foolfillment: the blog

At last night’s TeachMeet for students and probationer teachers I gave a 7 minute presentation on my own probation experiences. It was all very self indulgent I thought but people seemed to like it so I’m going to share it here.

I used Prezi for the first time to collect a few images together, last night I saw some really good uses of prezi – while some people think it can induce headaches I saw last night how fantastic it is not to be stuck in a linear presentation.

Here’s the link to the prezi I used, though I fear that on it’s own it won’t make a great deal of sense as it was really just an aide memoire for me. My main points were somthing like this:

• Make sure you get up to the staff room and speak to as many other people as you can. Don’t hide away in your classroom on your own working.
• Observe as many people as you can, it needn’t be formally but just get into classes all over the school if you can to see how other people do what you want to do.
• Make sure you have a life away from school, find a way to switch off and stop thinking school
• Set aside some time each week to get the GTCS housekeeping done, the stuff you need to do isn’t too onerous but if you let it pile up it can be very difficult to get back in top of.
• Spend time reflecting on how you are doing, it needn’t always be formally, just chatting about things with people helps – see the first point.
• Write up loads of mock application forms and get people to read them. Pester other teachers for their opinions. If possile ask people outside of your subject. Do the same for interviews – get loads of previous interview questions and prepare some answers for them, do as many mock interviews as you can.

Far from a comprehensive list but I think doing those things last year helped me.

Last night was the very first TeachMeet for student teachers and probationers. I was a bit sceptical when David Muir suggested that we could arrange it in just 6 weeks, but I supported it and signed up to attend and even to present if I was wanted.

Then the most amazing things happened.

Everyone pitched in to make last night an amazing success. I think last night was truly crowdsourced, the event organised itself with people from across Scotland helping to sort it all out.

John Daly, Iain Hallahan, and of course David Muir all deserve special mentions, but there was one time in particular that stood out.
Iain was trying to find a way to get in touch with all the NQT co-ordinators in the 32 Local Authorities. Over the course of a night a plan was formed, a collaborative spreadsheet on Google was set up, and a gang of teachers organised themselves to send a letter that had been written collaboratively onto the LAs they had contact with. Within about and hour we had people signed up to speak to over half of the LAs.

And how did we do it? With the power of Twitter and Google Docs. Wonderful stuff because not only did we get this sorted out but a lot of us learned a lot more about how we could use Google Docs to do some really cool stuff that would be useful for teaching.

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?

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

It’s been pretty quiet here recently, I’ve got the usual busy excuse, lots going on at school. There’s now only 2 weeks of term left, and then there are only a few weeks when the new term starts before the TeachMeetBorders is due to take place. I’ve been speaking to a few people around my school and they are keen to come. I need to push them on a little bit and sign up with the wiki, but there are some great ideas being bounced around.

I’m really excited about it, but I want to just give it a bit more publicity so that it can be as good as all previous TeachMeets.

If you haven’t heard of them before a TeachMeet is a really great way to spend an evening, everyone is welcome, anyone can present. Often there is a bit of a focus on technology in education, but it needn’t be, you can share about anything that has been going on in a classroom that you think is good. It is an often used phrase but TeachMeet has been described as the best CPD in the world!

If you fancy coming along, you might well learn something new, be amazed, amused and enthused. Sign up on the wiki, or get in touch with me and I’ll sign up for you.

And spread the word!