Try something different. If it turns out to be a mistake then you’ve learned something, so it isn’t really a mistake.

Greg Perry @futurebehaviour

The TeachMeet community tried something different this year at BETT. We mobilised, we tookover vendors’ stands and talked about free ideas teachers could use on Monday. We made an attempt to pass on the inspiring ideas that are regularly presented at the face to face TeachMeet events, to those who may have never attended one. Teachmeet Takeover made a small step out of the echo chamber that the community often gets caught speaking to.

Yes we made mistakes, we stumbled, but the idea I think is sound enough – here are a few things I have learned, observed and thought about from the last few days of TeachMeet Takeover

• Teachers get very excited about free tools.
• The majority of free web based tools that are familiar to some are completely unknown to others.
• Some companies understand the need for teachers to be talking directly to other teachers about real practice.
• There are so many passionate and inspiring teachers willing to stand up and present about their ideas.
• A handful of companies genuinely believe in the same things as we do.
• It can be hard to make the FREE message authentic amongst all of the SELL, SELL, SELL. But what started as a whisper…
• Many, many more vendors want their stands involved at BETT 2011.
• Next year we will stipulate requirements for the stands. Internet access, big projection facilities and a PA system.
• A simple competition gives people who are unsure a clear direction and encourages them to see multiple TeachMeet Takeover talks.
• Publicity is important, so people know about it before arriving.
• Maybe Takeover should only take place on Thursday and Friday.
• It exceeded all of my expectations.
• I now know the idea works in reality, with more planning for 2011 we can be more ambitious – perhaps.
• We could try a mass Takeover, four stands all close together in much more of a flash mob style.
• Certain companies are happy to volunteer time, money and resources (including their stands) to support TeachMeet Takeover.
• Keeping talks under 15 minutes is best.
• Having two people on a stand talking consecutively works really well.
• It has never been more important for teachers to be sharing free resources, tools and ideas with other teachers.

I have been thinking deeply over the last 3 days about the relationship between sales driven companies and the teachers sharing free ideas. For some of the talks there were 30-40 people on the stands – we were bringing them in. That is obviously good for the vendor but it also good for teachers sharing ideas with other teachers. Maybe 3 or 4 people stop and look at some of the vendor’s fliers or products, similarly maybe 15-20 people go away and find out about the free idea they heard from a presentation.

Perhaps we need to bridge the often gaping chasm between these two communities if we are to properly amplify some of the messages, ideas and ideologies to the majority of teachers which are so intrinsic to the TeachMeet community. There has been plenty of reference to the disconnect between teachers and those who sell products, but I am more convinced that we need to build partnerships to effect large scale change in schools. The interesting thing is that companies at BETT are desperate to find ways to engage with their users on a more authentic level. I think TeachMeet Takeover has provided a viable option and it works. Importantly the teacher community has acted first on this, it is on our terms, we have defined how this engagement happens and so can keep the right intentions at the heart of what happens in the future.

None of the vendors involved deliberately hijacked an audience to peddle their own wares – they really did just let us takeover. I think that turning people on their stands into real sales is harder then encouraging teachers to look further into a free idea that is presented. Also a person’s subsequent research into how they might use a free tool will inevitably lead to teachers’ blogs and maybe the domino effect is that they start to find out more and more free tools and ideas. We must be aware of the knock on effect a single 10 minute Takeover talk could have in the weeks ahead.

I heard about one teacher attending TeachMeet Takeover who had never heard of Twitter or any of the online tools that were being presented. After his first talk he spent his day at BETT attending most of the other Takeover talks collecting the 8 ideas he needed to win the goody bag prize. Hopefully his head is buzzing with that bunch of new, free ideas and is thinking about how he can best use them to support learning with his class.

A BIG thankyou to all of the vendors and teachers who contributed to TeachMeet Takeover this year.

We were able to apply some of the feedback from Thursday to improve things for the following days – I would be grateful to hear more of your thoughts and reactions from the Takeover events. What should we consider changing or improving for next year? What stories from Takeover have you to tell?

I am delighted to welcome John Johnston, an Education ICT Development Officer in North Lanarkshire, Scotland for a guest post. John first inspired me to start blogging and has continued to do so ever since then. It is a great pleasure to have him as a guest explaining about another of his innovative projects: EDUtalk.

I’ve just found out that I am not going to make it to BETT this year, chief among the many disappointments is that I am not going to get face to face time with many of the folk I know through blogs and twitter and that I will not get the chance to do some recording and evangelising for EDUtalk.cc.

Fortunately Tom has given me the chance to rectify this and fulfil both of these ambitions at once in another way. If through this blog post I can persuade some BETT attendees to produce some audio for EDUtalk I will have evangelised EDUtalk. Listening to reports, reflections, conversations and interviews will add an extra dimension to the blog posts and tweets I will no doubt read in the near future.

What is EDutalk?

Edutalk builds on a project at the Scottish Learning Festival 09 SLFtalk. SLFtalk collected short pieces of audio from a wide range of educators at the SLF and published them on SLFtalk. The audio was recoded on a range of devices, mostly mobile, and posted through a variety of services.

EDUtalk was started to continue to give educators an opportunity to create or listen to podcasts created on the hoof. We, David Noble and myself, see this as ‘guerrilla podcasting’ an alternative to heavier more complex and official channels. In 2010 we are running a EDUtalk365 project in the hope of getting one podcast for every day published on EDUtalk, BETT hopefully gives us an opportunity to keep up the pace.

At the end of 2009 we ran TeachMeet Mobile, a new format of TeachMeet, where contributors produced live audio which became episodes of EDUtalk365.

How to EDutalk

• Pick up the phone: Use Gabcast. We have a gabcast channel whose content is automatically sent to EDUtalk, see the Gabcast instructions.. All you do is phone up and talk, gabcast and EDUtalk do the rest.
• Tag it: Use AudioBoo or ipadio and tag your content edutalk. The podcasts will be automatically posted to EDUtalk.
• Email it: Email any audio to post@EDUtalk.posterous.com. Record on an mp3 player, your computer or phone. Email it as an attachment and it will be published.

Full instructions for publishing audio by these and other methods can be found on EDUtalk.

After you send in your recording it is put in the moderation queue for EDUtalk, not so that we can censor or edit it, just to avoid publishing the inevitable spam. If you are recording someone else make sure they have given permission to publish (you should be able to make this clear in the audio). All audio published on the site is published under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License. At SLF we manage to keep the delay in publishing to a minimum and plan to do the same during BETT.

Why EDUtalk?

Podcasting is a powerful medium. David and I believe that hearing someone speak adds an extra dimension. Although podcasting can be criticised as slower than reading and harder to link from it has the advantage of adding emotional emphasis, portability and you can listen while doing something else. Try reading a blog post while washing the dishes.

We think EDUtalk ‘lowers the bar’ to publishing a variety of audio online and we hope that others experiment with these ways of gathering voices. By publishing you audio on EDUtalk you gain distribution, an audience and due to the CC license you can easily republish elsewhere if you like. We also hope that collecting a mix of different voices for all areas of education will make compelling listening.

What to EDUtalk?

Typical EDUtalk episodes are short, 1 – 8 minutes long and cover a wide range of topics. The focus for EDUtalk365 is curriculum change. So far contributions have included:

• Contributors own thoughts and experiences
• Workshops and Keynotes at conferences
• A conversation with or between colleagues
• An interview with someone with an interesting insight into, or experience of, curriculum change
• Discussions with students
• Audio resources which can be used by students or other professionals.

David has produced some prompts which you may find useful when planning the content of the audio that you are contributing:

• How are you/they engaging with the changing curriculum? How are you/they changing the opportunities which you/they provide for your/their learners?
• What differences have you/they noticed so far? How are learners responding? What challenges do you/they envisage?
• Which resources are effective for you/them and may be of interest to others?
• What are your/their reflections on curriculum change so far?
• Who or what has inspired you/them lately?

EDUtalk at TeachMeet BETT

Although I will not be at BETT David will. As well as recording his own and other peoples’ thoughts, he will be attending TeachMeet BETT and hopes to get permission from the presenters to record their audio and publish it over the next few days at EDUtalk.

We hope that EDUtalk will prove a useful resource for sharing idea and information from BETT and that you will contribute to it.

The last time I wrote about TeachMeet Takeover a handful of intrigued companies had shown some interest in allowing teachers to use their stands at BETT 2010 to talk about free tools. Now we have seven who have signed up ready to be taken over!

I don’t enjoy the BETT show very much. The TeachMeet is always a tonic and the opportunity to meet people also helps, in part, to dilute the overwhelming nature of it all. In my opinion the biggest challenge for the TeachMeet community is to encourage new people along to the events. TeachMeet Takeover is about taking the message of free, powerful (mainly) online ideas to other teachers attending BETT 2010.

In a nutshell: Educators presenting about FREE ideas on the vendor stands at the world’s largest educational technology event. Sharing inspiration for free.

Take a look at the wiki, the companies are willing. The timetable is filling up. Are you up for helping? Can you spare 10 minutes on the day that you are at BETT 2010 to talk about free classroom ideas?

• What do I have to do? >> Bring your great learning ideas to BETT and talk about them.
• What can I talk about or present? >> Free ideas, that is the only required aspect. It can be successful work online / offline. It can be school based projects or simple class ideas that have worked really well.
• How long does it need to be? >> Completely up to you. Companies have signed up for 30 minute takeover slots.
• When is it? >> Throughout the full course of the show – Wednesday-Saturday. See the wiki for details.
• Do I have to be a teacher? >> No, just have practical learning ideas that work.
• How formal is it? >> In the same style as TeachMeet, relaxed and fun.
• Do I need a prepared presentation? >> If you like. Or not – just examples of work to talk about – illustrate it how you like.
• Where will it be? >> Each company has signed up to slots of time on the wiki. They have added their stand location too.
• Where do I sign up? >> Go to the wiki and add your name.

It is that time of year again when London Olympia is transformed into the BETT Show.  TeachMeet BETT is taking place again this year on the Friday night, between 6.00pm and 9.00pm, in the APEX room.

Earlier this year I was able to confirm that EMAP (the organising body behind BETT) offered the TeachMeet community 3 consecutive nights for free in the APEX room. The proposed events, some yet to be confirmed, are as follows.

• Wednesday 13th January 2010 - TedX Event
• Thursday 14th January 2010 – Amplified (TBC)
• Friday 15th January 2010 – TeachMeet

As you can see from the TeachMeet wiki link over 25 people have signed up for the Friday event already and we even have our first presentation pencilled in.

In my opinion TeachMeet BETT 2009 did not have enough presentations about practical, working ideas for learning that could be used in the classroom the very next day. Also the event itself did not have the feeling of the local, regional TeachMeet events that I have attended.

The latter is I suppose a result of the scale of the event and that I am sure is set to be the same this year. With that in mind I have only one request for this year’s TeachMeet BETT:

Only sign up for a presentation if it is something that is practical and applicable to the learners some of us will return to on the Monday. No products, no theoretical stuff, no rants.

It doesn’t even need to be limited to “classroom” practice, which is so often referred to. Learning can happen anywhere – so how are you inspiring learning? What real stories have you got to tell?

It is these narratives that inspire people the most, not weighty theories, we want a window for us into other learning activities . It is the closest we can some to actually being in the classroom with other teachers. We draw parallels with our own practice and ask ourselves, will my class be engaged by that? How can I apply that great idea?

Please consider signing up for a presentation, even if you have never done it before, share your story, share your great idea.

After BETT 2009 there was plenty of healthy discussion about the ways that TeachMeet could reach beyond the Apex Room which we have resided for the last few years. Could Teachmeet Takeover be one of the answers?

I have been organising the TeachMeet event for the Friday night (please sign up on the wiki) and as part of that, have been in touch with lots of generous sponsors willing to offer their support  for the event. One thing I can report is that there is a general enthusiasm from these sponsors to do more for the teaching community at the event. To provide something beyond the usual food, drink and wifi. If you have any good ideas please let us know?

One of these sponsors who has helped progress the idea of TeachMeet Takeover is Chris Ratcliffe (@chrisrat) from Scholastic – who kindly offered some time on their stand during the show. After a talk with Stuart Ridout my co-conspirator for #TMBETT2010, I decided to test the water on Twitter and see what sort of response we get from other teachers and vendors. That was first thing this morning, currently we have these companies expressing an interest in offering time on their stand:

• BrainPOP UK
• Rising Stars
• Scholastic
• Edicts
• Open Source Cafe
• VT Education and Skills

I am yet to confirm things with these 6 but it is great that they are willing to back the idea when it was just in it’s infancy this morning.

So what is TeachMeet Takeover?

• Short time slots of 30 minutes or less on vendor stands throughout the course of the show.
• Teachers taking over – no affiliation to the vendor or obligation to help sell their products.
• Education professionals talking about FREE ideas.
• Informal presentations of good, quality ideas that you don’t need to pay for.
• Vendors sign up for time on a wiki.
• Educators put their name down in a time slot to talk on the wiki.

This is my simple outline but I want it to evolve with the help of the wider community, so please let me know what you think and any ideas you have.

>> If you are a company with a stand at BETT 2010 and you think you would like to offer us some time then just leave a comment or get in touch with me and head over to the wiki and pencil in some times. I suppose the only thing that a #TMtakeover needs is people to talk to. Saying that internet access and projector facilities would help things along. I look forward to seeing more signup.

>> If you are an educator or teacher attending BETT 2010 and think you have a simple idea to share then take a look at the wiki, find a slot that has been filled by a vendor and pop your name down. No real need for a formal presentation -although some visuals or demo of the tool will be useful, just make sure you know your stuff and the idea is FREE. Watch out though, there may be some more Takeover guidelines coming soon!

In my opinion this is a good opportunity for the Teachmeet community to share it’s various expertise beyond the usual crowds. Let me know what you think and also how we can develop this idea even further to make the most of the offers that have already been made.

During my visit to the Scottish Learning Festival I was aware that Martin Jack from Think Different Events was there. We had been in touch regarding Merlin John‘s piece about the TeachMeet community being offered 3 evening slots at the next BETT show. I thought it was important I took the opportunity to track him down.

Scanning the corridors of the SECC, ably assisted I might add by Con Morris, we were able to find Martin and although he was very busy he gave me a few minutes of his time to confirm some arrangements.

Martin explained that the offer from EMAP for the BETT show is:

1. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night use of the Apex room (FREE)
2. Security for each of those evenings (FREE)
3. AV and technical support for the three events (FREE)

It just so happened that whilst we were outside the SECC talking, we bumped into Keith Clifford the Marketing Director from EMAP in charge of BETT. He was in a hurry but quickly said hello and  also confirmed the above arrangements.

Martin was keen to impress on me that if we were able to clearly state the default setting for the AV setup then it would be arranged for us and be ready for the event. This year we had a large screen and a smaller one to the side for the back channel. To take advantage of this, each event, each night will need to confirm the technical requirements well beforehand.

I think that it is a great offer from EMAP whatever occurs over the course of those three nights. TeachMeet at BETT this year was thronged and in my opinion 3 separate events gives scope for development, an opportunity for smaller more intimate events and illustrates how important TeachMeet CPD is.

What is missing? What will be needed? I questioned Martin about a few other arrangements just to be clear about what is on offer. The TeachMeet community will need to organise or through sponsorship arrange for:

1. The tables will not be in a cabaret style as they were this year. We will need to cover the costs of that switcheroo. Or pitch in ourselves!
2. Wi-fi was not covered in the above offer. I asked and it seems it will need to be paid for from sponsorship, but can be arranged with EMAP.
3. Food, nibbles and drinks will need to be covered as usual through sponsorship.

There it is. We have the APEX room for three nights if we want to use it. I think that as this is unprecedented territory for TeachMeet the sooner we begin to plan the better. That is the next question really and one which I now throw out to the TeachMeet community as a whole.

What would you like to do with three different TeachMeet style events?

Please feel free to cross post this and help to get the message out as much as possible so that the ball begins to roll and we can quickly decide upon on the nature of the 3 nights.