foolfillment: the blog

For me one main attraction of blogging was the conversations that crop up around what I write, or what others write. I’ve been gradually aware of something recently and I wonder if others feel the same.

I want to know if anyone else thinks that they comment less (or receive less comments ) on blogs now than they did before they used twitter?

Teachmeet last night was great! Around 30 people made the journey down to Galashiels in the Borders last night for the 11th (well 12th really, but hang the details) edition of TeachMeet.

David Muir did a sterling job and wrote up two posts live on the night, and no doubt others will follow shortly. I am not going to do the same, to be honest I didn’t take most of it in as I was riding along on a wave of excitement. I have however put together a quick post about what I talked about in my 7 minutes.
John Johnston, Scotland’s premier edu-aggregator, has already set up a page that will collate all tweets, flickr posts, delicious links, and blog posts. This depends on you tagging all your stuff with tmxi, so please add that to anything you post about last night.

It was awesome to see so many people come from so far away, as I say about 30 people were there in person, with notable mentions for distance travelled going to Theo Kuechel, Andy McSwan, and Louise Jones. It was great that everyone came along and made it such a good night by contributing and by pitching in. As ever it was the people who made the night, and it was really nice to put some faces to names I’ve been in touch with for ages online but not in person.

As well as the people there in person, an amazing number of people watched the event live through the flashmeeting, when I looked in there were 17 people there and I know more people popped in and out throughout the evening. You can go and watch the flashmeeting again, and at the time of writing it has already been watched an incredible 56 times!

I’m sorry to both Andrew Brown and Iain Hallahan who missed out on presenting, maybe next time?!

Again, a huge thanks to everyone who came along and made the night what it was, I really enjoyed myself and am so glad I stepped up in September and decided that we’d have a teachmeet down in the Scottish Borders. I have to make special mention to Liz Marroni for arranging the venue for us and for getting the unfiltered internet access.

I am now looking forward to the next edition – maybe it will be TeachMeet Extreme-North edition? I think Louise Jones volunteered to sort out our trip to Aviemore, but maybe we should make the journey that bit further and go and visit Sinclair in Thurso?

Last night I talked about alternative tasks for pupils in Craft and Design. I’ve blogged about this before but I want to just pool the three things I mentioned here so they can get aggregated with all the other TeachMeetBorders stuff.

I have a pupil who has been unable to work because he’s been in a sling. He couldn’t draw or write, but he was able to use his left han to control a computer mouse. While the rest of his class were sketching out designs for a wooden box, he was busy drawing the box on the computer, using Autodesk Inventor. He came up with something that looked a little like this:

Then when the class wre in the workshop making their boxes, again he was unable to do this so I gave him a camera and set him the task of documenting the different stages in the manufacture. He was going to put it all together into a ComicLife strip, and hopefully a short Animoto video. Unfortunately he has been absent again and hasn’t had the opportunity to complete these tasks, so I’ve done some examples of the sort of thing he could get done:

ComicLife strips:

Animoto video:

The fantastic news today was that a venue has been secured for TeachMeetBorders!

In just 10 days time the 11th 12th edition of TeachMeet will be happening in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. The venue is the Langlee Centre in Galashiels, provided by Scottish Borders Council with – and here’s the great bit – unfiltered wifi access! Things will kick off at about 6pm and will run till about 8.30. We need to be out of the building by 9. Of course after that we can still carry on – we can go for a meal and then on to a local watering hole to continue the sharing of ideas and enthusiasm right into the wee small hours.

If you’ve never heard of TeachMeet before it is a must-attend event. “The best CPD in the world!” Please head over to the wiki and sign up now, or get in touch with me.

I’ve tidied up the wiki a little, and added in the big missing element – TeachMeetEat, if you fancy continuing the discussion after 9 and having a few drinks to get to know everyone a bit better then sign up now. At the moment I think we’ll be heading to an Indian restaurant in Gala, the more names the better.

Even if you can’t make it to Gala in person we’ll be running a flashmeeting so you can watch from afar.

How can you help?

There are a few things still up in the air, and you can help out:

1. The first way to help is to spread the word – blog it, tweet it, email it, tell people. Tag it using teachmeetborders that way we can see who’s buzzing.
2. The second way you can help is to find a way to get some refreshments for everyone at Langlee. Any suggestions are welcome – should be go BYOB? Can we find a kindly sponsor or six to fund a small amount of drinks for everyone?
3. The third way to help is maybe to bring along some kit – we’ll be pretty well set up for projectors I think, but we’ll need a few machines to run the presentations and to host the flashmeeting.
4. The fourth way os to sign up to the meal if you fancy it, once I have enough names I’ll look into making a booking

One of my 3rd year Craft and Design pupils has been in a sling recently and unable to do most of the normal work, we’ve been designing and making a small trinket box in the last few weeks so I’ve had him taking photos of the class’s progress. Soon he will be putting these images together into a Comic Life strip. I’ve not got him onto that stage just yet – snow impedes progress! – but I’ve had a little play with Comic Life tonight with his images. I wanted just to show what’s possible but without stealing his thunder too much, so rather than publishing it on their class blog I thought I’d put it here (under the banner of sharing resources!).

I’ve also been playing with Animoto again, still waiting for my education key so still limited to 30s videos, here’s one I made last night…

This weekend students from 5 schools from all across Europe and America gathered in Edinburgh to share their findings for the Community theme of the Global Ambition project.

I am the co-ordinating teacher for the Hawick High School team, but really all that meant this weekend was I drove the two representatives up to Edinburgh and let them strut their stuff. I was incredibly proud of the boys and they should be pleased with the work they have done so far and, especially how they presented themselves this weekend. You can read a little about what the Hawick team have been up to by looking at their wiki, I know they would appreciate your comments and questions. Hawick High School’s Global Ambition Wiki

The teams from Sweden, Shetland, Germany, and New Jersey all made a really good showing of themselves and all took part in incredibly rich discussions based upon each team’s findings.
Hopefully we can keep up these meetings – the chances of finding any other such group of students all working together on such a topic are very slim. They are such a diverse bunch, yet (as was pointed out) they have so much in common. I wish I had had these opportunities when I was at school.

It was also really interesting to meet with some of the students taking part in the Learning School project this year.