My first Teachmeet

Friday, November 4^th 2011. 5pm. Bolton, Lancashire.

On a wet, cold and generally miserable autumn afternoon @john_howarth at arrived at my school to give me a lift to a local primary school. The trip wasn’t for an LA led INSET session, or LA meeting this was going to be my very 1^st Teachmeet.

I arrived at Heathfields CP school, the home of the legendary David Mitchell (@deputymitchell) with a little trepidation. Teechmeets are where the ‘clever ones’ from Twitter meet and make people like me feel uneducated and as though I know nothing about educational technology, aren’t they?

No. Most certainly not!

In all of the time I’ve worked in the education sector – 12 years now – I’ve never met a nicer, more open and amazingly enthusiastic set of people than that night at Heathfields.

I grabbed a coffee, sat down and watched the hall swell in numbers with familiar and unfamiliar faces – matching real faces to Twitter avatars should be a new addition to a MENSA test. I sat waiting for the presentations to start not knowing what the format of the night would be.

Using the Random Name Selector by Primary Technology (it turned out the creator of the software – @johnmclear was sat right in front of me and what a nice guy he is too)  names of the presenters were chosen to decide the running order. The order was, iirc… (Apologies if I missed someone out!)

@ianemills
@chrismayoh
@reesiepie
@hgjohn
@ideasfactory
@deputymichell
@naiad7
@primarypete_
@raff31
@simonhaughton
@mister_jim
@frances1808
@ejf23

All the presentations were excellent most notable were @ianemills’ talk on using Xbox Kinect in the classroom which gave me the kick I needed to get a Kinect into my own school and lessons and the presentation by @mister_jim. A colleague sat at my table commented ‘why didn’t we have teachers like that when I was at school’ such was the highly engaging, natural manner that he delighted the room with. It was a true pleasure to watch.

As @dughall so rightly said early in the evening the presentations are only a small part of the evening. It’s the networking that occurs during the night I met people I wouldn’t normally meet  during the course of my normal working day – primary teachers, primary SLT, area consultants and co-ordinators, and other ed-tech professionals. I now have a few exciting projects on the horizon with some of the guys I met that evening and can’t wait to get @ianemills into my school to help me develop my own Xbox Kinect project.

The evening really did open my eyes to the work currently going on in primaries and I was amazed at the skills, knowledge and dedication to using educational technology in the classroom. I was also quite humbled that, after chatting with a few primary teachers, I found out that I had an IT budget more than 10 times that of their schools, yet they seemed to be doing 10 times more exciting and innovative stuff with their ICT. This made me reflect on what I spend my budget on and how it’s possible to do a whole load more with less. My purchasing decisions will change for sure now!

The night finished off in a traditional way for teacher types… having a pint or two in pub and talking for a couple of hours about work!

Overall, my first Teachmeet was an amazing experience and one I can’t wait to repeat.

@ideasfactory has persuaded me to conquer my fear of public speaking (odd for someone who works in a school, I know) and present at the next TM. I better start brushing up on my presentation skills!