When shall we have Teachmeet Brum?

So I'm looking to organise a Teachmeet in Birmingham sometime in March.

My preferred date would be Friday 9th March of Friday 16th March. I have a city centre venue with free parking that's about 5 minutes walk from Broad Street, so I'm figuring we could go for a Teachmeet and then a TeachEat at a decent Birmingham balti place.

But here's the thing - I'm not quite sure about Fridays. Being an inexperienced Teachmeet organiser (having only done one previously and that was mid-week), is Friday just to late in the week? Are we all too tired on Fridays?

So here's a chance to influence the decision. Please fill in this spreadsheet to answer the question: When shall we have Teachmeet Brum?

What I learned from BETT 2012 #2: Grass isn't always greener

I've never experienced a different education system than the British one, but of course the odd snippet or two has come my way over the years which have led me to the following beliefs about education in different countries:

• The district structure in the US is ideal with between 10 and 20 schools in each district.
• Hungarian education is best at teaching maths.
• Finland is perfect.

This BETT washed those beliefs away like the chaff they really are.

I spoke to a Norwegian lecturer bemoaning the loss of small rural schools and the devastating impact it is on their community.

I spoke to US educators tearing their hair out at the slow pace of change exhibited in their state's education system, with each district being stalled and blocked by what they really want to do.

I spoke to teachers from Germany decrying their assessment regime in the way in categorises students into 3 categories of achievement at the age of 9 or 10 - you know whether you'll be going to university at that age.

I spoke to an Italian teacher shocked at how much technology was available to British schools and how little to Italian schools.

And I thought, it's not actually that bad here.

Planning for serendipity: #DoMoreEdu meets level 3 students at my school

I had the fortune of being invited to the #DoMoreEdu event at BETT on Saturday by the team @DellEDU. Whilst I couldn't stay for the full event I was impressed with the way that the discussion created engagement of its own accord, regardless of the content of the discussion. Led by Ewan Macintosh and Tom Barrett of Notosh.com

One of the earlier topics in the conversation was about how we use space. Now I have to admit that I'm pretty nonplussed about the issue of 'space' in schools, firstly because I'm of the belief that the relationship between teacher and student is so crucial that the issue of space makes only a tiny fraction of a percentage of difference to education, and secondly because I work in a serviceable 30s built school. It isn't perfect but it works and we get decent results.

What surprised me however was that the discussion engaged me. Motivated me, even.

On to serendipity. It's not the kind of thing that one associates with schools. So much so that I had to ask the guy sitting next to me what it actually means. The top search in Google gives me: The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way: "a fortunate stroke of serendipity". So it's something about happiness, good luck and benefit. Yet our planning and our timetabling is so tight, so rigorous, so full of targets, that I struggle to see how we can 'plan for serendipity' within the current system.

But maybe the answer was right there before my eyes - it was in the discussion that I was engaged; through the growing relationships around the table that I was motivated. It wasn't the content of the discussion that mattered so much at that time - more the process.

Back to school on Monday and I was preparing my first lesson for a group of level 3 students who are really struggling with maths. Disengaged, with low self belief, they find maths extremely hard. Both their attainment and their progress is below where it should be. I knew all that and realise that I have awful lot of content to teach them if they are to make level 4 by May (when they sit their SATs tests). Could I afford to give up a single lesson just to engage them?

I decided I could and so on Monday we sat around a conference table and held our own #DoMoreEdu. We talked about moments of unhappiness and happiness in maths learning. We talked about how we should organise the space and how we could find more time. The children made suggestions for how and what they should be taught. They resolved to meet online at 6:00pm on Tuesdays for an extra revision timetable. Some of their discussion is recorded here. We also wrote our first blog post about that session. Since then we've had our first real maths lesson, which did actually contain some real content.

It was by chance that I booked an extra night's stay at BETT that allowed my to take advantage of the kind offer from @DellEdu. It was also bad planning when I realised that my train ticket actually said 11:23am, not 1:23pm, meaning that I had to dash off earlier than expected from the session. But that chance and bad planning allowed me more time to reflect on the experience in the light of teaching nine disaffected maths students on Monday morning, and already they have shown a higher level of engagement than I expected. Is that serendipity? Maybe it is. Certainly giving up one lesson of content and direct instruction to gain more motivated students who are willing to participate online in their own time is a win for me.

planning_serendipity.mp4 Watch on Posterous

What I learned from BETT 2012 #1: Cloud is the new Interactive Whiteboard

1. Cloud is the new Interactive Whiteboard

My first visit to BETT was last year and I was struck at that time by just how many companies were marketing interactive whiteboards, or products that somehow augment interactive whiteboards. They just weren't there this year. The obvious few had stands - Smart, Promethean and so on, but I didn't notice many more.

What I noticed instead was the word 'cloud'.

It was everywhere, usually alongside some alliterative slogan that also used words like 'connect' and 'collaborate'.

It seems to me that loads of companies are on the cloud bandwagon, hoping that schools will invest in some product somewhere on a server in a secure room on a business park in Milton Keynes.

Now I'm not averse to cloud stuff. As a Google Apps for Education user I have a lot of time and effort invested in the cloud and it has begun to make good efficiency savings at my school. It's even helped some kids do some learning. Alongside Google Apps (which is free), I've also invested in Incerts, Purple Mash, Education City and Espresso, not to mention other free Cloud-based products such as Manga High, PixlR, Prezi, Aviary, Wordpress, Posterous and Khan Academy. That's quite a daunting list, and if I'd had the school check book with me I could have quite easily come away with another half-a-dozen products from the show. Moople was particularly interesting as it presents a kind of one-stop wrapper for a load of different cloud-based products, effectively providing a single sign-on for all users. Single sign on is critically important for younger users as they often have difficult remembering one username and password, let alone twelve.

What concerns me with all this is not really the huge range of products, but the fact that they can act as a barrier between the teacher and student. One-to-one teaching is the most effective way of raising a child's attainment and skilled teachers spend their time finding opportunities for these one-to-one's to take place throughout the course of a school week, no matter how big the class size is. One danger is the temptation to think that teachers can facilitate the use of these technologies to somehow engender learning. But teachers are trained to teach - the proven way of developing a child's knowledge - and using cloud-based technologies can, if used incorrectly add an extra layer of complexity between the one-to-one teaching relationships that exist in classrooms across the country.

Similarly, for years interactive whiteboards have been seen as the must-have piece of kit in any classroom, but have also come with cautionary tales of only being used for presentations at the start of a lesson, or being hidden in cupboards only to be discovered by a particularly eager Ofsted inspector. I wonder if cloud technology will become that next big thing - used well be some, touched on by others and hidden in cupboards by a few.

And I also wonder if it really matters - I mean to education as a whole. Would students at my school really be disadvantaged at their secondary schools if they've never collaborated on a Google Doc before they get to Secondary school? Of course I'm going to continue using Google Apps and the many other cloud products I've brought into my school - but where's the evidence that it really makes a difference?

What I learned from BETT 2012 #1: Cloud is the new Interactive Whiteboard

1. Cloud is the new Interactive Whiteboard

My first visit to BETT was last year and I was struck at that time by just how many companies were marketing interactive whiteboards, or products that somehow augment interactive whiteboards. They just weren't there this year. The obvious few had stands - Smart, Promethean and so on, but I didn't notice many more.

What I noticed instead was the word 'cloud'.

It was everywhere, usually alongside some alliterative slogan that also used words like 'connect' and 'collaborate'.

It seems to me that loads of companies are on the cloud bandwagon, hoping that schools will invest in some product somewhere on a server in a secure room on a business park in Milton Keynes.

Now I'm not averse to cloud stuff. As a Google Apps for Education user I have a lot of time and effort invested in the cloud and it has begun to make good efficiency savings at my school. It's even helped some kids do some learning. Alongside Google Apps (which is free), I've also invested in Incerts, Purple Mash, Education City and Espresso, not to mention other free Cloud-based products such as Manga High, PixlR, Prezi, Aviary, Wordpress, Posterous and Khan Academy. That's quite a daunting list, and if I'd had the school check book with me I could have quite easily come away with another half-a-dozen products from the show. Moople was particularly interesting as it presents a kind of one-stop wrapper for a load of different cloud-based products, effectively providing a single sign-on for all users. Single sign on is critically important for younger users as they often have difficult remembering one username and password, let alone twelve.

What concerns me with all this is not really the huge range of products, but the fact that they can act as a barrier between the teacher and student. One-to-one teaching is the most effective way of raising a child's attainment and skilled teachers spend their time finding opportunities for these one-to-one's to take place throughout the course of a school week, no matter how big the class size is. One danger is the temptation to think that teachers can facilitate the use of these technologies to somehow engender learning. But teachers are trained to teach - the proven way of developing a child's knowledge - and using cloud-based technologies can, if used incorrectly add an extra layer of complexity between the one-to-one teaching relationships that exist in classrooms across the country.

Similarly, for years interactive whiteboards have been seen as the must-have piece of kit in any classroom, but have also come with cautionary tales of only being used for presentations at the start of a lesson, or being hidden in cupboards only to be discovered by a particularly eager Ofsted inspector. I wonder if cloud technology will become that next big thing - used well be some, touched on by others and hidden in cupboards by a few.

And I also wonder if it really matters - I mean to education as a whole. Would students at my school really be disadvantaged at their secondary schools if they've never collaborated on a Google Doc before they get to Secondary school? Of course I'm going to continue using Google Apps and the many other cloud products I've brought into my school - but where's the evidence that it really makes a difference?

Moments of learning from #domoreedu

My happiest moment of learning was sitting with my Year 4 teacher some 20 years ago and really 'getting' long multiplication. I remember thinking this is what I can do - I've never forgot the process or that moment.

My least happy moment of learning was realising what I thought was good practice was actually rubbish. It forced me to change quickly.

Moments of learning from #domoreedu

My happiest moment of learning was sitting with my Year 4 teacher some 20 years ago and really 'getting' long multiplication. I remember thinking this is what I can do - I've never forgot the process or that moment.

My least happy moment of learning was realising what I thought was good practice was actually rubbish. It forced me to change quickly.