I am writing this prior to any updates for firmware or for the Table Toolkit software, I am sure hope some of the issues I raise will be addressed.

The popular unconference has shown it’s flexibility over the last year as a whole variety of events have been successfully run. My first TeachMeet was at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2008 and I have been privileged enough to be have organised one in the Midlands as well as attend many more. The ethos and atmosphere remains the single most important constant - open, friendly, innovative.

Last Tuesday I headed down to Channel 4 HQ for their Summer Education Conference. It carried the question of “What Comes Next?”, exploring the future of schooling in the UK. As a closing act they invited Ian Usher and I to host a TeachMeet. It was small in scale but not in terms of the ideas and innovation that was shared - as usual this was varied and hugely interesting. Take a look at the Connect recording for a flavour of the event.

TeachMeet North East took place in Tyneside Cinema a couple of weeks ago with about 50 people attending. From all accounts it was a very successful event with a high percentage of people who were attending TeachMeet for the first time. You can catch up with the presentations and the links to the FlashMeeting recordings either on the wiki page or in the Ning for TeachMeetNE.

TeachMeet Student Edition was the first variation of the original concept specifically designed for student teachers and teachers in their probationary year. Run by David Muir from Strathclyde University in early June it attracted around 60 people according to those signed up on the wiki. Once again you can get a full replay of the presentations and the event from the FlashMeeting.

TeachMeet the Islay Variation - education 2020 Conference - In June lots of people packed their bags and headed to the Isle of Islay off the West coast of Scotland to take part in the education 2020 unconference. It explored the theme of what education will look like in 2020 and what challenges might we face. Take a look at the wiki for the way they organised the event and here is a stack of pics and videos from the event in a Flickr group. Here is the Flashmeeting too to catch up.

I really appreciate the archiving of these events through the web conference recording and Leon Cych has also done some great work recording those events he can attend and publishing the presentations on the TeachMeet Blip TV channel. This is sponsored by Futurelab and offers those unable to attend a way to learn from the event.

There is a range of TeachMeets on offer in the remainder of this year, here is the full range that I am aware of. Plenty of choice both in terms of location and the style of the events - I would urge you to attend if you can make it and have never been before.

>TeachMeet SuKe - Sussex and Kent. Tonbridge, Friday 18th September, 7-9pm. Sign up or contact Stephen Lockyer(@mrlockyer)

>TeachMeet SLF09 - 23rd September BBC Scotland, Pacific Quay. Returning to the Scottish Learning Festival for the 4th year I am sure it will be another successful night. Get your name down!

>TeachMeet Skolforum - if you happen to be in Stockholm on the 27th October between 4.30pm and 8pm why not join our Swedish colleagues.

>LeadMeet - Scottish leadership edition. LeadMeet is a variation on the now tried and trusted TeachMeet format. This time we are concentrating on educational leadership. Wednesday 29th July 2009, Carlton Hotel, Edinburgh.

>TeachMeet North West - 22nd October 5-10pm at the BBC 21st Century Classroom, Salford, Manchester. Join the folks who have already signed up.

It is great to see a range of national and regional events springing up and I wish all the organisers all the success for their respective meets.

If you are in a position to support these events through sponsorship I am certain that it will be gratefully received. Small contributions are all that is needed and every event relies upon kind sponsors to help cover the minimal costs involved. Please get in touch with the organisers through their wiki pages or leave a note for me and I can let them know you are interested.

The BETT Show organisers have picked up on the vibrancy of the TeachMeet community and Merlin John recently spoke to Martin Jack of Thinkdifferentevents (who runs the seminars for BETT organisers EMAP) about a generous offer of the Apex room at Olympia for three separate evenings, three separate TeachMeets, during the BETT Show 2010. I hope to find out more about the details of what this offer entails. It will be very interesting to see how the TeachMeet community responds to it and perhaps how over the course of the year 3 separate events unfold.

The most recent presentations have included Voicethread and Wordle which are really great little tools and their flexibility is reflected in the wide range of ideas that people have offered.

We are about to kick off a Nintendo DS project at school, which you will hear more about here soon, and so I have been thrilled to see a bunch of ideas outlined by people with direct classroom experience of using the consoles. It will prove a useful set of current thinking for our teachers and I hope we’ll be able to contribute too.

I hope that you are finding the presentations useful. As always if you have an idea that you would like to contribute then just get in touch. Thanks for all of the support and contributions so far. (By the way the very first presentation on the IWB has just hit 40 different ideas!)

Currently you can add your name to a growing list (73 already signed up) in this Google Group. We don’t know whether we can convince Google to back a UK version of the GTA, but I think that we will be in a better position to go to them with that question if we can show support for the idea.

Last November I wrote about the idea and it is good to revisit it, as I have experienced the ways Google tools can impact on learning in the classroom. Let’s hope that if we continue to show support for the idea that a better platform for sharing and celebrating our experiences can develop, whether that’s a Google Teacher Academy or otherwise.

I approached the workshop with the idea of connections, how we as teachers can connect using Twitter and how we can connect children’s learning. You can see the presentation I used below and in the first few slides I shared my use of Tutpup and Voicethread - simple but hugely effective tools for the classroom, both of which connect children to each other’s learning.

“Classroom Without Walls” suggest looking at or beyond the horizon, however I raised the idea with the participants that we sometimes overlook the walls between our own pupils. I explained that using tools such as Voicethread we can perhaps first address how we can connect children within our own class. When was the last time your children looked at each other’s work? Peer assessment is important but often difficult to find time to do. When working with Voicethread, peer assessment is just part of the process not just an additional session you need to timetable.

I helped demonstrate the idea of a networked teacher by asking the participants to find teachers who had tweeted a clue about their location to me via Twitter. As usual my network provided some great responses and the workshop participants used Google Earth to try and find the schools and colleges that were shared. It was really engaging and rooted in a lesson that I taught last year to my year five class.

It was interesting to see that out of the two workshops around 90% of delegates had a Facebook account and only about 15% had a Twitter account. Some had both. But these young teachers, although very aware of social networking between friends, have not yet engaged with the idea to create a professional network. I hope I gave them a nudge in the right direction.

If you get a chance then also take a look at this Mastercard advert “Milton Avenue”- it resonated with me as I was thinking about how important a network is to me for information and advice. I don’t have all the answers but perhaps someone in my network does. This was underlined on Friday when a teacher at school asked my advice about domain names on behalf of the school she is a governor at. My experience of purchasing domain names is limited but a quick question on Twitter allowed me to provide her with great recommendations and advice.

It was agreat day at the NCSL and I was thrilled to get some time to catch up with Dan Sutch from Futurelab who opened the day with a thought provoking keynote on the future of schooling and leadership. John Davitt was there to wrap the day up in his unique and entertaining style, the first time I have seen him talk beyond the TeachMeet 7 minutes.

Victorian Jigsaw - Media Application - SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

This is a simple little activity I created based upon our Street Child, Victorians unit. I used SMART Notebook and the line tool to lay a square grid over an image. I then copied parts using Notebook screen capture and the guidelines to help. I then pasted these into the Media application. Simple jigsaw. Unfortunately the default setting in the Media application is to have magnification or zoom and ideally for the jigsaw idea I wanted none. This is not currently possible, however I set it to the lowest I could.

It was amazing to watch this pair of children take such care over the placement and size/rotation of each part. They showed great skill and engagement with the activity, all the more interesting as there were no instructions nor have they had any sort of training in manipulating the images.

Musical Instruments - SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

In this video a small group of children are using the Hot Spots application to identify the names of different musical instruments. The application allows the user to move word labels (you see in the first part for the video) and also pictures. Once one set of hot spots have been completed it moves onto the next set if available - once finished it returns to the main screen.

In my experience four children is the maximum for junior children to work together. Ideally it would be less because you have to divide the space, the screen real estate and the number of questions by your users. Too many people around it and engagement dwindles.

These are simple activities but they take a long time to create - unfortunately the time the learners are engaged is reduced because of the multi user scenario. Four children working on a task takes less time to complete then just one child. The payoff for the teacher in this example is small. I have to generate lots of activities and examples to engage all of the learners for a significant amount of time. Currently the SMART Table Toolkit does not allow me to quickly create high quality content in Hot Spots.

Perhaps this is another unforeseen situation arising from multi user learning activities, that it is not sufficient to generate the same amount of content for a single user and then just expect it to be divided up by the children at the table. Content creation needs to be streamlined so that you can quickly make a large range, with depth, that will engage each learner adequately.

Addition Application - SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

I like how this application encourages children to work together. Even though the maths is simple, they have to rely on each other to be successful.

Interestingly what tends to happen is one person from the group takes the lead and directs others. Not something they are told to do, but some just take charge and solve the question quickly and instruct others what to do.

Such a group dynamic makes users passive or active, so it is possible that children don’t engage with the maths directly but engage with the person who tells them what to do. I have seen this application being used by lots of groups of different children from my class (ages 9 or 10) and a leader always emerges. In those instances when the group does not have a leader then two scenarios tend to play out:

1. Children look at the problem, solve it themselves and each take the lead to solve it, this conflict then leads to confusion with the input of the answer. Individuals place their fingers on the table at the same time and then without really saying much expect others to adapt to what they have inputted.
2. The group talk about the solution and then between them they each contribute something towards the answer. I believe that this scenario is clearly the best to engage all learners and comes with experience from using the application. Those who have used the activity before tend to add one or two fingers when the answer may well be small enough to answer on their own - thus drawing in other members of the group to complete the solution. 
    

Addition App - Set to multi-touch finger counts from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Watching my Year 5s using it I was surprised at how engaged they were, it is after all simple addition or subtraction. The unique nature of the “finger count” setting is it causes the children to rely on their peers to help them answer the question. If we don’t work together we don’t progress. The collaboration from even just 2 or 3 kids was great to watch.

This application is not new, I have seen and used it before on the Philips Entertaible. Which allowed any object placed on the surface to count as “1″. This was a good feature of that device as it allowed more flexibility to support early counting strategies etc. Not so with the SMART Table which needs a firm finger press.

The size of integers and answers increase as the number of learners set to use it does. (this is done in the admin screen) More finger presses are needed and higher numbers correspondng to the maximum of that group.

Another setting for the Addition application is to show answers using currency - which for British currency is frankly woeful, no colour, incorrect sizes of coins. Canadian and US seems to be in colour not surprising really. Counters or counting blocks can also be used and I will look into this next week.

I was most pleased with the level of engagement from the children and although on the surface this seems to be a simple application, it definitely requires a level of teamwork that you often do not get. 

It is intriguing watching the children’s first attempts and how they realise they need to work together. As the challenge is small scale, once they have been successful they begin to refine their approach, communicate better and so get to later answers quicker.

These are some short films I took today of four children working with this application. The images and video are from the Victorian period, primary and secondary sources of information. I asked them to explore the collection and make some notes about what they find out from the media. As a final discussion point they sorted the images and video into primary and secondary sources; real photos and video or not.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (1) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (2) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (3) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (4) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (5) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

This activity ran for about 20 minutes and is the sort of depth that I have been looking for. I combined some pencil and paper note taking with the high tech access to the media, which worked for us. The children had room to work around the table and as I have said it is comfortable with four users.

Although there are many other applications to explore with multi-touch the Media application has my attention at the moment due the unique interaction with images and film that you experience when at the table. It is the blurring of that physical and digital space that I am intrigued with. The children passed each other video footage. If there is a way this can be done in other available computing environments then I don’t know about it. We certainly would not get the same level of intuitive connection with lots of media as you can when working in multi-touch.

It feels like this is an extremely unique and powerful feature of the multi-touch lightbox applications, whether on a SMART Table or not. One feature that provides children with amazing access to work with digital video in a unique way. The process just facilitates the learning intentions as it is so simple, hopefully you can see that from the footage. Film clips can be placed alongside each for comparisons; moved and sorted according to a custom background or even moved into a shared storyboard format. Furthermore a collection of images and video could be used in early years classrooms as a precursor to writing about an event or trip that took place.

It is the heightened sense of access and of sharing the digital imagery, combined with the fluid resize, rotate and placement controls you have that makes it a powerful learning tool.

I wanted to share with you a few bits of video that I took of the children using the Table as well as a short introductory clip about the physical structure of the Table and its’ components.

Media App for SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

The children worked very naturally with this application and it was fun listening to them chat away about how they liked it. The level of interaction here is high as there are only 3-4 children working at a time, any more and in my opinion the quality and frequency of interaction with the images would reduce (in parallel to a reduction in the amount of surface available to individual users).

Quick Tour of the SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

What do you think? I would appreciate your thoughts on the two short clips. There will be plenty of opportunity to post more videos throughout the course of the project and I hope to make a short film introducing the applications and software too.

I wanted to help illustrate to the children the grand London house that Rosie was working at in the book. I thought that the StreetView layer in Google Earth would allow me some high quality imagery, I just needed a real location in London somewhere.

I sent this Tweet out:

Anyone know of a London st of grand Victorian homes, with black iron railings + 3 or 4 floors high, want to look in GE Streetview10:51 AM Apr 22nd

And was pleased to get some great suggestions and this one from @didactylos the Director of Marden City Learning Centre. I was able to pick out a road to search from Roger’s Tweet and so set to it.

I did a quick search for Kensington High Street as he suggested and briefly scanned the area, I soon found a street that looked ideal.

I then switched on the StreetView layer and zoomed in and the first view was a beautiful 3 storey house identical to the one described in the book. Black iron railings and even steps down to the servants quarters and kitchen in the basement.

We turned the camera to take a look at the impressive row of housing and discussed what we could see in the image that might have been there at the turn of the century. We also discussed what we may have seen, heard and smelled if we were Rosie standing on that Victorian street.

The tweets allowed me to access exactly what I needed drawing upon experience I did not have, and StreetView in Google Earth provided the class with rich imagery to help with their diary entries that they continued with. Some of the children did some drawings of the houses we had seen and it helped to spark their imagination and provided a much better understanding of the sort of scene we were working with.