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Teachmeet
TeachMeet Hits its Fourth Birthday: Coming of Age #tmfuture
May 24th
TeachMeet is entering its fifth year and the unconference for teachers, by teachers has helped hundreds – maybe thousands, in fact – to try out something new, alter the way they already teach and learn, join a community of innovative educators or completely transform their way of working.
The hope was that the model would spread. It has, but as those who have created and helped pull TeachMeet together over the past four years, we want to see it spread further, deeper and with increasing quality of input from practitioners. This post outlines how we think we might manage this.
This is the beginnings of a conversation with those who care about TeachMeet. Add your views in the form of any blog post or comment or tweet – tag it #tmfuture
What are the goals of TeachMeet?
TeachMeet was originally designed to:
- Take thinking away from the formal, often commercialised conference floor, and provide a safe place for anyone to pitch their practice.
- Provide a forum for more teachers to talk about real learning happening in real places, than one-hour conference seminar slots allow.
- Showcase emerging practice that we could all aim to undertake; sales pitches not allowed.
- Be all about the Teach, with only a nod towards tech that paved the way for new practice.
- Provoke new ways of sharing our stories: PowerPoint was banned. We wanted people to tell stories in ways that challenged them, and the audience.
- Empower the audience to critique, ask questions and probe, all online, through SMS or, later, Twitter.
Over the years, these ‘rules’ have altered, leading to some great innovations, others less so. The answer to “What is a TeachMeet?” has become a myriad of meanings, some pretty far off the original goals. We need to help and support people to organise, run and contribute to events that build on previous ones. We need to make TeachMeet as accessible to newbies as it was in 2005. We need TeachMeet to once more find its focus.
Supporting the “infectiousness” of TeachMeets
- Organising TeachMeets should not be easy. Taking part in them should be. But more support is needed for organisers.
- Sponsorship is hard if there’s no bank account into which funds can be sent.
- Without sponsorship, any event over 30 people becomes tricky to organise while also giving people a special night of learning, the time, space and mood that gets people over their self-conscious selves.
- Paying for refreshments and venues is impossible if there’s no organisation to pay them the precise sum.
- The best TeachMeets provide social space, social activity, entertaining MCs, good refreshments, good online coverage and some form of online ‘conclusion’ – this needs coordinating by the organiser(s), but it’s not a skill everyone will have the first time around.
- We’ve got a superb opportunity to curate the best bits from all these TeachMeets that are happening weekly – this needs a degree of oversight.
A means to make TeachMeet more sustainable, easier to use for sponsors and organisers, and have the ability to do something spectacular
TeachMeet is owned by the community that shape it – but there needs to be a body to manage sponsorship and sponsors, and provide support for new organisers so that they maintain the TeachMeet goals. We assume that if someone is organising a ‘TeachMeet’ they would like to emulate the success of those popular early TeachMeets, and better-supported national conference ones (e.g. SLF and BETT).
What would support from the TeachMeet body look like?
- Seeking of sponsorship all year round – including ways and means to get your message to as many teachers as possible
- Brokerage of sponsorship – i.e. one place sponsors and those seeking sponsorship can come together, in a transparent manner
- Recommendation of onsite support (good venues at discounted rates/free, A/V, event organisation [for bigger venues], catering etc)
- Suggestions for various formats that have worked in the past
- Mentoring from previous TeachMeet leaders including on-the-night help
- Featuring of content and promotion of the event in a timely manner on an aggregated, higher profile TeachMeet site
- A group calendar so that events can be seen by geography and date
- Promotion of TeachMeet through international and national events, using contacts of existing TeachMeeters
- In-event publicity (e.g. if you plan an event at a regional ICT day or national event, then we can help broker paper materials for insertion into packs etc)
But, above all, TeachMeet is reaching a point of saturation in the UK – things are going really well in terms of enthusing teachers about their own learning. We have a great opportunity to carry over a small proportion of the sponsorship and contributions towards creating a TeachMeet culture in countries where teacher professional development in this way is still blocked by barriers physical, financial or cultural. This is just one idea, harboured for a long time but unable to realise in the current setup.
This body can take the form of:
- A Limited company (with a Director and shareholders)
- A Charitable Limited Company, with a board of directors and voting rights for fellow ’shareholders’ (we could work out some way of people being ‘awarded’ shares based on [non-financial] involvement?)
- A Social Enterprise, perhaps formed as a Limited Company (see more information on what this means and how it might work (pdf))
- A Charity (this feels like a lot more red tape to pull through and perhaps not entirely necessary)
As we take things forward we invite you to contribute your ideas and thoughts to make things work smoothly. We want you to comment, probe and make your own suggestions before the end of June, using the tag #tmfuture
Pic: The main room awaits TeachMeet Midlands 2009 :: Ian Usher
My Reflections on TeachMeet Takeover
Jan 16th
Try something different. If it turns out to be a mistake then you’ve learned something, so it isn’t really a mistake.
The TeachMeet community tried something different this year at BETT. We mobilised, we tookover vendors’ stands and talked about free ideas teachers could use on Monday. We made an attempt to pass on the inspiring ideas that are regularly presented at the face to face TeachMeet events, to those who may have never attended one. Teachmeet Takeover made a small step out of the echo chamber that the community often gets caught speaking to.
Yes we made mistakes, we stumbled, but the idea I think is sound enough – here are a few things I have learned, observed and thought about from the last few days of TeachMeet Takeover
- Teachers get very excited about free tools.
- The majority of free web based tools that are familiar to some are completely unknown to others.
- Some companies understand the need for teachers to be talking directly to other teachers about real practice.
- There are so many passionate and inspiring teachers willing to stand up and present about their ideas.
- A handful of companies genuinely believe in the same things as we do.
- It can be hard to make the FREE message authentic amongst all of the SELL, SELL, SELL. But what started as a whisper…
- Many, many more vendors want their stands involved at BETT 2011.
- Next year we will stipulate requirements for the stands. Internet access, big projection facilities and a PA system.
- A simple competition gives people who are unsure a clear direction and encourages them to see multiple TeachMeet Takeover talks.
- Publicity is important, so people know about it before arriving.
- Maybe Takeover should only take place on Thursday and Friday.
- It exceeded all of my expectations.
- I now know the idea works in reality, with more planning for 2011 we can be more ambitious – perhaps.
- We could try a mass Takeover, four stands all close together in much more of a flash mob style.
- Certain companies are happy to volunteer time, money and resources (including their stands) to support TeachMeet Takeover.
- Keeping talks under 15 minutes is best.
- Having two people on a stand talking consecutively works really well.
- It has never been more important for teachers to be sharing free resources, tools and ideas with other teachers.
I have been thinking deeply over the last 3 days about the relationship between sales driven companies and the teachers sharing free ideas. For some of the talks there were 30-40 people on the stands – we were bringing them in. That is obviously good for the vendor but it also good for teachers sharing ideas with other teachers. Maybe 3 or 4 people stop and look at some of the vendor’s fliers or products, similarly maybe 15-20 people go away and find out about the free idea they heard from a presentation.
Perhaps we need to bridge the often gaping chasm between these two communities if we are to properly amplify some of the messages, ideas and ideologies to the majority of teachers which are so intrinsic to the TeachMeet community. There has been plenty of reference to the disconnect between teachers and those who sell products, but I am more convinced that we need to build partnerships to effect large scale change in schools. The interesting thing is that companies at BETT are desperate to find ways to engage with their users on a more authentic level. I think TeachMeet Takeover has provided a viable option and it works. Importantly the teacher community has acted first on this, it is on our terms, we have defined how this engagement happens and so can keep the right intentions at the heart of what happens in the future.
None of the vendors involved deliberately hijacked an audience to peddle their own wares – they really did just let us takeover. I think that turning people on their stands into real sales is harder then encouraging teachers to look further into a free idea that is presented. Also a person’s subsequent research into how they might use a free tool will inevitably lead to teachers’ blogs and maybe the domino effect is that they start to find out more and more free tools and ideas. We must be aware of the knock on effect a single 10 minute Takeover talk could have in the weeks ahead.
I heard about one teacher attending TeachMeet Takeover who had never heard of Twitter or any of the online tools that were being presented. After his first talk he spent his day at BETT attending most of the other Takeover talks collecting the 8 ideas he needed to win the goody bag prize. Hopefully his head is buzzing with that bunch of new, free ideas and is thinking about how he can best use them to support learning with his class.
A BIG thankyou to all of the vendors and teachers who contributed to TeachMeet Takeover this year.
We were able to apply some of the feedback from Thursday to improve things for the following days – I would be grateful to hear more of your thoughts and reactions from the Takeover events. What should we consider changing or improving for next year? What stories from Takeover have you to tell?
Sharing Classroom Inspiration For Free
Jan 13th
Something new is happening at the BETT show this year, the largest educational technology trade show in the world. Not a new product or technology service. Not a new website or gadget. This year some companies have handed over their brightly coloured stands to teachers. They are downing tools for 30 minutes and giving teachers the controls!
Teachers and educators have voluntarily signed up on a wiki to “takeover” these stands throughout Thursday, Friday and Saturday and will be speaking about free ideas. Sharing classroom inspiration for free. This, ladies and gentleman, is…
But why would a brave few companies allow us to takeover their expensive stands? Here are a few reasons, the first from Chris Bradford from BrainPOP UK, one of the very first companies to offer their support (and orange stand) to TeachMeet Takeover:
We support CPD (Continuing Professional Development). To support those who want to be better teachers. We know BrainPOP UK works best as part of a good teacher’s toolkit – we also know teachers call upon any number of other resources. Why shouldn’t we do our bit to encourage open minded investigation into new ways of doing things?
The second set of remarks come from another Chris, this time Chris Ratcliffe from Scholastic UK who has been instrumental in driving this idea onwards:
At BETT, I usually spend a lot of time talking to very interested consultants and advisors (and I like doing so), but I don’t spend a lot of time talking to teachers. My feeling is that as the stands are much more corporate than at the other shows, it is much more serious; and to get people to be excited to come back time and time again it needed something different.
To me, when I came across TeachMeet, it felt like the perfect solution. To have teachers standing up and talking to other teachers about what gets them excited would be just the sort of thing that would lift the show.
If you are attending the show you can see the full timetable on the wiki or why not download our flyer which has all of the details. Not only that but the flyer has details of a competition too in which you can win a £350 goody bag just by collecting some idea, here is a snap of part of the flyer.
If you are at BETT please help by taking part and heading over to the stands, you might learn something from the teachers presenting. If you are not attending be sure to follow along on Twitter, the hashtag for the 3 days of takeover talks is #TMtakeover.
If you are attending, presenting or showing at FETC or ISTE in the US this year why not try something similar. Companies: hand over the controls – let go and learn! Teachers: takeover and share your great ideas for free!
Looking Back
Dec 27th
The sun will soon be rising on 2010 and I just wanted to look back at a hugely eventful year for me personally. Here are some of the things that have been memorable.
Last Christmas we spent our holidays in Australia. It was an amazing trip for me and I would dearly love to return to that part of the world, perhaps on a more permanent basis. When we arrived in Sydney our apartment was not going to be open until later in the day. We had landed about 8am and the prospects of entertaining a 2 year old with all of our luggage still in tow was going to be tricky. But to our rescue came Judy O’Connell and Dean Groom, both of whom I had known from our various online networks but had never met before. Judy kindly picked us up from the airport and we went back to her house where we were able to unwind for a little bit. Dean picked us up later and took us on to our apartment in Manly. I am so grateful for that amazing gesture of kindness – it got our trip off to a great start and illustrates the trust that can be developed through online connections.
The TeachMeet community has had an incredible 2009 and I have been fortunate enough to have been to five events in person. The BETT show TeachMeet began the year and I was just amazed by the scale of things and the huge interest from the commercial sector. In May Stuart Sutherland and I organised and ran the first TeachMeet in the Midlands, hosted by the National College for School Leadership. It was incredible to be part of the full organisation and we are hoping to hold another in 2010. I was delighted to be invited to do a mini-note at TeachMeet North East London and also to organise TeachMeet Channel 4 to bookend their education conference. In September I was able to return to the Scottish Learning Festival and another TeachMeet held in the BBC Scotland building. Along with popping into various Flashmeetings I also attended Dai Barnes and Doug Belshaw’s hugely successful EdTechRoundup TeachMeet which was held online. This added another amazing dimension to this incredible professional development event. With Stuart Ridout, I am currently organising TeachMeet Bett 2010 as well as TeachMeet Takeover – it looks like it should kick off another inspiring year of grass roots professional development.
When you get an invitation from royalty to a conference in another country you can be excused for being a little sceptical. But the inaugural World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Qatar was no joke. I was delighted to be included in only 1000 of the invited delegates from all over the world. A handful of edubloggers were invited but not many actually attended. It was a privilege to represent primary school teachers from the UK and be part of the wider discussions. Although the word “innovation” was in the conference name, little was done to “walk the walk” in terms of the communication processes used. That said, I blogged and tweeted my way through the event to encourage remarks and comment from a wider audience. I hope that if there is a 2010 event that more will be done to encourage delegates to share what they experience with a world audience.
This time next year I will have spent a term in a new job! After a bit of grumbling I stumbled upon a Deputy Head Teacher job that I believed would be a great opportunity. I spent the return flight from Qatar writing the letter, which got me an interview. The day and a half interview was a great challenge and I was thrilled to be offered the job. I will be starting as Deputy Head Teacher in the Summer term. I have been in my current post for about 8 years and I have been through some great times, but it has long been time for me to move on and face a new challenge. As part of the interview I asked readers of this blog and followers on Twitter to help with some testimonials. I printed them off and found a moment in the formal interview to hand them out to the panel – it was an amazing set of references and I have no doubt helped secure the job. Thankyou to everyone who contributed to the 20,000 character job reference.
During 2009 I continued my involvement with multi-touch technology in the classroom. At BETT in January I met with representatives from SMART and organised an early trial of the SMART Table in my classroom. After working with it I felt it’s capacity to impact on learning was limited. Sadly the trial was abruptly ended, in my opinion due to an honest and frank account of my experiences I blogged about. Although critical of the SMART Table I was committed to helping SMART improve and develop it as it would directly benefit the wider multi-touch educational technology field. But, alas, they prevented that by taking it away and they did it, in my opinion, to limit the damage caused by my negative posts. I am now a member of the SynergyNet steering group at Durham University who are developing a multi-touch learning project, and met in November of this year for the first time. The developments at Durham are really exciting: multi-touch classrooms, networked tables able to pass media between them and a general focus on the pedagogies that underpin multi-touch enhanced learning.
This academic year we have been doing shorter half-termly topics in Year 5. We have found that although shorter, they are more focused. The first one was Sealife. Built around and inspired by the Nintendo Wii game Endless Ocean. It was a pleasure to work with the children during the 7 weeks as we explored, discovered and learned together. Using an open ended game to drive a topic was amazing to work with and the children were completely engaged and enjoyed every moment.
Maths Maps has been a long time in the making. Years ago I made some Google Earth resources that used the satellite imagery to structure maths activities. With the development of Google Maps and the ability to now collaborate on a map as if it is a document, such as a Google Document, I have been able to realise what I had always imagined with these resources. Each Maths Map is a maths topic with activities located on real life objects visible in the satellite imagery layer of Google Maps. In total the 3 current maps have been viewed 85,000 times, but more importantly the idea has inspired other teachers to begin using Google Maps to produce engaging content for their learners.
This year I finally made the switch to a self hosted blog. With the nudging of Doug Belshaw I bought some space and installed Wordpress, transferred everything from my old blog and have been really happy here in my new home. The most obvious advantage is the personalisation that you can achieve with your own space. There is no limit or other person choosing what you can add or not. You are free to be as creative with your space as you are with what you write. I was pleased to have been nominated by my peers for 6 different Edublog Awards categories this year, thankyou to all those who wrote such kind words in their nomination posts.
I just tweeted about a couple of updates to two different “Interesting Ways” presentations. The IWB resource was started in November 2007 and now there are about 30 different crowd-sourced resources with a huge amount of shared expertise. I prefer not to be too tool-centric, nor do I like the formulaic “100 Awesome things to do with a Cabbage” sort of posts that have littered education blogging recently. In my opinion what sets the Interesting Ways resources apart is that (a) they all begin at zero, they are put out there not as a perfectly formed multiple of 10 lists and (b) they are built by everyone, the crowd, educators explaining and sharing their experiences. They are authored by the community and I feel lucky to be in the position to keep encouraging them along.
A memorable year in lots of different ways and Christmas at home this year has been made really special as my 3 year old son’s excitement has built to a feverish crescendo. I have been able to share in some of that too. I wonder what 2010 will bring? I am looking forward to it already. I wish you all the best for 2010 and hope you continue to join me.
TeachMeet Takeover NEEDS YOU!
Dec 14th
The last time I wrote about TeachMeet Takeover a handful of intrigued companies had shown some interest in allowing teachers to use their stands at BETT 2010 to talk about free tools. Now we have seven who have signed up ready to be taken over!
I don’t enjoy the BETT show very much. The TeachMeet is always a tonic and the opportunity to meet people also helps, in part, to dilute the overwhelming nature of it all. In my opinion the biggest challenge for the TeachMeet community is to encourage new people along to the events. TeachMeet Takeover is about taking the message of free, powerful (mainly) online ideas to other teachers attending BETT 2010.
In a nutshell: Educators presenting about FREE ideas on the vendor stands at the world’s largest educational technology event. Sharing inspiration for free.
Take a look at the wiki, the companies are willing. The timetable is filling up. Are you up for helping? Can you spare 10 minutes on the day that you are at BETT 2010 to talk about free classroom ideas?
- What do I have to do? >> Bring your great learning ideas to BETT and talk about them.
- What can I talk about or present? >> Free ideas, that is the only required aspect. It can be successful work online / offline. It can be school based projects or simple class ideas that have worked really well.
- How long does it need to be? >> Completely up to you. Companies have signed up for 30 minute takeover slots.
- When is it? >> Throughout the full course of the show – Wednesday-Saturday. See the wiki for details.
- Do I have to be a teacher? >> No, just have practical learning ideas that work.
- How formal is it? >> In the same style as TeachMeet, relaxed and fun.
- Do I need a prepared presentation? >> If you like. Or not – just examples of work to talk about – illustrate it how you like.
- Where will it be? >> Each company has signed up to slots of time on the wiki. They have added their stand location too.
- Where do I sign up? >> Go to the wiki and add your name.
TeachMeet BETT 2010
Dec 6th
It is that time of year again when London Olympia is transformed into the BETT Show. TeachMeet BETT is taking place again this year on the Friday night, between 6.00pm and 9.00pm, in the APEX room.
Earlier this year I was able to confirm that EMAP (the organising body behind BETT) offered the TeachMeet community 3 consecutive nights for free in the APEX room. The proposed events, some yet to be confirmed, are as follows.
- Wednesday 13th January 2010 - TedX Event
- Thursday 14th January 2010 – Amplified (TBC)
- Friday 15th January 2010 – TeachMeet
As you can see from the TeachMeet wiki link over 25 people have signed up for the Friday event already and we even have our first presentation pencilled in.
In my opinion TeachMeet BETT 2009 did not have enough presentations about practical, working ideas for learning that could be used in the classroom the very next day. Also the event itself did not have the feeling of the local, regional TeachMeet events that I have attended.
The latter is I suppose a result of the scale of the event and that I am sure is set to be the same this year. With that in mind I have only one request for this year’s TeachMeet BETT:
Only sign up for a presentation if it is something that is practical and applicable to the learners some of us will return to on the Monday. No products, no theoretical stuff, no rants.
It doesn’t even need to be limited to “classroom” practice, which is so often referred to. Learning can happen anywhere – so how are you inspiring learning? What real stories have you got to tell?
It is these narratives that inspire people the most, not weighty theories, we want a window for us into other learning activities . It is the closest we can some to actually being in the classroom with other teachers. We draw parallels with our own practice and ask ourselves, will my class be engaged by that? How can I apply that great idea?
Please consider signing up for a presentation, even if you have never done it before, share your story, share your great idea.
