TeachMeet06 was great fun and highly useful for the 60 or so people who made it. It was also pretty advanced thinking for some of us. Since East Lothian is always up for sharing what it does with others - warts an' all - I hope that the TeachMeet community likes the idea we've had to use its branding to reach out to a larger public more often (when did it become a brand, I don't know?)
Karen has already outlined the concept in brief, and you can download the Word minutes.doc from last Thursday's meeting for more detail. The TeachMeet Roadshow is a concept which, in theory, anyone can take, adapt and use in their own local authority, using where possible examples and case studies from the 'home patch'.
The roadshow aims to show what technologies are available for learning, to show how teachers might think through their curriculum and to start teachers on the planning processes involved. At the end of the roadshow sessions teachers will have identified where their training needs lie and training opportunities will be lined up around interest, geographical or stage groups.
The hope is that we will have more teachers thinking about their needs before embarking on the latest 'fad', only to give it up a week or two later because it wasn't for them. We also hope to have a highly skilled set of staff who share their knowledge and let the roadshow run further and deeper into the Authority, without central IT services having to dispense the same stuff all the time.
Will it work? Is it different from anything that goes on already in local authorities? To the former, I don't know. To the latter, almost certainly. I can't wait to see how it pans out in reality.
As always, feedback, ideas and comment welcome at the foot of this post! (btw: the logo's just temporary ;-)
Sounds a great idea - and one which might help with re-inventing the wheel - something I'm going to return to shortly.
Posted by: chris | September 30, 2006 at 11:24 PM
I really like this idea - and we certainly need to stop re-inventing the wheel. Can we coordinate the online element of the training - I know a lot of training needs to be face to face, but a lot of it could be online? This is what I was going to talk about at TeachMeet, but time beat us.
I particularly like the idea that this is rooted in the curriculum, and not just for the sake of being the latest 'fad'.
Posted by: AB | October 02, 2006 at 09:26 AM
At the moment we are just concentrating on F2F, because much of the support will be provided by mentors in schools or IT staff. However, an online element is on the cards further down our list. I would like to see it in from the start just to help people get on the ladder without having to wait for help to arrive.
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | October 02, 2006 at 10:13 AM