One of the things that has stopped me putting finger to keyboard has, I suspect, been the time it’s taken me to adjust to my new role in Higher Ed. This blog, even down to the domain name, was very much a reflection of me as a teacher. It reflects my thinking, as it developed, over the course of ten years. There’s much here I’m proud of, but I also felt a slight temptation to review, revisit and perhaps even remove some posts in light of all that experience.

Instead, this site will remain (for now, at least) in mothballs, while I start a new blog over at davestacey.co.uk/blog

So it is with these blog posts. While I’m a bit gutted that I slipped away from a post a day so soon, I think I spent what little energy I’ve had over the last couple of days in the right places, and I’m hopeful that with a fair wind behind me I can still make 28 posts over this month, it may just involve doubling up on a few days.

Day 7, post 4. I wonder if there’s some brand of cold and flu meds fancy sponsoring a couple of posts…

For various reasons, that petered out after a few years. I’m pleased to say that it looks as though a new group of educators in Wales is coming together to pick up that baton, with even more ambition that we had around #addcym.

One of the main reasons that tonight’s post is so short, is I’ve spent a chunk of time building the website for NetworkEdCymru. We’ve got our inaugural Twitter chat tomorrow morning at 9am, a series of blog posts in the work from teachers from across Wales, and the first of what will hope to prove to be a number of events coming up in April.

Keep an eye on the site, and the Twitter account for more news as it develops. And if you’ve liked to be involved in shaping it as it moves forward, please get in touch.

I’ve found myself increasingly using mobile to take notes at meetings and conferences, and while my thumbs struggle with sustained use, it’s something I’m increasingly finding quite useful. As phones have become powerful to handle easy switching between apps, this too has increased what I can do.

I’m currently typing this on my Honor 9, which I’ve had for about 6 months now, and stands out as an excellent phone. I bought it primarily for the reviews of the camera, but it’s handled everything I’ve thrown at it without stuttering or having the occasional wobble which is more than be said for the last LG I had.

In an attempt to make this post vaguely useful, I think it’s going to become one of those ‘how I use’ kind of posts. Herefollows a list of my favourite apps. In no particular order, here we go…

Waze – great for getting around on school visits, with additional hilarity at the attempts to pronounce Welsh road names. That said, the fact there is a welsh language pack adds extra brownie points in the Stacey household.

Podkicker – probably the only thing I miss about Apple products is the syncing of podcasts between phone and computer. If anyone knows of a decent android equivalent, I’d love to hear about it

Google Calendar. – while I’m largely stuck using Outlook for work emails, G Calendar handles the integration of multiple calendars better in my view.

Google Drive – if I absolute have to use to Word App I will, but for firing up and getting quick ideas down, Drive + Docs can’t be beaten in my view.

Google Keep – I still haven’t found the perfect to do system that I had when all my work stuff was on Google, this is proving a useful addition to the ‘try to keep Dave organised’ crusade. I’m currently experimenting with Trello again, although I’m not a big fan of the widgets.

Twitter – while I still tend to use Tweet deck on my browser to better access various lists, in recent months I’ve found the Twitter app increasingly useful at surfacing useful content from the fire hose of noise that is my unfiltered twitter stream.

Feedly – I’m still mourning the death of Google Reader, but this is my favourite of all the alternatives I’ve tried. Lack of offline reading has been an issue in the past, for which I’ve found FeedMe to be an alright alternative.

Any ‘must haves’ that you think I’m missing?

I can’t remember when I set up my first blog, I think it was probably during my NQT year. That no longer exists, but I’ve been posting here on and off since 2008, and the same idea of being part of a larger community still holds true. Since the advent of Twitter much of the conversations that use to take place on forums and in the comments below blog posts has moved there, but I suspect (with no firm evidence to back up this assertion) that the last few years have seen an increase in the number of teachers blogging.

I’ve found a number of benefits over the years. I still come back to things I posted years ago to review and revisit both thoughts, links and resources that I posted. In some ways, I’m writing for my future self. I’ve also been lucky to receive a range of useful and supportive comments over the years that have helped me develop my thinking. While some part of the edu-tiwtter-blogosphere can, at times, be a little hostile, that has never been my experience. The awareness that there may be an audience for your writing can, if you let it, act as a barrier to your writing. While that may have stopped me posting things that are probably better off unposted, I think there’s something in the idea that you just get on with it. As Seth Godin might say, just ship it.

Which brings us to #28daysofwriting. The idea came from Tom Barrett in 2015, and you can find what Tom wrote about it at the time here. One of the key things was that by placing a 28 minute limit on your writing, posting something once a day was achievable and would make it more likely to become a habit. While I’m not sure that quote worked for me (if I’m honest by the time March rolled around I was ready for a break), at this point in time I’m looking for an excuse to get back to blogging, and this seems like a good way of doing so. As well as a legacy of those posts, the idea of a post a day was also a strong feature of the late, lamented ‘StaffRm’ site.

If you want to join you’ll need:

• A blog – if you don’t have your own you can get a free blog at WordPress.com (others are available)
• 28 minutes max each day – to write and publish a blog post – Some of mine were written and posted in about 6 minutes last time. You use the time you’ve got!
• Optional – adding an image from a Creative Commons licenced source or your own image. I’ll post some more about this in a few days, but in the meantime try the search tool at Creative Commons.

https://search.creativecommons.org/

If you do join in, even just for a few days, post a link to Twitter using the hashtag #28daysofwriting. And you’re not writing yourself, keep an eye on the hashtag and a comment to the posts of those who are.

Image: The End of the Line by Bruce Guenter – CC Licensed on Flickr.com

As a result, several posts are missing images, and a few of the pages aren’t working. Normal service will be resumed shortly…

*Yes, I know I said that last time, but I’ve already got some of them written this time!

So, knowing that the best laid plans of mice and Dave’s are often derailed on the road of good intentions (or something), I’m going to set myself the challenge of posting something (anything!) here on a daily basis for the next month. As ever, they’ll be a mixture of stuff I’ve read, stuff I’ve tried and some random ponderings. I’ve got a few bits from last term term to reflect on as well, so hopefully I won’t run out of steam for at least the first week and a half. As ever, please feel free to add any encouraging words via the comments or Twitter.

We moved it to the bar, and in doing so took away the option for people to present via a big screen and there was no space for people to sign up to present in advance. There was however, a bar!

The first 4 or so minutes were spent with people noting down specific problems they had encountered, or questions they had on post-its. One point per post-it. These were then brought to the front and I hurriedly grouped them (roughly) onto sheets of flip chart paper. These were then spaced around the room and the for the next 15 minutes people wandered around adding their own suggestions and ideas as solutions to the problems that had been raised. In the final couple of minutes of this section I asked people to identify and of the solutions that they especially wanted to talk about / hear about / have a discussion about.

While I reviewed these we had the one presentation (wrong word – more of an activity demonstration) that Lesley Anne had prepared in advance, which worked as a good break between the two sections and got everyone involved. If the video isn’t embedded below, click through to see what I mean!

#tmshp16 I love a woman who brings her own timer and horn to a Teachmeet! @LA_McDermott in action #shp16 pic.twitter.com/lQKglpwxlY

— Dave Stacey (@davestacey) July 9, 2016

We then spent the final 25 minutes discussion four (I think) of the ideas that had had the strongest indication on the sheets that people wanted to talk about. Discussions and ideas bounced around the room, people got up to share ideas on the flipchart and with one exception I think every problem that was noted down had at least one solution to it.

You can see what we ended up with here. You can scroll through them below or see the whole set on Flickr

The feedback from those there seemed very positive, including from a number of people who had made a contribution to a discussion who would, but their own admission, not have signed up to present.

It was also interesting to talking to people afterwards who, until that point, had only encountered the large, sponsored, key noted events. I’m not knocking them – I think there’s a real place for them, but it’s always worried me that teachers leaving them might not walk away with that sense of ‘hey, I could organise one of these…’ that so enthused me at my early TeachMeets. Hopefully this got a little closer to that, and made sure that even those people who might not (yet) have the confidence to get up and talk for 2 or 7 minutes get to share their ideas and join the discussion.

One suggestion from a colleague was to limit the number of problems (perhaps to 2 per table) so as to make the sorting phase a little easier. While I don’t doubt it would, I think I’d like to keep the ‘all issues considered’ approach, but maybe move the ‘activity’ slot early to cover the sorting of the post-it’s into groups.

All in all, I think one I’m happy to mark up as a success! Thanks to everyone who’s contributions and enthusiasm made it so!

Hopefully more SHP Conference related posts will follow soon!

One the features I loved in Google Reader was the ability to search back through posts you’d bookmarked. In an attempt to regain that functionality, and to allow me to dig down into the goldmine of blog posts from the last few years I’ve just created a Google Custom Search. It’s a bit rough and ready for now – I’ve just dropped in the list of blogs I subscribe to, many of which are long dead (anyone else remember posterous?!). However it’s a good start and it’s allowed me to go back and find some really useful posts that may be a few years old, but have been helpful in shaping my thinking.

You can use this custom engine here. I’ll do some more tweeking with it next week, and maybe even embed it in this site too. But in the mean time the ability to create your own is available to anyone with a Google account, but seems to be one of the lesser known features.

Image credit: Dig byMatt MacGillivray. CC Licensed on Flickr.com