Attending the first TeachMeet Midands in 2009 through a flashmeeting was my first experience of TeachMeet events, and I came away inspired with ideas and enthused by the ethos of sharing exciting practice. With the same team, the same fantastic venue at the National College, and an array of stories from Foundation Stage to Higher Education, the 2011 version was equally inspiring.
All of the presentations I watched were of a really high quality, with some thought provoking practice on show. Of particular interest to me was the use of live blogging to collect and share EYFS evidence at Leamore Primary School. Capturing evidence using iPod touches is something I had been thinking about for some time, but the concept of live blogging it so that parents can follow the learning journeys of their children is a powerful idea. In conversation with the staff after their presentation it appears that this live blogging was actually more straightforward than a system without the sharing element, as it allows all of the evidence to be ‘beamed’ to the cloud instead of having to connect cameras to computers to download media. The use of tags to sort this information quickly and easily is another thing I have been thinking about, and their presentation has given me the push I needed to move thinking to practice.
NQT Marc Faulder’s presentation on following childrens interest in litter down the path of a topic on sustainability showed the power of not over planning learning, and letting it take the course the children want it to. The eloquent talk that he shared through audio examples was testament to engaging young children in this way.
Meeting up with online contacts is always one of the most enjoyable parts of a TeachMeet, and it was great to see so many people face to face who feed my learning online. It was also great to see so many people who were new to TeachMeets, and I even bumped into someone I studied with on my PGCE. I know Stuart, Kevin and Tom put a lot of time and thinking into engaging people from outside of the twittersphere, and I would be interested to hear their strategy for creating the buzz surrounding this event.
I liveblogged many of the presentations on my posterous, with links to individual presentations below:
#tmm11 Xbox Kinect in the classroom – Raymond Chambers @Lanky_Boi_Ray
#tmm11 First round of nanopresentations…
#tmm11 Sustainability with foundation children – Marc Faulder @marc_faulder
#tmm11 The Avatar Project – Peter O’Brien @peter_obrien1
#tmm11 iPod touches for EYFS evidence through live blogging – Leamore Primary @Michelle_Hill
#tmm11 Mashing up the curriculum digitally – Ashley Proud @ashleyproud
#tmm11 Inspiring Pupils using Learning Provocations – Julian Wood @Ideas_Factory
#tmm 11 nano presentations part 2 – @KnikiDavies @lordlangley @teenytina
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