The teacher challenge

I spent a very pleasant day yesterday with teachers from a development group in North Derbyshire. It was their group's 'teacher day' and they had gathered in the splendid surrounds of the Hayes Centre near Somercotes for a day of stimulation and conversation. There was real meat in the day which opened with a presentation by Will Ord called 'Philosophy for Children'. The teachers then broke into their various groups to pursue activities ranging from photo orienteering to digital alchemy.

My sessions were called ... 'Podcasts, blogs and that sort of thing' ... I had prepared a set of ideas which included an opening on Web 2.0 and then a work through of the sort of things that people can do and how this affected or would affect teaching and learning. It didn't work out quite how I had planned it. The teachers, in this first group, had come to listen because they wanted to know for themselves so that they could make sense of what was going on and what it might mean to them in the future. My careful preparation went out of the window as I answered their questions... 'Well what is a blog then?'... I explained and then showed them Common Craft. I ran a video from YouTube and the discussion began about stopping and blocking and how schools could get the best out of the resources available. I showed how to unplug the videos and run the flv files on their own. I talked about RealPlayer11 which does the job neatly for you and how this worked with FireFox. I did a podcast using Podium having been asked about podcasting and I built a blog in Blogger to show how quick and easy it could be.( You can see it here)

Forewarned I waited for the second group to arrive. I asked what they wanted to know and took it from there. I don't know what they got from their 45 minutes with me but I was left with the impression that we needed to go on and explore what could be and what could happen.

These professionals needed time to consolidate information and help and support in getting to grips with changes and challenges. It seemed to me that the session was a start but by no means an end ... almost like booking the tickets for a long journey and then having to wait to get on the plane.

I ended by showing Honeycomb as a way of making the connection between what they needed to know and what they might use ... thoughts for the future... and suggested that they kept their eye on it.

We talked of mobile phones, Asus miniBooks, Nintendo DS and all other tools that children will be bringing to the school party and tried to make sense of them in a world driven by targets, tests and standards.

Right at the end of the last session two teachers approached me ... 'Thanks heavens,' they said, 'We thought it was us! ... It transpired that they worked in a secondary school with challenging pupils who needed support to move through their institutional world and these teachers had been trying to make the connections between what their students do and want to do and where the system leaves them. They could see that Web 2.0, for want of a better title, could be part of this and that schools needed to move forward and not worry so much.

It made my day ... I gave them my card and offered help ...