I was tagged by Mags Amond for

tagging you next for a #TeachMeet20 looking back / looking forward post @johnjohnston

TeachMeet, a meet up for teachers, self organised and designed to keep it grassroots. The Wikipedia page is not too far from the mark. Started 20 years ago!

So I looked back. I’ve 38 posts tagged teachmeet here. But if I search for TeachMeet I find 124 posts. Searching my Twitter export finds over 300 matches. So TeachMeet has been on my mind over the years.

What I was thinking about 10 years ago: TeachMeet10: time for a TM-Reboot in Scotland?

For me TeachMeet is part of one of the most exciting periods in my teaching life. My already well developed obsession with using technology in teaching had exploded with the internet, blogging, podcasting & RSS. Twitter was on the horizon. As a class teacher I was getting to go to conferences!

Ewan MacIntosh was the main instigator of the 2006 ScotEduBlogger meet-up. After the second day of e-live conference we were all heading off to the Jolly Judge, a pub with WiFi! So excited.

The development of TeachMeet has been well covered. Mags has done an amazing job, for example.

Looking Back

I started writing some notes about TeachMeet’s past, but didn’t get past some bullet points, I am going to post them otherwise this post will take the rest of the year. Views very much IMO.

• I remember preparing like crazy for the first ‘real’ teachmeet. My name didn’t come out of the hat¹. I did speak at the second SLF one. On first and speeding through my presentation in jig time.
• I recall another SLF one when Ewan stopped a speaker for being commercial.
• I loved the random picker idea and the no PowerPoint rule.
• I remember a blog post or comment by Robert Jones to the effect that the main beneficiaries was on the speakers. I certainly learnt a lot by presenting, but also in helping organise TMs.
• I remember not liking the idea of keynote speakers, when I read of the BETT events.
• I never really liked the freebies from sponsors. I did enjoy the free beer and snacks.
• In retrospect I think the TM I regret missing most was an outdoor one somewhere in central Scotland with, as I dimly recall, tents & camping.
• I met so many good people. The initial jolly judgers, the second round, small TeachMeets that spread over Scotland, and the online folk. All were full of positivity, generosity & kindness. Some passed by, some I’ve followed for years.
• The positivity. This may have been the main benefit to me. It felt like it was from the infantry not the officers.
• Recently I read of the Twinkl TeachMeet: hated it, asked them to change the name, got nowhere.

Looking forward

TeachMeet withered somewhat in Scotland, I am not sure why. Maybe things bubble up for a while, serve their purpose and then don’t anymore. Different times might need different solutions. Pedagoo felt to me like an evolution of TeachMeet to some extent. Its domain has gone now. My fingers are far from the pulse of Scottish education.

I am probably not the best person to ask. When the name was being discussed I held fast to Scots EduBloggers Meetup. That lacked a bit of inclusivity and was somewhat shortsighted 😃.

To me TeachMeet felt as if it was in the same category as Blogging, Creative Commons, RSS, Open Source and other things that promoted freedom and sharing. Online interactions seem a lot less innocent now than they did then. I still believe these things are important.

Lots of educational CPD now seems to be in Teams or Zoom, this misses the serendipity involved in a face to face meeting and the built in talk to your neighbour TM principle.

Other, to me, important aspects of TeachMeet which should be carried forward include: a relaxed social feeling; the flattening of hierarchy; the centrality of classroom practice and fun. We could do without freebies; involvement of leaders in setting the agenda, although they are more than welcome to share their classroom experience and technology and services without classroom practice.

The most important for me would be the selection of speakers at random, hopefully with more speakers than spaces. TeachMeeters should be willing to go along to listen to others and open the opportunity to share if it arises. Not being guaranteed a spot might lead to more spontaneous presentations, serendipity and perhaps a reason to organise the next one.

Given I’ve now retired from teaching, I do not suppose I’ll be at another TeachMeet I will alway be interested in seeing how it goes.

Postscript teachmeet.scot

I have the teachmeet.scot domain. I don’t want to keep paying for it or hosting the inactive site². I’d love to give it to someone else who would care for it in the right way.

1. Probably just as well I was going to talk about RSS, possible not the most interesting subject to class teachers. ↩︎
2. The site was set up to allow folk to ask for an account and then post events. At one point I hoped that folk could be encouraged to post reports or link to reports of events to create a resource of sorts. ↩︎