TeachMeet Aberdeen 2011 reflections (part 1/2)

One week on from TeachMeet Aberdeen I wanted to jot down my impressions of the evening, record links and any available presentations, and pass on contact details of the presenters.

I was made aware of TeachMeet Aberdeen 10 (SE) at the last minute and unfortunately could not attend but in the 12 months since I’ve been able to log into live webcasts of a number of TeachMeets around the UK. I’ve been inspired by the presenters and the organisers of these events and made use of their tips in my day-to-day lesson planning – improving the experience for pupils in my classroom. So when Stuart Brown asked if I’d like to help to arrange TeachMeet Aberdeen 11 I jumped at the chance.

Our decision making and delegation centred around email and twitter communication channels and was very successful. If anyone tells you that you need to look a co-organiser in the eye to effectively plan an event, tell them they’re living in the dark ages. Stuart was an excellent colleague, coordinating press coverage and the finer details of venue arrangements (the MacRobert building at University of Aberdeen: home of the Education faculty) without breaking sweat. We met in person for the first time at about 5pm on the day of the TeachMeet, which I think is fairly mind blowing as by that point pretty much everything was in place (including Stuart’s radio interview for the next day!).

Thanks too to Jim McCracken and Linda Stephen from University of Aberdeen who organised the wifi logins, tea and coffee, room booking and even a bit of cleaning! They were brilliant hosts and incredibly supportive and enthusiastic. Disaster seemed likely half way through the evening when the laptop ran out of charge due to fact it was streaming video onto the Internet. Without Linda sourcing a few power adapters in under five minutes we would have lost more than half of our audience! Jim even pitched in with a presentation on a resource recommended by one of his students. Saying “thanks” doesn’t seem to be enough.

The video of the evening is currently available in hour long chunks at http://www.livestream.com/teachmeetaberdeen11 but I am in the process of editing them into their individual presentations. It’s unfortunate that the Livestream studio is slightly blocked within the Aberdeenshire authority at the moment – something for future TeachMeet organisers to check out before using their service.

Martin Coutts (@mcoutts81) kicked off proceedings with a presentation on how he uses an iPad to engage secondary pupils in his mathematics classes. He even used his iPad to give the presentation and showed how this device could be a godsend to classroom teachers. Earlier in the evening Martin also demonstrated how his iPad 1 could record video by using separately purchased camera connection kit – it actually allows the user to capture in a better resolution than the iPad 2! Martin also showed the audience how he uses http://www.mangahigh.com and games-based learning to augment his learning and teaching to inspire his students. A great start!

[youtube http://youtu.be/vTyclpbbaFE]

Kirsty Marsland (@kirstymarsbar), currently studying for her PGDE in Modern Studies, gave an insight into how she uses Wordle to highlight learning intentions and generate interest in her lessons.

[youtube http://youtu.be/B4cGeRZf9Gw]

Stuart Brown (@stuart_g_brown) was up next and described some of the challenges he faces in using ICT effectively in the classroom. He also offered excellent probationary advice to the students in the audience (real and virtual) and mused on the impact his support philosoraptor had on the attainment of his pupils and why he would let pupils use mobile phones for learning in class. This was an excellent, well considered presentation that only got better with second viewing. Highly recommended!

[youtube http://youtu.be/QbbkYyQ5jpg]

Charlie Barrow (@charliebarrow) rounded off the first half by showing how he uses augmented reality at Portlethen Primary to make learning magical. He uses the mobile phone application Junaio and a lot of preparation to turn pupil-generated paper images into content activators which when scanned plays an associated video or takes the user to a particular web page. It looked amazing and although my set of iPods do not have cameras (which is unfortunately de rigour for augmented reality) I hope to speak to him further about his project and see if a link to secondary could be made.

[youtube http://youtu.be/DpOLNS729hc]

I’ll add the second post once all the videos have been uploaded to YouTube and my notes turned into something resembling a coherent train of thought!