Tag: teachmeetperth

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These are the slides I used at TeachMeetPerth Last week. You can see the images on a flickr set. The VoiceThread above is a work in progress, I’ll probably re record the audio with a quieter computer and a script.

I first got the idea for OpensourceCPD from teachmeet at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2007. Ollie Bray is widely quoted as saying that teachMeet was his best CPD experience. This had me thinking about Teachers as providers of CPD I also talked to Con Morris of LTS’s CPD Scotland team, he mentioned that reading my blog could be a cpd opportunity for someone!

My favourite learning experiences at conferences and inset have always been the ones presented by teachers. I include in this the more informal teachmeets and the social continuation in the pub or restaurant afterwards.

I’ve also been aware of the open source movement as a great deal of the software I use day to day is open source software, this blog, firefox, Vienna and many more. this got me wondering if this might be a useful model for distribution of cpd material by teachers, material that is not locked into a Local Authority, business or agency. Teachers as providers and consumers. The CPD material would be freely available and could be used by individuals or presented by a provide, the teachers supplying the material on the wiki could be providers/consultants. Of course because the material is freely available it can be supplied as CPD by anyone.

So the idea came together based on a casual reading of the Open Source Definition

  1. Free Redistribution: the software cpd materials can be freely given away or sold. (This was intended to expand sharing and use of the software on a legal basis.)
  2. Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable. (Without source code, making changes or modifications can be impossible.) this might be a little more difficult, hopefully it will not mean that folk would be put off uploading a pdf which is hard to edit, but more the spirit that material shared here is for mashing up.
  3. Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)

The Open Source Definition has a lot more, but you get the idea. This project will probably follow the Open Content model more closely:

Technically, it is royalty free, share alike and may or may not allow commercial redistribution. Content can be either in the public domain or under an open license like one of the Creative Commons licenses.

but at this time I thought that Open Source CPD was a snappy title

So I have started a wiki OpenSourceCPD to support this idea. I hope it is going to be connected to CPDFind in some way. At the moment the site is sitting on a temporary server and I probably will not get a lot of work done until the spring break. Several scottish educational bloggers have added Profiles and there seem to be a far bit of approval at TeachMeetPerth.

The focus to start with will be Social Media or Web 2.0 in teaching and learning.

Nothing is set in stone (it is a wiki) but I’ve begun three main sections:

  • CPD Materials A basic outline of various social media tools that can be used in teaching.
  • Cpd Opportunities CPD courses for self study or to be used as a skeleton for leading cpd.
  • Profiles A list of practitioners that could lead such cpd (this could be on a paid or free, online or face2face basis).

If this idea appeals please get in touch, if you want a password to edit the wiki leave a comment or send me a mail.
If you have some material you want hosted on the wiki but have not the time or inclination to edit it get in touch and I’ll be happy to post it for you.

So have a look at OpenSourceCPD.

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Yesterday evening I was in Perth courtesy of Krysia who kindly give me a lift to and from Glasgow through a fair amount of fog.
We were there for TeachMeet 08 North. T oget the idea of how good teachMeet is think how far you would go for some cpd on a Tuesday Night. The ScotsEduBlogoSphere had come from far and wide. None further than Ian Stuart of Isly High school who had set off at 8:30 am to get there.

As the event was set up the Sandaig macbook was pressed into service to run the flashmeeting which brought in an audience from further afield, I think I spotted Sinclair and Joe Dale in there. Flashmeeting is an amazing service, it is increadable that with a standard macbook and a wifif connection you can broadcast watch-able quality video and sound. The macbook was attached to Mr W’s snowball mic, I think it could get used to having such a great piece of kit attached to it. This meant that I could not tweet microblog the presentations which on a little refection was probably a blessing for my followers.

The meat of the event were the Seven minute micropresentations chosen as is becoming traditional by electronic fruit machine. The presentations were great, it always shocks me finding out how much I do not know about teaching with technology.

Ian Stuart kicked off telling us what’s been happening in Islay High School. I heard Ian at the SLF where I was amazed at the radical way the school is transforming teaching.

At teachmeet Ian focused more on the umpc technology the children are using, the power of these tiny devices is amazing. Small devices were a bit of theme at the meet, Asus minibooks, PSPs and other wee computers dotted the audience and dinner table.
I was lucky enough to be sitting with Bob Hill who leant me (or did I just borrow) his Eee PC with which I could watch the flashmeeting meaning Tess Watson‘s voice was in sterio until I found how to mute the sound.
These small pcs look like being the vanguard of a realistic one2one program. (and according to Robert Jones a possibility of getting Linux into schools). I would take a very long blog post to cover all of the ideas that came out of the 2 and a half hours of presentations. Hopefully the presenters will take a leaf from Nick Hood and blog their presentations, Nick’s is unusually in the comments to his teachMeet post. It is a great comment, (and one of the few where I’ve felt Snap shots has been useful rather than annoying) well worth following the links.
I would be great if the presetator tweeted there posts @TeachMeetPerth which would provide a nice aggregation..

A presentation I really enjoyed was Sarah Duffy‘s talk about her class’s http://midsummerdreaming.wikispaces.com a great project. But I really enjoyed them all and await the blog posts..

I talked about OpenSourceCPD more of which when I have more time at the weekend. for now I’ve put my comicLife slides, OpenSourceCPD on flickr. My TeachMeetPerth set is up too.

All in all another great teachMeet well up to the high standards set by previous events, all credit to Neil for organising, arranging and MCing.

Blogged from tm

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TeachMeet08 - Location
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Tomorrow after work I am of to TeachMeet 08 North curtsy of a lift from Krysia. Organised by Neil Winton and with a great line up of speakers I am really looking forward to the evening. Not often you can say that about cpd;-)

By the looks of the wiki everything is in place, space, projectors and an enthusiastic bunch of web 2.0 teachers.

If you cannot get along to teachmeet David Noble has organised a Flash Meeting so you can get some of the fun in your browser as it happens. The Meeting for TeachMeet08 BETT went very well, it was easy to hear and see the presentations.

I hope to be spreading word about scotedublogs.org.uk again, this time by passing out wee flyers. I am also hoping my name comes up for 7 minutes of fame. The presenters at TeachMeet are chosen by electronic fruit machine and get 7 minutes to talk.

Last time I was up first, ran through my talk in 5 minutes but still managed to secure sponsorship for scotedublogs.org.uk. The results of this will hopefully be apparent soon as scotedublogs.org.uk will have its own host, making it even more powerful!

This time I hope to talk about OpenSourceCPD for the first time. More about that here after the event.

If you are going to TeachMeetPerth either in the flesh or in the Flash Meeting or just want to keep in the loop remember that you can follow teachmeetperth on twitter, teachmeetperth will tweet all the posts tagged on technorati and hopefully provide a backchannel on the night for tweets @teachMeetPerth.

I am looking forward to meeting everyone in person or online

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I’ve not updated here for a week, but have been quite busy elsewhere.Teachmeet 08 North tn

After reading Neil‘s announcement of teachMeet 08 North, I popped over to the ScotEduBlogs Wiki and started a new page: TeachMeet 08 North for folk to join in the fun. It looks like it is going to be a great event, over 50 edits on the wiki page on the last two days shows a deal of enthusiasm for TeachMeet.

I bumped into Suzie Vesper while following Ewan‘s ULearn07 adventures in NZ on twitter. Suzie hads a great wiki: educational software and web 2.0 which covers nearly everything I’ve heard of. After a few tweets this morning, I’ve started adding an Adobe Flash page to the wiki. Hopefully it will be of some value, the rest of the wiki certainly is.

Flash eg

Coincidentally, I’ve become involved in another flash project; as I was invited to join the Teachers sharing their work with Flash blog.
Teachers sharing their work with Flash centres round the work of Geoff Dellow. Geoff has done an amazing amount of work with flash in schools. He tells me he is retired but he has certainly not slowed down (a quick google will tell a lot). Geoff promotes the use of flash 4 in primary schools and provides free over the phone tutoring for teachers. I first met Geoff at SETT before it was The Scottish Learning Festival. He had children creating animations in flash at his stall which had me hooked.
I hope I manage to do some work with flash again soon so that I can share it on the blog.