Hello again,
Quite awhile ago I wrote about preparing to go to the TeachMeet PD being held at ACU. It was my first professional development and was the inspiration for my student business cards. I have finally got around to compiled around it!
Before the actual session, I was emailed by a lecturer about it being held and directed to a wiki page. This page had been especially set up for TeachMeets being held in Victoria, whether it be rural, regional or metropolitan.
As you can see in the screen cap above, the page can be edited by any member. This allowed everyone, including myself, to sign their attendance and add information about their online profiles. It was also an opportunity for presenters to volunteer their time to speak on a topic.
TeachMeet is unique in the way that it relies on teachers volunteering to speak in either 3 or 7 minute blocks on topics which cover a range of ways to approach education. Topics covered in this TeachMeet ranged from ways to use Google Chrome and how to use Doceri, to how to educate on and prevent suicide as well as promote well being and presentations on how to implement a genius hour program.
By having these presentations only go for such short periods of time, presenters could only involve the most critical details and those watching didn't have the chance to lose interest. During the intervals, those present are given a chance to talk to the people around them and network. The varied participants; students, teachers and past students who are now teachers, are so diverse that it wasn't hard to find something to discuss and chat about. The entire session went for roughly 2 hours with a short 20 min tea break.
One of the strangest things I noticed at this session was the opening line of the evening, 'Please feel free to connect to our wifi, we would like get #TMMelb to trend again!'
WHAT!? These people are encouraging me to tweet during performances? Coming straight from school where if a mobile was visible, it was confiscated, this new found freedom to tweet was strange and almost uncomfortable for me.
But I keep up. Watching the presentations was one experience but reading the tweets alongside amplified the effect. And after joining in myself the experience changed again! People were chatting about things they had done which were similiar, people asked questions about everything and those who replied offered advice and further questions.
One thing I was concerned about the entire time was the size of the room. The session was held in a large room, in our new Daniel Mannix building, and while it was big, it wasn't big enough for everyone who attended. It was tight, the tables could have been set up differently and we definitely needed more chairs. But despite this, everyone managed to find some room and participate all the same.
Following the session, we were instructed to head to the same wiki page where we could see the slides from the session as well as additional information such as when the next one would be held and how to get involved.
All in all, my first TeachMeet was one to remember and I would definitely recommend it to both current and future teachers. The wiki page can be found HERE for those of you in Melbourne if you are interested in coming along to the next one!
Hope to see you there,
Miss Tracy xx
P.S. I apologise for the quality of the images in this post, my screen cap quality is not the best :(
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