Well, that was an interesting day. I volunteered to post the feedback from the last session today for groups 5 and 6 so here I am. We were a bit light on the ground so we joined together to make a composite! I thought this would be a good place to start and would make me write my first ever pedagoo post so here goes.
Our group consisted of Jenni Ewan, Colleen MacGregor, Pat Phillips, Annemarie Weston, Graeme Henderson, Dean Campbell, Annette Iafrat, Julie Sutherland, Joe Wilson and Charlie Thomson. Lots of good contributions came out of the session on the 3 questions Fearghal gave us, i.e. what have you taken from today that you will use on Monday, that you will use 1 year from now and what can pedagoo do to help?
We did a round robin session on each question so that everyone was able to make a contribution. Everyone had something that they were able to take with them to use on Monday and they ranged from speaking to a head about blogging, discussing the possibilities, blogging about what happened at the teachmeet, laminating hexagons to fit ideas together (solo taxonomy), linking blogs to school websites, using Portable Apps, changing mindsets for particular S4 science classes and letting children explore ideas by taking a step back and considering how to move forward. There were ideas from everyone and although some things may not be done on Monday, (as everyone was careful to add the proviso, “it may not be Monday exactly”….) everyone was keen to jump into action.
When it came to discussing what we would be hopefully doing in a year’s time the idea of embracing the ethos of pedagoo by spreading the word and sharing practice and ideas with others was prevalent. Most people want to take ideas from today’s workshops and after coming to grips with them themselves, make sure that others in their schools and local authorities know about them. Another recurring theme was that there is lots of room for CPD and everyone wanted to look further into the ideas that came up from the workshops they were in. Joe’s aim for the year was to try and push through some policy changes, looking at open licencing and mandating.
The exciting bit for me though was at the end of the session when we discussed what pedagoo could do to help us with this. The main ideas were really about continuing the good work that is already done by pedagoo in sharing practice and connecting teachers. A lot of people agreed though that it would be useful if we could arrange more local events as people travelled far and wide to come today and whilst it was a hugely successful, stimulating and inspiring event, days like this need to continue to happen when we all return to our own authorities. To make that possibly they need to be local and perhaps on a smaller scale and with a mix of secondary and primary teachers. Any help that could be offered or guidance on where to start organising a meet would be appreciated. We thought that possibly a directory of pedagoo twitter followers and their area of expertise would make it quicker and easier to find the people we would like to network with and seek out. Is this a possibility?
And relax…..I have reached the end of the first post. Hope I managed to cover the main points of our discussion but feel free to comment away! Thanks to the team at pedagoo for organising a brilliant and inspiring day.