Sunday 13 January 2008

TeachMeet08 Live at Bett 2008 - and some thoughts

Unique talk program with something called nanopresentations. Which are basically either a 2min or 7 min presentation - you were not allowed to use PowerPoint.

It was a unique format that allowed for a forum where you could hear from "innovators" about their practice in ICT. Nice and easy to digest in bitesize chunks.


Just listened to Vivien Black about work she has done with year 1 using blogs in Honeycomb - new software from Softease. She told use about a year 1 child who at home drew a picture in paint and then logged in and uploaded it to his blog.

Me and Anthony had been shown this software (by Vivien Oddly enough) on the Softease stand earlier. It’s a mix interesting mix of piczo.com and Blogging tool - wrapped up in Textease Studio Tool. I'm not a Textease user but it looked good and very easy to use - Vivien's example shows this. Well worth a look.

There were many other speakers but one which stood out for me and Anthony was Derek Robertson micro-presentation on - Objection! Games in the classroom? Using Phoenix Wright for the Nintendo DS to encourage and motivate writing in an S2 English language class.
It was an inspiring talk about how in Scotland he has been using computer games and consoles in the classroom.

I need some more time to digest it - but he talked about using Wii in Nursery. Using DS with Brain Training to develop mental maths skills and Phoenix Wright, a text based decision making game to learn about play scripting and persuasion in English.

It linked nicely with a Seminar me and Anthony visited in the morning on ICT and the Primary Framework for Literacy led by Gayle Gorman and Helen Wolstencroft. Gayle made a comment about the press keeps talking about that children are on games consoles and the internet too much. She suggested that we should be enbracing childrens culture and using that to motivate and engage children in school. Derek Robertson seems to be doing it already.
Hopefully I'll upload the video I took of his presentaion so you can all check it out.
It’s always something I’d been interested in and it’s great to see that people are doing it. With my new AST status i’m now gonna try and pursue some of these ideas.

Check out the Teachmeet08 site with a list of who spoke. http://www.teachmeet.org.uk/

More on Bett 2008 and some of the highlights soon.

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