TeachMeet Midlands 2011

Gathered together a bunch of stuff from #tmm11 using Storify which I’m liking more and more (even if it tends to foul up blog posts when it gets embedded! I’m sure that’ll get sorted).

In the #tmm11 Story, I’ve pulled in a load of Tweets, Flickr images, presentations, Audioboos, follow-up blog posts … even a slideshow of Peter Clarke’s superb photos – scroll right to the end. For some reason it didn’t seem too keen on some of the Google presentations, but was happy with others and whilst it would happily embed Slideshare presos, the Google ones were simply links. Sure there must be a tech reason.

It’s definitely got potential!

Future provision

Just been reading a great post by Daniel Stucke on possible future modes of provision for ICT resources in school. I’ve been ruminating along similar lines for some while now. My starting point was our school’s strategic plan … but that didn’t really help as most of the goals could be delivered by any of the models of provision Daniel carefully outlined.

Given that cost (not surprisingly in these times) tends to be the dominant factor, I wonder whether it’s time to revisit another possibility? I’ve long held the belief that there’s a whole host of untapped potential out there that students already possess, in their homes and in their pockets. We have steadfastly ignored it, not without good reason:

• inequity of access
• transferring costs to parents
• inevitable variety of capability
• technical/security issues in school
• current school codes which largely exclude student devices
• increased demand on bandwidth
• teachers coping with many different devices in a class
• lack of consistency of applications
• the formal (examination-based) ICT curriculum

and many more I’m sure.

But given the serious financial times in which we find ourselves, isn’t it time we began to address these issues more determinedly and begin to release some of that potential? I think there are counterarguments for almost all of these points and whilst solutions certainly aren’t neccessarily easy, surely it’s time we gave it a shot and at least had the debate?

Image by watz on Flickr

Purpos/ed #500words book from #PurposedPSI

A number of people have expressed an interest in buying further copies of the book we enjoyed receiving at #PurposedPSI. I said I’d sort things so here’s what I suggest:

First an expression of interest – please complete this brief form. (The books were created using Scholastic’s ‘We Are Writers‘ system and will therefore cost  £5 + postage)
When we have sufficient numbers (the minimum print run is 30 copies) I’ll place the order with Scholastic.
When the books arrive with me, I’ll DM the people who requested them for their address details and post the book(s) on.
When they receive the books, peeps can pay me by PayPal or send a cheque. I trust folks on Twitter without question 🙂

If you’ve any comments or suggestions for improvement, do please whack them in here.

Just another thought – wonder whether folks convening TeachMeet’s might want a few copies to sell?