SETT and Teachmeet 2007

 

I haven't really done SETT (the Scottish Learning Festival) this year.  Both Annabelle and I looked through the programme and couldn't really see a lot of sessions that we wanted to go to that would make it worth arranging cover work and annoying people by asking them to cover my classes. 

I wanted to see the Stephen Heppell keynote on the Wednesday and I was quite interested to see what Sharron Tonner was going to say about using mobile phones on the Thursday.  Everything else seemed a bit samey.  I think SETT is a great event but it needs more teachers who have never gone before to attend.  I don't know how they go about attracting them. 

eLive in Edinburgh has (or had - I would guess there won't be money for it this time) a similar problem.  A CPD event over two days, although it has the advantage of one of the days being an in-service day, yet very few teachers in the council attend.  How do we get Mr Smith in Maths or Mrs Jones in CDT to come along when they're already feeling overwhealmed by technology and these new-fangled interactive whiteboard things.

TeachMeet also seemed to be preaching to the converted.  I am sure we all came away with loads of ideas, but everyone in the room could have stood up and spoken about the wonderful things they are doing with technology in education.  How do we reach the scared, the apprehensive, the technophobes?

Comments

[John]

hi Katie,
For myself I really need a teachmeet, not to convert anyone but to get support and a warm feeling of be among friends.
the first teachMeet was only a couple of years ago, a few folk in a pub. 150 this year in the science center, if we keep growing at this rate we will be pulling in 'the scared, the apprehensive, the technophobes' in a couple more years.