This is an invitation to those attending the Scottish Learning festival, TeachMeet SLF 2012 or TeachMeet SLF fringe to share their thoughts and reflections via EDUtalk.

Three years ago, David Noble and myself organised, SLFtalk – Audio publishing by attendees at the Scottish Learning Festival, the idea was to gather reports and reactions from the floor of the Festival from anyone who wanted to join in.

This developed into EDUtalk – Audio publishing by educators, using mobile devices which has now collected around 400 audio recordings about education.

This year, I am not going to the Festival or TeachMeet, I’ve a 25th anniversary to celebrate and although I’ve spent the odd anniversary at TeachMeet before, I am not going to miss this one.

I realise that I’ve been very privileged to attend SLF for a number of years (Thanks to MasterClass, Glow, Moira McArthur now NLC council ) and not many teacher get the chance. This was one of the reasons behind SLFtalk.

This year

I would like to know what is going on. I am sure I’ll read blogs posts and news from Education Scotland but I would also like to hear from folk attending. I am sure this is true for many others.

Why Audio?

I believe that audio has some advantages:

• For the listener it can be listened to when doing something else, the dishes or driving. It also brings an extra dimension of information from the sound of the voice.
• For the recorder it is quicker to get ideas down by a quick recording than it is to write. It is also very easy to publish.

So if you are going to the Scottish Learning festival, or attending TeachMeet SLF 2012 or TeachMeet SLF fringe please send us your thoughts and reflections.

How to contribute

Contributions to EDUtalk are supposed to be easy to do, we are not looking for polished pieces of audio, although these will not be turned down

There are 3 main ways of contributing now:

1. Email any audio to post@EDUtalk.posterous.com
2. Tag an Audioboo edutalk
3. Tag an ipadio phlogs edutalk

There are of course many many ways to record audio, most devices, computers,smart phones and mp3 players have applications do do this. You could use any one of these, all you need to do is save an audio file, mp3, aif, wav etc and mail it to post@EDUtalk.posterous.com. If you can send an mp3 and save yourself some audio, but any audio format will do.

Audioboo and iPadio both have smart phone applications that are free. You just need to download then onto your phone, record audio and tag that audio edutalk, Audioboo limits you to 2 minutes with a free account but it is surprising how much information you can give in 2 minutes.

What to talk about

Anything you want really, as long as it is about education. Some ideas:

• A conversation with a colleague following a formal session
• chat with a presenter after their session
• you own reflections on a session attended
• about a stall or product on floor (no adverts!)
• conversation with colleague about recent teaching and learning
• a group discussion that you are part of.
• or something else…

Pick up the mic or phone

Please do, I think we need to hear from all sort of folk talking about all sorts of things in Scottish education. If you are a regular voice or have never published anything, HMIE inspector or probationer, leader writer or blogger please think of adding your voice to the EDUtalk mix.

Cross posted at http://JohnJohnston.info/blog and http://edutalk.cc