I had some great experiences at Scottish Learning Festival this year. Some highlights for me were:

• Gary Bloom’s eloquent advocacy of the power of professional community over even the most reflective and perceptive of individuals. He started this off with a bang by showing a 30 second clip of 6 people practising basketball and asking the audience to count the passes. Half of us didn’t spot a guy in a gorilla suit appearing in the middle of the players! So much for perceptions!
• Mick Waters presentation on Making Learning Irresistible was also excellent. Neil Winton has written this up very well in the Connected Live Blog, so I won’t go into detail here. You can see Mick for yourself here!
• Teachmeet 07, a festival ‘fringe’ event based on the ‘unconference’ model as outlined by Ewan Macintosh here. In an unconference, the event is trailed well in advance on an online page and people can choose to present or just ‘lurk’. On the night the group of educators got together in the Glasgow Science Centre, had a bite to eat, a drink and shared interesting practice. They did this by meeting and greeting and taking part in the presentations. The presentations were chosen by a ‘CPD puggy’ and all (bar one) were by practitioners and highlighted just some of the inspiring use of educational ICT.
• The speed at which the CPDFind / CPDScotland double-sided postcards went! Rumours that signed copies are appearing on Ebay are not substantiated!

You can find out more on the excellent Connected Live blog

 I am now on the lookout for the CPD opportunities that emanate from SLF (eg online versions of the presentations) for posting in CPDFind. I know many of our blog readers were also there, so please leave a comment on what did it for you this year (or not). It will help us identify the best CPD providers for CPDFind!

Categories: ScotLearnFest07, TeachMeet07