A grand day out!

I had a grand day out to the seaside this week – a trip to Blackpool Teachmeet at Hawes Side Primary school, organised by the very capable, enthusiastic and hospitable Jim Maloney and Tom Sales.  It was brilliant to meet tweeps in the flesh who inspire me on a daily basis – much humour to be had in the company of @Joga5, @dughall and @Ideas_Factory and many others, too.

Also, much humour after the event as friends, family, colleagues and pupils got so excited and wanted to see my ipad! Thanks very much to @chrisrat for that goody bag treat.  I ended up with a huge crowd of year 6′s all wanting to talk to me when I was on playground duty the next day!

The rock I took back proved a huge incentive for my class and led to some very competitive problem solving on Friday – I use a book called Groups Work from time to time with them and this time each of the teams were competing for the prize of rock! Whilst competitiveness is not my motivational tool of choice, every now and then it’s not so bad - this time it had a real impact on the cooperation going on within groups!

There are some immensely talented and amazing teachers out there who always seem to come up with some new ideas for us to try out in class -

• @stephenheppell showing the time button in google earth – it’s possible to see what a city like Berlin looked like in the past, simply by using a slider bar; using translate tools we can read any page on the internet, whatever language it is written in; Mapumental – looks like something to keep an eye out for when it is released in the future – it’s a visual representation of databases which could even be used by parents to search for the information THEY think is important e.g. how many teachers send their own children to a school!
• @bevevans22 had some really neat ideas about using powerpoint for stopframe animation
• @zoeross talked about guilty pleasures – not the cake at the back, but using tools like moviemaker and photostory for effective learning – Rickrolling and Colin were just delightful additions to really sound applications for the classroom
• @Joga told us about the awesome work being done by @GiraffeClass – the jokes they learnt/told/shared via twitter were truly amazing when you consider the play on language that is involved in them for year 1 children (well worth following the class on twitter!)
• @ianaddison talking from a distance about using Voki – he’s also set up a map so you can see where all the teachmeet twitterers are!
• @simonhaughton demonstrated a huge range of uses of purplemash in the classroom – I REALLY must explore the datahandling tools in more detail after having seen what he did with them – we’ve used the animation tool very successfully so far, and can recommend that to anyone!
• award-winning @iamclairei showed how she has been using games as a stimulus to writing – in particular with Machinarium
• @colport talked about the fantastic myebook site – it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already done so – he used it very powerfully with his class to publish scanned copies of their work (my PGCE student used it earlier in the year for a science information book and we are using it this term for a poetry book).
• There were online timelines via a link
• @SpanishSam showed the power of wordle for MFL or for any sort of topic teaching – perhaps at the start of a topic to show the keypoints or as a review at the end of the topic
• @misterjim (one of our fabulous comperes!) showed us poissonrouge - a really interesting site especially for FS/KS1 that enables lots of problem solving and self directed study
• @jacksloan talked about the power of blogging for connecting children with the wider world
• @Ideas_Factory suggested that resistance to change is written in our dna and used animal analogies to describe how different people respond to change
• @primarypete_ showed his use of voicethread as a tool for moderating writing  and storybird - another amazing online tool for using in class – I’d thoroughly recommend voicethread from my own experiences, too (we’re currently using it to collaborate with a class in Australia) but have only briefly looked at storybird, so want to have a closer look at that in the future.
• @mynictle gave such a clear way of understanding the different terminology for non-musicians and there was definitely some competition going on between the salt and vinegar/cheese and onion lovers!
• A great project was shown by a Blackpool high school who are using learning “bases” to provide some of the continuity and cross curricular apporaches  that children at that transition stage benefit from

I’m sure I’ve missed out loads of ideas that were shared, but it was great to see tools that I love being demonstrated, some different uses for those tools and some ideas for new tools and ways of using tools.  It was only my second teachmeet – it certainly won’t be my last.  If you don’t get an opportunity to go to a teachmeet, check out @eyebeams who videos the events and will be adding to his archive.   I wonder if TeachmeetCheshire could work?!?!

P.S. if you want to try out any of the tools – or have any others to share, join in the wiki for apps4class – just look at the index if you are looking for a particular tool, or look at the subject areas for some ideas – please join and add!  And if you want to chat to other UK teachers in an #edchat style, the new #ukedchat starts on Thursdays at 8pm on twitter – check out the wiki for more information.

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