I've just arrived back home from TeachMeet Bolton feeling extremely inspired from all the wonderful ideas that the presenters shared to the audience of over fifty people who attended:
- @ianmills explained about all the different games that you can use on an XBox Kinect to support children's learning via kinaesthetic methods, including to: tell the time using your arms to simulate the hands of a clock, support play in the early years with Kinectimals and Build a Buddy to help make a picture move about virtually on the screen;
- @chrismayoh described about how he set up a 'digital leaders' project at his school in which pupils could apply to help others use/embed ICT skills across the school - see this video of some of the interviews they gave;
- @reesiepie demonstrated some of the ways that she has used collaborative learning structures in her lessons to help organise group work;
- @hgjohn talked about the Blackpool Monopoly Challenge that was held on Monday in which teachers from across Blackpool had to use their smart phones and apps such as iPadio to visit as many sites across the town as they could within a time limit - http://monopoly.creativeblogs.net/;
- @ideasfactory showcased a variety of online generators (listed here) to help prompt children with ideas and give them foundations from which to write a fantastic piece of text;
- @deputymichell did a live literacy lesson with some of his pupils and Pie Corbett and also showed off his 'Well Done' blog that he uses to celebrate children's achievements online - http://welldone.heathfieldcps.net/;
- @naiad7 talked about she had used the fabulous http://en.linoit.com/ website to create virtual walls of sticky notes, including to create a shared news bulletin with staff;
- @primarypete_ gave a video presentation (watch here) about how he has successfully used http://www.zondle.com to create a variety of online spelling games for his Year 1 class and impact that they have had on improving their ability to retain phonic information;
- @oliverquinlan explained about his work at @plmuniprimary and how he has managed to get his students involved in blogging their course experiences to help them self-reflect on their work - http://blogs.plymuniprimary.com/;
- @raff31 talked about good old fashioned blogging, including the journey that his school has gone on to develop and integrate writing blog posts into everyday school life.
- @mister_jim discussed the values of using collaborative tools to improve pupil engagement and reflected on an independent learning project that he did with his Year 5 class last year in which they had to produce a piece of work on any topic of their choosing - read here for more details about how successful he discovered that child-initiated learning could be in KS2;
- @frances1808 described about how she had taught children to create their own e-books - as explained in these instructions;
- @ejf23 (author of http://super-school.co.uk/) explained lots of strategies that she had implemented in her school to help raise children's awareness of the value of maths skills and to dramatically improve their attainment - see this blog post.
I also gave a quick demonstration of some of the tools available on http://www.edmodo.com/ and talked about some of the successes that I have had in using it at my school - see this section of my blog for more information - http://www.simonhaughton.co.uk/edmodo/ (to join the UK Edmodogroup, the code you need is r73gcv).
(image credit - @John_Howarth)
TeachMeet Bolton was a great opportunity to catch up with those teachers who I've met before on past TeachMeets as well as to meet up with several of my Twitter followers in person for the first time who all seemed keen to thank me for all the ICT ideas which I'd given them, which was extremely nice I thought.
TeachMeets are fantastic opportunities to show that there are people out there who work in schools that do care for their pupils and who do want to make a difference in their education. I'm sure that everyone tonight (including those who watched online and all those who watched at Plymouth University) left with several practical ideas that they can use back in their classrooms.
Thank you to all the staff at Heathfield Primary School who helped to tidy the school up ready and serve the refreshments (pasty and peas - mmm...), as well as Ian Mills who helped to set up all the technical side of things (including the WiFi). The double act of @deputymitchell and @dughall was also very well played - they both deserve lots of praise for being able to organise such a successful event and for being able to promote it without any sponsorship or funding at all. You, were, amazing!
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