Amazing, inspirational, educational, fascinating and fun – what more could you ask for on a Friday night??

Words can not fully describe or do justice to the atmosphere in the Apex room at 6 pm last night – I guess it was one of those where you had to be there – and I was glad I was. The reason for this – Teachmeet Bett2010.  The main part of a teach meet is:

hearing stories about learning, from teachers. This is not an event to present about a product or theory – this is a chance for teachers from all types of establishments to hear ideas from each other. Real narratives of practice that make a difference. It is about being engaged and inspired by our immediate colleagues and a whole bucket load of networking to boot!

Last night for me was all of that. Perhaps testament to the success of TM were the 250+ people who were in the room at the start, along with those attending via flash-meeting and following the tweets live. It was an eclectic mix of teachers, advisers, stand holders, journalists and curious onlookers.

The whole evening was a highlight – things for me to take away were:

Voki - a tool that i am going to use before the week is out! thanks to @ianaddison

Scratch – fantastically demonstrated by @milesberry (Finding Nemo just won’t be the same again!)

Voicethread and wikis from @lisibo along with these wise words: what is old hat to you is a light bulb to someone else!

Xtranormal from @gvibe

http://www.ict-register.net/ a reminder from @tonyparkin that there are other tools put there to help teachers.

classtools.net – @daibarnes with a video of how a teacher at his school had used the resource – again another great tool.

As well as these tools, there were many others. Firstly – I don’t think I will ever be able to view Captain America in the same light again after @digitalmaverick’s quite brilliant presentation – on the power of heroes and collaboration. @ianusher talked about a project that he is involved with teachers as writers which is a great idea.  I know that since starting this blog, I have thought about the whole process of writing and how children write too.  @IanYorston will also stick in my mind and have now subscribed to his blog - The Unreasonable Man he was entertaining and gave a great link to linkbun.ch which lets you put multiple links into one small link which you can share over IM, Twitter, email or even a mobile phone SMS, a brilliant idea for sharing multiple links with the class and one that I had not come across before. @darrenmurphy spoke about e portfolios but started his presentation with a question by asking – how many full time teachers were in the room – I must admit I was surprised by the lack of hands that went up, however this discounted the number of part-time teachers and also advisers in the room. Although, it did make a good point of perhaps getting more ‘teachers’ involved and I think Tom Barrett’s brilliant idea of the TM takeover is one way of getting the message ‘out there’. @helenmyers spoke passionately about the use of Second Life in language teaching – I have never used of been in second life – but thanks to Helen will be investigating further this year. @dughall took us back to a time when he was 10 … his message though was very clear and a reminder to us all that we need to be teaching our children to prepare them for the ‘new’ tools  that they are engaging with.

The evening ended with a presentation of turning a wall into an IWB in 7 minutes using a Wiimote – quite brilliant, fascinating and it worked thank you to David Phillips @ictcoverlessons for showing this.

A huge debt of gratitude goes to Tom Barrett and Stuart Ridout for organising such a successful evening and also to Leon Cych for streaming the event live. Also, to all those attended for making it the evening it was – for me it was just fantastic and I feel honoured and privileged to be part of the community.