#TeachMeetEP

Jane Tucker on 100WC

Simon on XBox and Literacy

It's been a busy few weeks, so this is my first opportunity to jot down a few thoughts on #TeachMeetEP on 26th September at the University Church of England Academy (UCEA) in Ellesmere Port - many thanks to UCAT and the staff at UCEA who welcomed us and supported the event. Firstly, the lessons learned:

• Like #teachmeetchester, several people who signed up for the event were not able to attend. The 4.30pm start was undoubtedly too early for some people who were intending to travel to Ellesmere Port from Chester or North Wirral. A 5.00pm start may have been better and we will look at that as a possibility for our next TM (read on for details of that). Twilight sessions are always going to be subject to the unpredictabilities of the end of the school day and an obvious solution would be to move to an evening slot or, maybe, Saturday morning? Or is that pushing expectations of professional commitment? I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of teachers to give their time and energy to unpaid professional development in their own time, but giving up an evening or precious time at the weekend maybe a 'bridge too far'? Only one way to find out, I suppose ....
• Second lesson learned was admin-related, I suppose, and a bit trivial, but ended up being quite important, I think. The #TeachMeetEP sign-up form collected necessary information on presentations, names and organisations. For contact details, it asked only for a Twitter handle, if available. The assumption was that most who signed up would be on Twitter - mistake! In the end, only about a quarter of those who signed up gave Twitter contact, so it was not possible to contact them directly again (to give reminders or joining info). In future, the sign-up form will also ask for a contact email address.
• Third lesson was also about making contact. #TeachMeetEP was aimed primarily at staff in local Ellesmere Port schools (with others very welcome, of course). Staff from three local schools came along, but despite many Tweets and several direct emails, we had no response from other schools. Email does not seem to be a very effective way of spreading the word about an event like this. Why do emails to some schools appear to disappear down a black hole? Not sure about a way forward for this one, though anecdotal evidence suggests that some schools and teachers have the impression that everyone attending a TM has to present. Maybe the whole concept of TM attendance - present if you want, 'lurk' if you want - has to be spread more widely?
• Final lesson learned was technical and just a bit frustrating! At #teachmeetchester, the Gosoapbox website was used to collect questions, ideas and comments during and after the event. Despite a few glitches in subsequent attempts to use the site, we once more asked a people to share their views in this way for #TeachMeetEP. Result - Nothing! Either the site completely failed to work or nobody commented. I can't believe the latter is true, so the former seems the likeliest scenario. We won't be using Gosoapbox again!

On to the positives! There were six very different and thought-provoking presentations at #TeachMeetEP which fitted just about perfectly into the 1.5 hour time slot. My highlights were Si Poole's XBox presentation on the the big screen in UCEA's theatre, Dean Paton's engaging and entertaining tour of place names and Martin Little's fresh angle on fractions - apologies for not mentioning everyone; your contributions were much appreciated, but these three are the ones which spring straight to mind a month after the event. Resources and images from the evening are on http://chesterictproject.weebly.com/teachmeet.html as well as three extra presentations from contributors who could not attend in person. And Finally - the next #teachmeetchester TeachMeet will be  at the University of Chester campus in Warrington on 13th March 2014 - details here ....