TeachMeet: Midlands: Inspiring practice and live blogging #tmm11

The first day of the half term holidays saw me joining educators from the midlands and beyond for a TeachMeet at Sherrier C of E Primary School in Lutterworth.

As ever, this TeachMeet was a really inspiring afternoon full of ideas and enthusiasm from the presenters and the audience. There was a strong theme of parental engagement running through the event, and some interesting reflections on how technology could be used to move towards a more collaborative model of involving parents rather than just reporting to them. I found many points of interest around this in Tony Sheppard‘s presentation, particularly the huge potential of technologies for communication, but the problems of addressing limited access to these technologies.

A particular highlight for me was Kniki Davies‘ presentation on how she had used Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia as a stimulus for an exploratory R.E. lesson. I found her use of the rich resource as a provocation to further discussion of spirituality really inspiring, and this idea of provocations is something I have been trying to integrate into my own practice for some time.

When I visited  ‘Learning without frontiers‘, I found myself coming home wanting to blog and reflect on almost all of the sessions that I attended. Unfortunately, that never happens after the event, as time is short and I was soon on to the next thing.  However, blogging in detail as the event happened allowed me to make a record and begin to synthesize the ideas from #tmm11 as they happened. Armed with my new MacBook I decided to try my hand at ‘live blogging’ the event, and managed to write posts on most of the talks as they happened.

Hopefully it has also created a resource that is of use for people who attended to reflect on what they learnt there, as well as for those who couldn’t make it to benefit from. It is certainly something I will do again when attending such events.

I certainly benefitted hugely from Ewan McIntosh‘s live blogs at #lwf, as well as those contributing to ‘feeding the backchannel’ with relevant links and information on each of the presentations. I think this is a really valuable role at such events, and something I plan to continue.

Links to the ‘live posts’ on my posterous blog are below:
#tmm11 – Moving from VLE to VLE Ecosystem – Mark Allen @edintheclouds

#tmm11 #purposed – Engage with the debate!

#tmm11- Pump up the lesson- @kvnmcl

#tmm11 Games Based Learning in Year 4 – Emma Dawson @squiggle7

#tmm11 Games Based Learning – Marc Faulder @marc_faulder

#tmm11 Taking Handwriting Digital – Nicki Wise @kiwiteacheruk

#tmm11 The MORSE code for Revision – @teachingofsci

#tmm11 Creative Approaches to R.E. – “My client is not in a hurry” @KnikiDavies

#tmm11 Mission:Explore – Getting outdoor learning into your classroom

#tmm11 “The ISO 7 Layer Model” @mikemcsharry

#tmm11 – Jan Webb on using commercial tools for study @janwebb21

#tmm11 Tony Sheppard @grumbledook on Online Reporting

#tmm11 @kvnmcl on Google Apps in a Primary School

#tmm11 Simon Shaw- Quick wins and successes in parental engagement

#tmm11 Zoe Ross on “Blue Peter Learning”