I had a great day yesterday between the Learning Festival and the ‘unconference’ fringe events in the Glasgow Science Centre. I started off blogging Ewan’s We?re Adopting! An Adoption Strategy for Social Media in Education, which I really enjoyed. Hearing how East Lothian have brought together technology to let teachers and students share makes it very tempting to move through for the support of David Gilmour and the great blogging community he and colleagues have put together.After that I chatted to a few folk and walked around nervously before my spot. I actually sort of enjoyed myself and the audience seemed happy enough, I posted a few links and hope I’ll put the presentation up at the weekend.

At 6:00pm we dashed back across to the science centre for TeachMeet07. Previous events have been described as “My best continuing professional development” by Ollie Bray.

This time we had a huge space in the Science Centre and the biggest ever crowd, about 120 in all throughout the night.
About 25 people had volunteered to present, most offering seven minute micropresentations and some two minute nano-presentations. This time Ewan had organised a virtual lottery to choose the next presenter and explained that folk should fell free to chat if the presentations did not interest them (it is an un-conference). He had also organised some excellent audio so even in the huge space everyone was clearly heard.
I was delighted to be pulled out the virtual hat first and raced through a quick intro and guide to scotedublogs.org.uk, trying both to explain what it is good for and to get the bloggers in the room to link to scotedublogs.org.uk (this might mean you). It seemed to go down well, the audience was very friendly and encouraging. Maybe because I only took five of my seven minutes.

After that it really was the best CPD in the world, speaker after speaker producing wonderful ideas, the audience cheering and ‘wooting’. Before you knew it it was 8:30. One or two folk did not get to present, but we managed to here most of the list. I could not pick out anyone particular, but was sorry Ian Stuart and Theo Kuechel were not heard. I had an idea about what they would be talking about and it sounded great.

The atmosphere in the room was amazing, teachers are not always the most cheerful of folk when they are getting after hours training. I do not think I have been in such an open and friendly crowd.

After that it was off to Khublai Khan’s for some food and more excellent CPD. A vote of thanks to Softease who sponsored the weird and wonderful menu of crocodile, zebra and ostrich.
I probably got more teaching tips and great links and ideas yesterday evening than in the rest of my year’s CPD put together. The links will end up in my del.icio.us tumble when I get some time.

I have no idea how this event could have been improved but I am really looking forward to the next one.

Categories: ScotLearnFest07, TeachMeet07, Technology