A couple of weeks ago, one Friday evening I found myself driving to Ennis to the Clare TeachMeet. This TeachMeet was organised by Leanne Lynch. It was her first event of this type so I was looking forward to seeing what the vibe would be on the night. I’ve been to many educational events over the years and more than my fair share of TeachMeets and I’ve found that each one has it’s own energy. I made a spur of the moment decision to bring my daughter and my niece with me on the night. They are both members of the Youth Media Team and I thought we might get a few interviews on the night.
Being met with food on arrival always bodes well for the night ahead … and what followed didn’t disappoint! We had a lively but leisurely 2 hours of learning preceded by a warm welcome from Leanne
Next up was Mags Amond sharing some of her research on TeachMeets …
… and challenging us to break in to (or out of) jars to get to the makings of her now legendary glowies 🙂
Followed by Chris Reina who took us on a whistle stop tour of 65 apps in 7 minutes!
Next, Martina O’Grady shared her experience of dropping the use of a Maths book in primary school …
… and Aaron Carroll told us about Flipping the Classroom with the irishhomework.ie website.
This was followed by Sean Murphy telling us about Minecraft and Raspberry Pi for coding …
… Roseanne Healy reminding us of the importance of using ‘concrete materials’ with students …
… and Niamh Quinn on extending Aistear into 1st and 2nd class
All of the above in not much more than an hour!! So now it was time to get up and get active with GoNoodle
It was good to get up and moving, which led nicely into the next presentation from Bryn Llewellyn from Tagtiv8
I loved Bryn’s idea to have students choose different Kahoot answers by making different shapes – active learning at its best!
Steve Holmes then talked us through his Scratch Climate Sensor application including some data on Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian …
… followed by a quick look at Green Screen film making with Cormac Cahill.
Next up was Lauren King sharing her ideas on Business in Action and the Tenner challenge
and finally Jackie Maurer spoke about the CRAFTEd project
All that was left to do was for Leanne to wrap up the night and this was the golden moment of the night for me as Leanne asked to reflect on why we do what we do …
Leanne reminded us of the impact of Bianca Ní Ghrógáin whose ideas percolated through many of the evenings presentations … and of Tim Rylands, whose memorial service was held on that evening … before signing off with a story that her current 6th class had written when she had taught them 4 years previously. A beautiful way to end a fantastic night. I loved the vibe on the night – a lot was covered in a short time frame but it was done in a very relaxed way. For me it was all that a TeachMeet should be!
The icing on the cake was that Cara and Amy got a chance to interview Bryn, Leanne, Pat Hanrahan (Director of the Education Centre) and Mags who shared a few thoughts on Tim Rylands. You can check out their interviews here.