Last Thursday evening I attended Cramlington Learning Village's Teachmeet. It's the first time I've been to a Teachmeet as an enthusiastic lurker rather than a speaker, as I generally have discovered the next big thing or have something to share. And I like the sound of my own voice. A lot.
Sadly, due to a middle management course, I arrived late and missed a couple of the early presentations but, what I did see was very good.
There were a number of good ideas presented, but these are the presentations which stuck in my mind (by which I mean I'm going to steal their ideas):
Mathematician, Rachel Futo showed us different ways of using the game Connect 4. She uses grids and counters to assess prior knowledge, revise, stretch and support learners, for pairwork, for peer assessment and as a tool for A4L.
Geographer John Sayers was amazing. He shared 3 ideas: The personal learning chair (which some of you'll be pleased to know can be used with QRCodes), mission explore, and concertina form information. You can read more about John's ideas at his blog which is excellent.
Fellow linguist, Chris Harte, showed us the difference between Feedback and Assessment For Learning. You can find his presentation on slideshare.
Polymath, genius, and all round good egg, Steve Bunce, rounded off the evening with a presentation entitled, Reality hits you hard, Bro (alcohol and singing). Steve told us about the songify app and showed how it can be used with an i-pad by getting audience members to record text and then used songify to create a song. I can see how great it would be if we could use it in school for MFL lessons.
