, and some have asked me about the practicalities of planning such an event.  This post is a summary of how the initial idea developed.

When I mentioned the possibility of having a TeachMeet in Falkirk, Cassie Law was very keen. She’d already attended the TM Student edition (where she gave a 7 minute talk) and was sold on the whole idea. Later, we mentioned it to another Falkirk teacher, Richard Olyott - so then there were three

Soon after that, a colleague at work suggested that the idea might be of interest to the primary ICT co-ordinators. We meet with the representatives from each primary school here three times a year. Initially, I was a bit concerened that they’d think that the notion was a bit bizarre … teachers giving up their own free time to attend a CPD event that had been organised by other classroom teachers. I came up with the idea, however, of introducing them to two great free online tools that I suspected they would find useful in their classroom practice at the same time – that way, if TeachMeet wasn’t for them, they’d have gotten something out of the short presentation. The two tools were Prezi.com and the great random name picker tool (traditionally used at all TeachMeets) – both did in fact prove to be a success as they went down a treat

The Prezi I made to introduce the TM concept is included below:

 At that time, there was no date set for a TeachMeet event in Falkirk. At the Scottish Learning Festival TM in September the three Falkirk ‘pioneers’ met Nick Tait and Peter Graham, two other interested Falkirk teachers. During an interval the participants were asked to make a promise to do something as a result of having attended that TM. We publically announced on twitter  that the Falkirk event would go ahead on the evening of one of our November in-service days. The following day, Nick Tait posted the details on the TeachMeet wiki and the challenge was issued – there was no going back!

After that, we spent a couple of evenings discussing things on Twitter and decided that the best thing would be to meet up again in person. One of the items on the agenda was a possible venue -and finding the ideal place was proving to be the biggest challenge. Just before our October break, however, I telephoned Carronvale House in Larbert, a venue that Falkirk Council have used in the past for their annual ICT Fair. On paper, it appeared to ‘tick all the boxes’. It’s about a 10 minute walk from a train station where trains arrive directly from Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh (some people from Glasgow had already signed up on the wiki and had requested that the venue be close to a train station), is minutes drive from the motorway, has wireless and wired internet connection, charges half price for evening hire, provides food, has a ‘bring your own bottle’ policy (and even supplies the glasses).

One of their rooms was available for hire that evening, so after consulting the others via email, we decided to just go for it and book it there and then ….  and worry about paying for it afterwards

During the October break, I emailed Anne from Steljes and asked if there was any chance of sponsorship, and on the same day that she got back to me, Con Morris from the National CPD Team got in touch via twitter to say that they were also going to provide sponsorship. Ross, Louise and John have agreed to support the event as well.

Ben was  interested in attending a TeachMeet event after hearing about the notion via a conversation with Tom Barrett . I discovered this after reading this twitter post by David Noble:

David’s reference to the fact that some of the people originally involved in getting TeachMeets going would be attending the Falkirk event motivated me to ask  John Johnston to chair the Falkirk TM and I’m ‘mega pleased’ that he has agreed to do this. It’s also great that my line manager supports the event and gave permission for me to contact all Falkirk schools via email.

It’s been quite a journey organising the first Falkirk TeachMeet and this post has only told half the story -  I’ll publish now and save the rest for Falkirk TeachMeet Update – take two