Teachmeet returns to North East London

On March the 31st @ the CEME centre in beautiful A13 country Havering (and Redbridge Primary ICT ) will be hosting Teachmeet NEL 2, the sequel. We are very excited to finally launch this event via our blogs, as we have some evolutions and changes to our old format. For those of you have never been to one of these event then read the description below and visit the wiki site of last years event here.

What is Teachmeet then?

Teachmeet NEL is an exciting unconference event organised by colleagues@ Havering and Redbridge. The event is a chance for anyone interested in Educational Technology to share good practise.
Delegates can come to either share what they are doing through means of a mini (7 minutes ) or nano (2 minutes) presentation or to just listen to what others are doing. Lats year there was a very wide range of subjects covered, these included a focus on the latest ed tech gadgets, an Nintendo Project and how a violin teacher used a VLE. We welcomed Ewan Macintosh as host for our evening, while sponsorship comes from a number of companies including ELMO, Softease and Aver Media. There was a raffle on the evening where delegates could win a top of the range visualiser or plasma screen TV.

The other side of Teachmeet is the networking, friend sourcing and meeting up with all those contacts you have been twittering and blogging with over the last year. This years Bett Teachmeet was mainly about this for me this year. Thanks to the hard work of Ian Usher, Drew Buddy and countless others, many of us enjoyed a drink and a chat in an upstairs room in Olympia once again followed by a 'Teacheat' session at Pizza Hut.

How is it Teachmeet North East London different this year ?

Dave, Nicholas Nesha, Penny , Amanda and I are very keen to get back to the heart of Teachmeet, which we believe is about teachers sharing that which they find effective and exciting in their classrooms. It is not sales pitches or long abstract talks about blue sky projects that leave you cold. We want people to be inspired and excited, We want them to come along to hear people that will make them remember why they went into teaching in the first place. I get these moments when I listen to or read the works of some of the cutting edge teacher bloggers, who graciously share what has gone well for them in their classroom.

In order to ensure that people go away inspired we have built in a further category to the presentation formats that already exist. So there will be 2 minute and 7 minute random presentations but there will also be a new category called a mini note, a short 15 minute presentation by the following confirmed guests:

• Tom Barrett - Inspiring ICT in his Primary Classroom
• Drew Buddie - Good stuff from the man who coined the phrase 'Twitter is like googling people'
• Max Wainwright - teacher and software developer on zen, simplicity and cup cakes
• One more TBA

We still want lots of 7 minute and 2 minute presenters please - so please go to the wiki site and add your name as a speaker or 'lurker' - if you can't work out how to do this, then email me your name and I'll do it for you.

We also recognise that we need our sponsors and though we wouldn't want them to sell from the front,we do, in this current climate need to give them a reason to attend. Therefore you will see our sponsors put to work around the central atrium in the CEME centre, they will each be serving themed refreshments, we therefore look forward to the cup cake stall, the bar and the more civilised Teas and coffees.

The other changes are the chairman and the venue. Here we have a mix of a modern and a classic East London legend. The modernity is the venue, the state of the art Ceme centre off the A13,which will afford us a huge space for networking, break out spaces etc. The classic comes in the form of Terry Freedman who will be a great chair of the event.

So please sign up now - trust me if you go to one ICT Conference event thingy this year, make sure its this one - it will be brilliant.