I was recently invited to write an article on TeachMeets for the School Leaders Scotland “Scottish Leader” magazine, and it was fascinating to do. I learned so much doing it, and promised to post the article on my blog (the article was produced under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share-Alike license). With the #tmfuture debate starting off tonight, I felt it may be an opportune moment to post it – so here goes!

TeachMeet – the story so far.

Have you ever heard of TeachMeet? Realistically speaking, unless you are a bit of a technophile or have attended either the Scottish Learning Festival or the BETT conferences and kept your ear to the ground then the answer is probably “No.”

But the signs are clear – that’s all likely to change, and probably very soon. There’s a revolution coming, and its name is TeachMeet.

But what exactly is TeachMeet?

Tim and Moby appear courtesy of BrainPop UK, all rights reserved.

Tim and Moby show off the range of TeachMeets currently on the wiki

Image courtesy of Iain Hallahan http://h-blog.me.uk and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share-Alike license

The best – and simplest – explanation I have heard of TeachMeet is the one given by Tim and Moby of BrainPop in their movie explaining what TeachMeet is: “It’s like Show and Tell for teachers.” That is to say, it is a model of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) which involves those attending as participants in delivering the training as well as receiving it. When signing up for the event, those who are willing to do so volunteer to give a short presentation on something they have been doing or finding out about, and at the event talks are selected totally at random. Generally at a TeachMeet, these presentations come in two lengths – 7 minute ‘micro’ presentations or two minute ‘nano’ presentations. This allows for short, dynamic delivery meaning that a greater number of presentations can be delivered in a short time, as well as reducing the likelihood of spectator disengagement; should a topic not be of interest to them, it is only a matter of minutes till something else is being discussed.

Of course, if there is a presentation that doesn’t interest you or apply to you, there are loads of things you could do instead – you can always talk to the person next to you, check out the online tool the last presenter was talking about, tweet or blog your thoughts about the event so far or even grab yourself a beer and some nibbles. Perhaps you could even join the virtual participants of the TeachMeet in the FlashMeeting or video conference and say hello? All of these things are actively encouraged at TeachMeets – whilst somewhat less formalised than many other CPD events, TeachMeets aim to be equally effective, if not more so.

From humble beginnings in Scotland during 2005, TeachMeet has both grown and spread very quickly. Originally running twice yearly (once in Edinburgh, once in Glasgow) there are now numerous TeachMeets each year; 2009 saw at least 20 TeachMeets , whilst there are already 20 TeachMeets run or planned for this year – and it’s only March.

Similarly, whilst Glasgow and Edinburgh were the original venues, TeachMeets have now taken part in (amongst other places) Yorkshire & Humber, Sussex & Kent, Moosejaw in Canada, Galashiels, Stockholm, Orlando, Newcastle, London, Nottingham, Cheltenham, Falkirk, Wrexham, Blackpool, East Lothian, Stirling, Perth, Oxford…… the list goes on and on. There have also been TeachMeets run purely online, and also using mobile devices. There is even a virtual TeachMeet planned to run in Second Life.

TeachMeet feedback from Twitter

Image courtesy of Iain Hallahan http://h-blog.me.uk and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share-Alike license

Looking at the number and range of TeachMeets, it is fair to say that the concept has truly established itself in the world of twenty first century education, and when you examine the feedback from those who have attended TeachMeets, you can see the effect they have on people. Sinclair Mackenzie, a Physics teacher from Thurso, writes “Have attended three TeachMeets in person, and many by FlashMeeting. TeachMeets promote long-range collegiality beyond your local goldfish bowl”, whilst Neil Winton of Perth Academy says that Teachmeets are “proof that we always have something new to learn, and something new to teach……and that not all teachers are cynical!!!” A recently qualified teacher from Falkirk, Cassie Law, states that the first TeachMeet she attended was “the best CPD experience of my probationary year. Great to hear about other people’s experiences, and it put my mind at rest”, whilst Jim Maloney from Blackpool recounts the effect that their first TeachMeet had on a Head Teacher from his authority, who said “The greatest impact on teaching and learning in my school in the shortest space of time. We are now reaping the rewards and our learners are more engaged in the learning process, and this has impacted on engaging parents too”. Jim goes on to say that the HT is now “TeachMeet’s biggest advocate in the borough. She raves about it.”

So where did TeachMeet come from? The idea originated with three Scottish educators – Ewan McIntosh, David Noble and John Johnston – who knew each other online, but had never met face to face until SETT (the precursor to the Scottish Learning Festival) in 2005. After their initial meeting, there was a desire to meet up again regularly to catch up on what they had been up to, particularly with regards to how they were using new technologies in education. When the eLive conference was going to be in Edinburgh in May 2006, another meeting was proposed and this time 10 people signed up (with another 8 sending apologies!) and in the Jolly Judge pub in Edinburgh a legend was born – although the name TeachMeet didn’t arrive till later.

In the Jolly Judge, for what has come to be regarded as the first TeachMeet

Image courtesy of Ewan McIntosh http://edu.blogs.com and is licensed under a Creative Commons Non Commercial license

Identified by many as the driving energy behind TeachMeet, Ewan recalls how the first meeting of these online colleagues led to the desire to come back and discuss what they had been up to since. “What we ended up with was a kind of regular event that we could have where people were sharing stories and trying to share some practice as well, but in a really laid-back, informal environment”. John backs this feeling up, recollecting an optimism among the attendees and a connection that was hard to achieve at the time – “It brought about a very powerful feeling of togetherness, especially as there was little networking about technology, very few Bloggers and no Twitter, so one could feel quite isolated.” David remembers the early TeachMeets being cosy affairs, but that they were still pushing the boundaries even back then “We were having presentations on Skype, and that was four years ago!!!”

Spot the difference? TeachMeet BETT 2010

Image courtesy of Ian Usher http://www.flickr.com/photos/ush/ and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike license

Although much of this will sound familiar to TeachMeeteers today, there are many differences as well. As has been discussed, there are now many more TeachMeets and they are spread out nationwide, internationally and even globally. But beyond that, the TeachMeet model is evolving; over the last year or two, educators have begun to put their own stamp on it in a number of ways. Perth hosted the first stand-alone TeachMeet (the others all having been fringe events of something or other) as well as the first subject based TeachMeet (Physics, if you’re interested). Since then there have been Student TeachMeets, online TeachMeets, TeachMeets for Mac users, GregMeet and even TreeMeet! “The evolutions of it are essential to continuing to survive, otherwise it becomes irrelevant,” says Ewan, continuing “TeachMeet was never about technology 100%, it was about the Teach first of all, and the tech was instrumental to achieving what we wanted to achieve pedagogically and never the other way around.”

Both John and David are also keen advocates of the evolution of TeachMeet. “I think they are already becoming less techy and more about teaching,” says John. “Evolution needs different models to choose survivors from. I think the Islay conference sounded great, while TeachMeet Falkirk and TeachMeet East Lothian brought in a new local audience. I very much enjoyed Con’s LeadMeet.” David agrees. “I think anyone who is interested in the evolution of the TeachMeet idea should really go back and look at the LeadMeet which was organised in the middle of last year by Con Morris, around the Scottish International Summer School on School Leadership. Various things were tried out there which I found put a smile on the face of every participant for the entire night, just trying out some great new ideas for involving you, particularly in getting conversations going.” Given the success of LeadMeet09, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for LeadMeet10!

The famous LeadMeet “Lego Leader” task and Leadership Wordl

Images courtesy of Mike Coulter http://mikecoulter.com/ and licensed under a Creative Commons Non Commercial license

Wordle image courtesy of http://www.wordle.net/ and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

And so the TeachMeet story continues. But there are challenges. John feels there is a danger that TeachMeet might be in danger of becoming too mainstream, not different enough, or too dependent on sponsorship. “There’s also the possibility that it might become too self congratulatory, self-satisfied and less innocent.” Ewan agrees. “When I’ve been running events it’s been as irreverent as possible, in a bid to distance itself from the hierarchies we’re used to, and the reason for doing that is to try and generate alternative discussion to what we’re used to.” He also feels that the TeachMeet ‘brand’ may need some protection from commercial exploitation, and is instead investigating ways to use the revenue generating potential of TeachMeet to further the model elsewhere in the world, places where having a TeachMeet would not be so easy, but that the benefits of such an event could be massive.

“I think my main concern is that it needs to diversify beyond the very large, but still very ‘niche’ group that attend it.” says Ewan. He suggests a Jamie Oliver-esque ‘Pass it On’ approach, where anyone who has attended a TeachMeet has to bring three of their non-TeachMeet friends along to the next one. “If we all did that twenty five times over, we would have the whole of Europe having been to a TeachMeet, and that could be a very powerful thing for education.” Of course, if the leaders of schools were to take up the cause and organise school-level, cluster-level or authority level TeachMeets, that target could become a lot easier to achieve, so why not take up the challenge and help shape the future?

Links

The TeachMeet wiki where you can find out all about upcoming TeachMeets, previous TeachMeets (and even how to organise one of your own!) is here – http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/

John Johnston gives a potted, personal history of TeachMeet at the beginning of this video – http://johnjohnston.info/blog/archive/2009/11/24/teachmeet-falkirk-09-video

The full audio of the Ewan McIntosh TeachMeet interview is available here –

http://edutalk.cc/edutalk365-66-iain-hallahan-speaks-to-ewan-mc

David Noble reflects on TeachMeet here –

http://audioboo.fm/boos/110917-david-noble-reflects-on-teachmeet

The LeadMeet Wordle of leadership characteristics is here –

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1022729/Leadmeet_09_Final

Iain’s TeachMeet weblinks can be found here – http://delicious.com/IainH/teachmeet

Iain would like to thank the following people for their help with writing this article:

Eylan Ezekiel, Chris Bradford, Tim, Moby and everyone at BrainPop UK for the Tim & Moby image, as well as their TeachMeet movie.

Stuart Meldrum, Alan Hamilton, Pete Mulvey, Danny Nicholson, Chris Ratcliffe, Kevin McLaughlin, Sarah Brownsword, Sinclair Mackenzie, Neil Winton, Cassie Law, Jim Maloney and everyone else on Twitter who responded to the #tmtwt appeal

Ewan McIntosh, Ian Usher and Mike Coulter for the use of their images, as well as David Muir, Robert Hill and Andrew Brown for saying it was OK to use the photo with them in it!

Con Morris and Margaret Alcorn for the opportunity to write this.

And of course, the original Three TeachMeeteers – John Johnston, David Noble and Ewan McIntosh – for not only bringing us what became TeachMeet in the first place but for the amazing help they gave me in writing this article

Due to licensing conditions, this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share-Alike license

The logo for one of the latest incarnations of TeachMeet: TeachMeet Student Edition Glasgow 2010

As you will know from my previous blog post or from following the #tmtwt responses on Twitter I have been doing a bit of research into TeachMeet, the model of CPD where teachers learn from other teachers. To begin, this involved having a trawl round the internet looking at the history of TeachMeet which proved fascinating (I even found it has its own Wikipedia page!).

One thing that became clear as I was looking at the history was the pivotal role played in the development of TeachMeet by Ewan McIntosh. In a moment of gallus bravado on Twitter, I asked Ewan if he would be willing to have a bit of a chat about TeachMeet, and to my delight he agreed. I tried to come up with a way to record the call, for notetaking purposes and perhaps to put online somewhere, but as anyone who knows me will testify, my tech skills are not the best. However, by enlisting David Noble’s help we managed to come up with a solution using iPadio to record the audio from the telephone call. Despite me being in Glasgow, David being in Fife and Ewan being in London (plus the additional complication of Ewan being on a train rushing to Luton airport to catch a flight!) David managed to record the interview and save the audio in a way that meant Ewan’s contribution was audible. The interview is up on the EDUTalk website here, and Ewan’s contributions are easy to hear, even above the trains and planes. My questions are a bit quieter however, and while they are somewhat less important than hearing Ewan’s contribution, I thought I would list them here and they could be read whilst listening to the interview by anyone who wished to:

1. Where did the germ of the idea that grew into TeachMeet come from?
2. At the start, how much of the organisation were you doing yourself and how much was crowdsourced?
3. When it became clear you were going to be moving away from TeachMeet, at least for a while, was there a worry there that it might disappear, or did you feel it had become sustainable?
4. TeachMeet has continued to grow and evolve – there’s been LeadMeet, GregMeet, small local ones, big national ones, international ones, subject based, changing rules and even BeerMeet – how do you feel about the current evolutions of the TeachMeet model?
5. What do you think made TeachMeet so successful, and when did you realise that you’d managed to come up with something really quite special?
6. Are there any other challenges that TeachMeet faces now?
7. You have spoken briefly before about DreamMeet, how would you see that happening?
8. Where is the missing 8th edition of TeachMeet?

Ewan was inspiring to listen to, and addressed many of the TeachMeet questions that have been getting talked about recently here and elsewhere (for instance, on John Connell’s blog here and here, during TreeMeet and by those organising TeachMeet Falkirk and TeachMeet Northwest) including the two big issues of the echo-chamber effect and the tech-focus question. No spoilers on here though, you’ll need to listen to the interview on EDUTalk to find out what he had to say.

Once again, I need to say a big thanks to Ewan for taking time out of a busy and less than tranquil day to talk to me, as well as thanking David for his audio-techno wizardry in getting the whole thing sorted out.

This is intended to qualify as my quickest blog post ever.

Recently on Twitter I have been collecting people’s feedback and thoughts about TeachMeet using hashtag #tmtwt. It has made fascinating – and inspiring – reading. Tonight I got a chance to gather it all together to make it accessible for those not on Twitter (and to make sure I can keep it!). I have saved a draft version to Slideshare, and am going to embed it below.

All comments gratefully received.

Last night I spent some time (too much time?) trawling round the internet looking at the law on copyright and intellectual property rights. I ended up with a headache. Again.

It’s all Julie Arrol’s fault really. Having been caught up in the IPR/Copyright whirlwind stoked up by Neil Winton here and here last year, I had managed to get myself distracted by many, many other things and had kind of let my IPR detective work slide. I had done a bit of half-hearted investigation, but hadn’t really got anywhere very fast. Julie re-ignited the whole thing on Twitter yesterday with a very simple question about ownership of resources. Having had a right good rummage through my terms & conditions of employment and drawn a blank on the IPR issue, I was intrigued by a response Julie got from Katie Barrowman suggesting that because the IPR issue was a fact of employment law, it didn’t need to be written into your contract. I asked Katie if she had a reference to back that up, and she pointed me towards this webpage from JISC Legal Information offering an overview of IPR law . In the Copyright Ownership section, they write:

Copyright ownership in an employer-employee relationship: Under s 11.2 of the CPDA, the basic legal position is that copyright of works created during the course of employment will be owned by the employer unless an agreement to the contrary is in place.

Now, as anyone who knows me will testify, that is just a bit too vague and wooly for me, so I went hunting down the exact law that was being referenced. Turns out, as anyone who knows anything about copyright could tell you, that copyright law in the UK is governed by the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. JISC had kindly offered the location of the offending clause, 11.2, and so I went straight to it. It tells us that:

Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary.

In situations where this is not the case, the Act is equally clear (in section 11.1):

The author of a work is the first owner of any copyright in it

The language used in the Act did not convince me that the issue was as clear cut as was suggested to Katie, so I did what any self-respecting 21st Century citizen would do – I Googled it.

That’s when things got a bit more complicated.

The Intellectual Property Office certainly don’t think it is as black and white as we have been led to believe. They point out that:

In the course of employment is not defined by the Act but in settling disputes the courts have typically had to decide whether the employee was working under ‘contract of service’.

The law firm Ashby Cohen also challenge the straightforward “Employer owns everything” assumption. They write that:

If an employee wishes to retain the ownership of their intellectual property themselves, they should create the work in their own time and away from the workplace in order to avoid any future disputes. If an employee creates something in their own time which they later go on to use in the course of their employment to benefit their employer, it would be prudent for them to agree up front (and preferably in writing) with their employer that they will retain the copyright on their creation.

They go on to suggest that it may be advisable for an employee to negotiate a contractual clause allowing them to retain the ownership of all intellectual property that they create, unless it is specifically created at the behest of their employer for the purposes of their business. The Employment Tribunal Claims website suggests a similar tactic to ‘avoid’ confrontation, but there is some debate as to how willing employers would be to allow this. Ashby Cohen also have concerns regarding this, stating that:

Employers may sometimes attempt to insert much more comprehensive terms into employment contracts regarding intellectual copyright, sometimes even attempting to claim ownership over everything the employee produces while they are employed by that organisation, regardless of where or when it was created. Such needlessly restrictive clauses should be challenged before the contract is signed in order to prevent any future legal wranglings.

Of course, they do have a vested interest, which becomes plain as they go on to state that in such situations, specialist legal advice is essential (and no doubt expensive). Guess who can provide such advice (no prize available).

The issue is also examined here by Paul Bicknell. He highlights the inconsistencies in the law, citing contradictory case law backing up both sides of the dispute before again suggesting that:

The issues above can be solved by an agreement whether oral, express or implied can between employer and employee, which vests first ownership in the employee.

The Creative Commons solution suggested by both Ewan McIntosh (in a comment on Neil’s blog) and Theo Kuchel is a decent work around. Although Julie had questioned whether you were able to attribute a CC licence to a piece of work that you didn’t actually own the IPR for the work in the first place, my understanding is that if you use a Share Alike CC resource (picture, animation, video, sound clip…) in creating your own work, then you are bound to make your work available under the same licence:

Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.

Whilst I am sure for many teachers in many situations that is a perfectly acceptable solution, it still fails to address the fundamentals of the IPR question. What if you choose to make a resource in your own time, lets say a textbook, producing all your own copy and examples and taking all your own pictures to put in it. The way things are at the moment, in the absence of a clear, formal, written agreement you are caught between surrendering much of your IPR altogether via Creative Commons or risking getting into a legal battle with your employer over who owns the IPR. Not much of a choice, really.

And don’t think it doesn’t happen – the comments on Neil’s post illustrate that it most certainly can and does.

I think Neil’s idea of building a clearer picture of the situation across the country is a good one. This issue isn’t going to go away, if anything it’s just going to get bigger, and we need to find a solution, and it would be easier if the solution applied to every teacher rather than each individual teacher fighting their own case. If people are willing to take the issue to the SNCT, Unions or the Scottish Government then let’s get them all the information they need.

Anyone know a good lawyer?

Got to look over the evaluation forms from the Glow training I delivered recently and it made pretty good reading. Here’s a Wordle of the key terms lifted from the staff forms.

Everyone seemed very positive in their feedback, both in the forms and in the surveys that were part of the group itself. As I had said at the time,  I felt having a chance to have time set aside to explore/play with Glow was as important as anything we were going to ask the staff to actually do, and they seemed to appreciate this as well. Reading the comments, it seemed that everyone enjoyed the interactivity and guidance of the ‘challenge’ approach and welcomed the chance to work with colleagues on them.

Overall, although I have come up with a few changes to the group that I would make myself, you have to be pretty happy with that kind of feedback. Let’s hope we see the use of Glow increases as a result of the training!

The other week, in the middle of some severe essay trauma, a tweet from the inspirational Neil Winton of Perth Academy came floating by in my Twitter feed (I had Brizzly running in a background window, and was clicking in and out of it to give myself a wee break from writing. Or to distract myself from writing, whichever you prefer). One of Neil’s tweets catching my eye is nothing unusual, but this one really grabbed my attention.

Strong words indeed. But a viewpoint that appears to be shared by an apparently increasing amount of educators – I have personally spoken to a sizeable number of teachers who have no interest in and no time for Interactive White Boards, or anything connected to them. In fact, at times it appears to go beyond having no interest – there appears to be a genuine animosity towards IWBs from some quarters that can at times border on the evangelical. On the other hand, of course, there are a number of teachers who appear to believe that Interactive White Boards are the saviours of the universe, and the one true path to cosmic enlightenment.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between?

Now, I think it’s only fair to make two confessions up front, namely that:

1) I have a fairly positive attitude towards IWBs, and have been known to leap quickly to their defence if I feel they are being unfairly maligned.

2) My personal experience using IWBs is exclusively limited to SMART Boards

Following the link in Neil’s tweet I found myself on a blog that I’d never seen or heard of before – intriguingly titled “The Tempered Radical”. The post in question was entitled “Wasting Money on Whiteboards…” and I started reading with a ready-to-be-offended attitude. The blogger, Bill Ferriter, started off by telling us how he had ‘given away’ his board as he had found it ‘basically useless’. However, the majority of his post – and indeed the comments following it – seemed less inflammatory and fairly well-reasoned (Bill also followed up his original post both here and here. Well worth a read, if you get a chance). I think, however, that the target of Bill’s self-confessed rant, as well as that of many of the critical comments in response to his article, was misplaced.

In the main, both Bill’s post and the comments it generated had major issues with what we might call blanket rollouts – that is to say schools or local authorities (districts) that decide to install a specific number of IWBs into schools and classrooms regardless of whether they are wanted or what impact they might have on the learning and teaching there. As well as the actual costs involved, Bill points to the opportunity costs – what could have been purchased with the same amount of money. Whilst these are valid points, surely they have nothing to do with IWB technology itself, but rather are to do with how our schools are being funded and administered? My own school uses SMART Boards, which has proven to be problematic as we are part of a “Promethean authority”, that is to say that all the schools within our authority are meant to use Promethean IWBs rather than any other brand. A decision has been taken somewhere, using some kind of criteria that is perhaps not educationally based (would it be fair to assume that cost might come into it?) that every school in our authority then has to accept, regardless of what they feel is best for them educationally speaking. Surely this is  - to use Neil’s words – counter to CfE? That is perhaps a rather large discussion, and should be saved for another time and place.

Reading the reactions to Bill’s post, as well as the Twitter Edchat about IWBs he mentioned in his post, it was interesting to see that a number of people were responding with the tech-neutral position that I was inclined to adopt myself. That is to say that IWBs (or indeed any technology, technique or tool used while teaching) is not in itself either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, rather it is how the teacher goes about using it that causes it to ‘become so’. In the case of IWBs, when I first saw one, it was being used purely as a large monitor with regular Microsoft applications, which could be touch controlled as well as mouse controlled. Not exactly the epitome of interacivity, yet some teachers were making very good use of it just like that. The next time I encountered an IWB it was being used as a large touch screen monitor, but for more web-based bespoke learning and teaching applications, and once more some teachers were making a very good use of it. My own personal use of an IWB in the classroom started during my probationary year, and tended to follow the large touch screen monitor approach spoken about above. Occasionally, we would use the IWB to write on but that was about as far as it went.

So, to review. Valuable as a teaching tool? At times, and for some teachers/students. Embedded in classroom practice? Again, perhaps for some teachers/classes, but only in limited ways. Worth the money? Hmmmmmm. Doubtful. I remained to be covinced as to exactly how useful a tool these IWBs were.

And then I started working in the school I’m in now.

Talk about an eye opener. On my very first visit, I saw more being done with their SMART Boards than I ever had before. When I started my job, I got to see a number of different teachers in a number of different classes using their SMART Boards. All sorts of weird and wonderful things were happening, and the children were all so engaged. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and even asked them what software or application it was that they were using, and how much it had cost. They just looked at me like I was stupid.

“SMART Notebook. It comes with the board.”

I couldn’t believe it. The same software that I had only ever used if I was looking to write something on my IWB, and you should have seen the things that it could do. And for children with a huge range of additional support needs. Children who just couldn’t make the conceptual leap between clicking a button or pushing a switch and something happening on a screen were able to make that connection because they could touch the screen and cause the reaction that happened on it.  Notebook activities could be highly personalised for individual classes or even pupils, using text, sound, video, animation or web content all from one ‘document’. And the pupils were driving the IWB activities forward too “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this, or that?”.

I began pottering with Notebook myself, and by now have achieved (I hope!) some level of competence with it. During this time I have used my SMART Board and Notebook software to deliver learning activities across all curricular areas. I have used it to collaborate with other teachers and other classes, and have even helped pupils use it to work together. I have used Notebook to administer moderations for SQA Access 1 and 2 units, as well as using the built-in recording function to create a video record of the moderation that can be used as evidence. I have created content that utilises the SMART Response ‘clicker’ system (formerly Senteo) to collect and analyse data, and have helped our Pupil Council start using this technology to cast their votes anonymously.

Now, the question behind this is why have I used Notebook to do all these things? Firstly, because Notebook is easy to use. Once you learn to use it (and I mostly taught myself) it is intuitive, quick, easy and versatile. And I still feel like I’m only starting to get to grips with it, especially as it continues to develop. Secondly, ease of access – it is on virtually every computer in our school, and is available to download for use at home for SMART Board users (a product key is provided for this purpose). Thirdly, and probably most importantly, is because the pupils I work with absolutely love working on the SMART Board. They find it hugely engaging, and are far more willing to ‘have a go’ on the SMART Board than they are on a more traditional paper-based jotter or worksheet task. Does this mean that the SMART Board is the only teaching tool I use? Of course it doesn’t, and neither does it mean I would keep using it if it didn’t meet the needs of my pupils (for instance, I found another way to deliver a set of activities that had been planned using SMART Response last year as the class were unable to make the connection between the clickers and the board, and also found the interfaces too confusing). And if they took the SMART Board away tomorrow I would still be able to teach. But that’s hardly the point - I would have to be a fool not to take advantage of such enthusiasm from the pupils wherever I found it.

Now, you may have noticed that I have answered a question about IWB hardware by referring to IWB software. This was no mistake, and I make no apologies for it, because I truly believe that the software, its functionality and what it enables us to do with the IWB are at the heart of the debate about the role that the IWB has to play in the modern classroom.  Back on Twitter, someone else summed it up in a far more elegant way than I could ever have managed.

I think that sums it up in a nutshell. When it comes right down to it, the IWB will make no difference in class on its own, whether it’s in one room, ten rooms or every room in a school/district/country.  It is, after all, just a tool, and the impact of any tool on learning and teaching comes down to how it is used.  Whilst I have had the privilege to witness some absolutely fantastic work being done with SMART Boards both within and outwith my school, and have also been lucky enough to take part in a Content Creation Seminar with some extremely talented colleagues from across Scotland, I have also witnessed some work where the IWB has added nothing to an activity, and indeed in extreme cases where it seems to be getting used in an almost tokenistic, gimmicky manner.  The IWB is not to be blamed for the second observation any more than it should be credited for the first – each teacher, each class, each pupil, each situation will call for a different approach and it is up to the skilled and professional educator to adjudge best what that approach should be. Solutions should not be ‘forced’ upon a practitioner, pupil or school any more than they should be withheld from them.

Finally, then, we come to my response to Neil’s original tweet and Bill’s original post, and it’s quite simple. Don’t blame the board. IWBs are only a tool, and it is us who make them what they are and not the other way round. IWBs will neither entrench nor challenge traditional orthodoxies, it is up to each one of us to do that, and to decide how to deal with the technological hand we have been dealt to our pupils’ best advantage. To use one of my favourite quotes from a wise man: “It’s not about the tech, it’s about the teAch…”

So, today I was mainly responsible for the in-service training of all our teachers and SMT on Glow. I had decided, in discussions with Katie Barrowman at LTS to follow the model we had seenCon Morris use in his CPD Challenges, and so I set about constructing (with a LOT of help from Katie) a brand new Glow group called “Have a Glow @IMS” which was based round a set of challenges ranging from signing in to Glow all the way up to creating their own Glow Groups.

Often I find Glow confusing and almost too much information. For this reason, and based on the very sexy new National Site, I decided to go a different way:

As well as looking very nice, the new National Site utilised a graphical interface – clicking on various ‘objects’ on screen would take you to different places in Glow. I really liked the idea of using a visual menu, and Katie came up with a good way to put one together, utilising tables in a text editor web part. Over about a day and a half, I managed to build the whole group and its ten challenges from scratch, and without an iota of coding ability. I finally worked out about 10 minutes before I was due in school how to do the one picture, multiple links trick but by then it was too late and I had to go with what I had. Working collaboratively with Katie and Alan Hamilton (of Stirling High School) I managed to troubleshoot the group whilst taking part in the morning INSET activities.

Come the afternoon, we were ready to go. The teachers in my school are not, it is fair to say, Glow enthusiasts, so it was looking like a big ask. When I mucked up typing my password in on the first attempt, they all had a hearty laugh. Second time was better and we were in, and I pointed out the side menu links to the school page, and how to get to the group we were going to be working in. They were sent off then to find a computer in pairs or on their own and to work through the challenges. I was to ‘troubleshoot’ along with my DHT and one of the Instructors.

We spent a good bit of the first hour resetting passwords and helping people log in. The chat as I moved round was slightly negative – all the usual Glow Aunt Sallys; clunky interface, unintuitive, hard to get in to, etc, etc – but as the afternoon went on and they had a look round Glow the chat started to become a bit brighter. Once the challenges were getting completed, there was laughter and hilarity ringing round the school (in a good way I hope). There was even a decent number of (fairly simple) Glow Groups set up by the end of the day!

So what did I learn from this experience of setting up a Glow group and running it in this way?

First of all, I learnt A LOT about using Glow to create. Katie and  Alan were a huge help in keeping me on the straight and narrow, but I did all the graft myself, meaning I became more comfortable and proficient using the interface. I even managed to work out the National Site trick, and changed my own Glow Group front page to utilise the same trick.

Passwords should maybe be done as a separate, perhaps preceding session, as this would have saved a lot of time at the start of this session.

I decided that as well as a home button at the bottom of each page, there should have been a “Previous Challenge” and “Next Challenge” button.

I learnt that if you give people time to ‘play’ on Glow, along with adequate support, they will begin to see the benefits of using it.

User account issues were another thing that should have been done in advance of the session, to prevent troubleshooting in the middle, or people missing out on a challenge.

I was also reminded of the power of Twitter – I had a number of people looking to join the group even before it was finished

Finally, I decided that what Katie Barrowman doesn’t know about Glow just isn’t worth knowing! Also, thanks again to both Katie and Alan for their help and support

Some of the pupils in my class had been struggling with some of the finer details of telling the time. They were trying hard, but, let’s face it, the concepts can be quite tricky. They were becoming quite disillusioned, so last week I showed them a Youtube video of Dave Allen talking about learning to tell the time

Now, we had been doing work on this same target for a few weeks now, and they were still having bother. The video cheered them up a bit, and stopped them feeling that they were the only people in the world who had ever had these problems. I had been thinking about how I might help them ‘get it’ all week, but was still unsure.

And then I had a eureka moment.

We got the desks back against the wall of the class, so we just had a big gap in the middle of the class and 3 piles of chairs. I told them I wasn’t going to give them any instructions, but that when they knew what I was doing they could help me. I put a chair standing in the gap, and then wrote out a number 12 and stuck it on. As soon as I wrote 6, they had it sussed and were able to help me arrange the chairs in a circle with the numbers 1-12 stuck on them in the correct clockface positions. We used a ruler as ‘the hour hand’ and they were all able to demonstrate that they knew where the hour hand should be pointing for a particular “o’clock”. We put a swivel chair in the middle of the ‘clock’ to help us move smoothly like a clock, and also had a discussion about the way the hand would move (only clockwise!).

Next, I moved the marked hours down off the backs of the circled chairs so they were hanging on the seat part, and stuck a sign with “o’clock” onto the back of the 12 chair. Again, they were quick to realise what was happening and in turns (starting with half past, quarter past and quarter to) we soon had the minutes in the right places above the respective hours. I found that being able to actually turn round really helped them work out where the numbers were in relation to each other – for instance, if they were facing 9, I could ask what was behind them and they knew without looking that it was 3.

Our chairs have been formed into a circle to represent a clock face, with the hours 1-12 stuck on low down and the minutes from o'clock to five to stuck on higher up

We then found ourselves a suitable hour hand, it having to be significantly longer than our hour hand, and thinner if possible. We then practised showing a particular minute to/from using the hour hand, before setting a question for the other pupils. Again, they were able to demonstrate good knowledge, and again the physical set up helped – for instance, with the hours being closer to the centre of the clock, I was able to point out that the minute hand was longer, and therefore should be looking at the further away numbers. It also helped I could direct gaze – ‘look up’ or ‘look down’ were a real help to the pupils. Also, being able to physically handle the hour and minute hands certainly seemed to help them distinguish between them.

Big hand pointing to 12, small hand pointing to 1. What time do you think it says on the clock?

WE then took some pictures of our clock, and Twitpicced them – an hour later they had had about 40 views each, and we also got a couple of comments from a parent. Finally, in turn I gave the pupils a single hand of the clock and got them to point to a specific chair. They had to read the chair’s time to me using which hand they had to tell which number they were to read. Again, this worked very well. At that point, we sorted the chairs and the desks out, put everything back where it should be and went to use one of the excellent Teaching Time resources on the SMART Board as a plenary activity. Just as we were about to start, I remembered that I had promised myself to use AudioBoo with the class, so out came Artoo (my trusty iPhone) and I had a chat with the boys about the lesson. The result was not quite as structured as I would have liked, but seemed positive. Judge for yourself by having a listen!

So, a successful lesson, and a useful technique that we can use again. I have already had another couple of ideas to develop the activity. The one downside was when I was asking my PSA if she thought the lesson had been any good: “Oh yes, I thought it was excellent. Was that one of Cassie’s ideas?”

I have used AudioBoo to record a few pieces for the EDUTalk project, one at a Dark Sky Scotland event I was at, one on assessment in my classroom and another which sort of turned into a rant about Community Learning Partnerships.

AudioBoo is fantastically easy to use, and makes publishing audio to the web incredibly easy for anyone with an iPhone (I think it’s cousin, PhoneBoo does the same for non iPhone users).

Going to try and post the audio below. Have a listen and see what you think.

I mean, how great is that? And it’s so easy to use. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Think I’ll try and get the AudioBoos going in class – think my students will love it.

Last week I introduced the class to the excellent 2DIY from 2Simple software, and they all made themselves a game, with support. I am hopeful that now they have been through the process once, we will be able to fade the support and see what they are capable of on their own.

I had tried to drop all the games into SMART Notebook so we could share them and display them all from one place, but although the games displayed alright, the controls didn’t work. I sent out an SOS to Anthony Evans at 2Simple, and he has kicked it around for a while with no joy finally concluding it might be a Notebook issue. I’ll forward that to my friends at SMART, but in the meantime Anthony suggested they could be displayed on a blog, much like Cleveland Junior School have done here. I must admit, I like the thematic idea, with Pirate Pete adventuring his way through a number of different games.

So I thought I would try and drop one of the class games here and see if it worked! If it does, this is ‘Kong’

Kong