This week, the first ever teachmeet was held in Cheshire. There was a very high proportion of people who’ve never been to a teachmeet before out of the 65 attendees, including those from the school who were our very kind hosts for the evening! Some primary schools used it as their staff meeting (a suggestion made after the success of this approach in Blackpool), we had presenters coming from outside our local area, virtual presentations from well-respected twitter and teachmeet-ers including @bevevans22, @davidErogers and @kvnmcl, technical support at the end of the phone and via tweets from @mikemcsharry and the wonderful @ZoeRoss19 and @nellmog supporting in their usual down to earth and practical ways. The technician at the school was immensely helpful – unblocking twitter for the duration and setting up a live web stream.
The virtual presentations are already up at teachmeetcheshire.pbworks.com, we hope to put up a link to the live stream recording before too long and there are lots of links to different sites/tools mentioned on the night!
There was a range of feedback – with a couple of people finding it wasn’t really for them as they needed a different approach to learning about new tech based tools – but all the feedback forms received so far have been enormously positive, with one person offering to host the next teachmeet in Cheshire at their school and reports of people downloading/trying out new ideas later that night – one person had used 4 of the sites they’d learnt about within the first 3 lessons the following day! And that is the whole point of teachmeet – ideas shared that can be tried immediately.
