Earlier in the year a message was sent to Wikispaces users that they would be closing down. Now if you look for the original Irish TeachMeet wiki, set up almost a decade ago, this is what you are greeted with…

In order to keep as much information safely intact as possible, the site contents were wrapped up in a zip file (attached below) – it is not tidy, rather like one of those cupboards you open to have all the contents land on your head and spill on the floor – but it is all there (in two formats, zip files attached below). The three main elements from the “old” wiki have each been reproduced as a page on the “new” wiki

• a Welcome / Fáilte page with overview and instructions
• calendar of TeachMeets in Ireland
• the list of volunteers who have organised TeachMeets in Ireland since 2009

PBworks may prove to be as temporary a home as wikispaces was but hopefully it will do for now, and some bright spark will work out a better way to carve a comfortable space in which to settle. The main thing is that this one is open to anyone in Ireland who wishes to access, use, and develop it.

Head on over to irishteachmeet.pbworks.com and have a look…if you are having a TeachMeet, sign in and add the details.

[So it turns out a virtual house mouse can be as nerve wracking as a real house move. Having done one of each this summer, I’ll be happy to stay put in both instances for as long as possible. For the virtual move, big thanks are due to Richard Millwood and John Hegarty for wisdom, help, and advice. For the fact that the wiki exists in the first place, serious eternal thanks are due to John Heffernan – once a historian, always a historian.]

HTML archive zip file for Irish TeachMeet Wikispace 2009-2018 irishteachmeet_20180531-HTML

PDF file for Irish TeachMeet Wikispace 2009-2018 irishteachmeet_20180531

One (and a half!) of the most enjoyable and memorable hours at the Scratch conference earlier this summer in MIT was the workshop to showcase ScratchEd Meetup. Attendees were not leactured about ScratchEd Meetup; we were welcomed by Karen Brennan, Alexa Kutler and the team, and launched straight into a typical event scenario which prompted several “I want one of these” moments. Best part was hearing from those from the worldwide network who have hosted meetups in their area – Leanna from Kentucky, Pau from Barcelona, Simon from Tanzania.

ScratchEd has long been an online forum wherein educators who use Scratch can convence. From this has recently evolved the ScratchEd Meetup, an occasional or regular face to face catch up session described as a “participatory professional learning experience”, organised with a Open Space / Barcamp / Edcamp flavour.

Ireland has so many users of Scratch in dojos, code clubs and classrooms around the country, it is a fair bet that many teachers and mentors would enjoy participating in a ScratchEd Meetup (especially topical with the background chatter about Scratch3.0). Plans are currently being incubated, so do keep an eye on the website at www.cesi.ie, the @cesitweets Twitter feed (and probably #ScratchEdMeetupsIE, though it is a bit of a hashtag handful) for details of time, place, and sign up.

SCRATCHedMEETUPS manifesto:

For some background reading on the genesis of this peer designed participative professional learning, see this 2012 article by Karen Brennan and her colleagues: http://web.media.mit.edu/~kbrennan/files/Brennan_ScratchEd_Meetups.pdf

It was nano presentations all the way at the TeachMeet proposed by Drew Buddie for the 2018 Scratch conference at the Media Lab in MIT, Cambridge, USA. We got an end-of-the-day time slot, and a cool dark space (with super duper AV facilities) called The Cube.

As we’d all had a long long day attending, presenting, and workshopping at the main conference, all presentations were ‘nano’ in nature – short, sweet and kept to the point. Presenters from all over the world volunteered to share out their wisdom – USA (Mildred, Kathleen, Shawn), Africa (Max – Kenya, Rehema – Tanzania, Justin – South Africa, John – Nigeria), Europe (England – Andy & Richard, Ireland – Mags, Scotland – Drew & Rob, Austria – Matt, Netherlands – Hans), South America (Brazil – Ana). There was a ‘use tech well for the good of all’ thread running thru the evenings presentations.

Drew was MC; Russel Tarr’s trusty classtools.net Wheel Of Fortune determined the order in which our thirteen speakers took the stage; me and The Dromedary of Doom were (almost totally redundant) timekeepers; Richard and John were on-call  ‘technoroadies’.

classtools.net random name picker

There was a whole new zero hour aspect to this TeachMeet, which was a delightful as it was surprising. Although some speakers had signed up in advance in answer to an online invite, others signed up from the floor as the TeachMeet was in progress – by email or by sharing me a link to their presentation. Lightning speed internet reliability – connectivity ftw!

The regrettably missing portion in this TeachMeet was some built in conversation time, but the clock and our collective tiredness worked against us in this instance. However, judging by the responsive atmosphere as the presentations rolled along, I think it is fair to say the occasion wasn’t diminished in any great way by this omission.

Thanks Drew for prompting this, the third of hopefully many consecutive TeachMeets at Scratch.

MC Drew

Round Tables at the Cube

Rehemma from Tanzania represents She Codes For Change

See Twitter timeline for this TeachMeet at #tmScratchMIT

The Friday late afternoon Ignite Session at the 2018 Scratch Conference at MIT was a happy, lively, and informative affair. The audience, which of course contains all the Ignite presenters as well as curious others, was receptive and responsive. Lisa, our curator of this session, had the perfect light-but-ruthless (think USA version of Irish Mammy – Irish Mom perhaps?) touch that kept things ticking along, and the format of a series of short sharp 5 minute presentations followed by Q&A made for an engaging and learnful hour for everyone present.

CTwins Ignite Scratch Conference MIT 2018

Richard Millwood and I, on behalf of our colleagues Pamela Cowan, Elizabeth Oldham, Nina Bresnihan, Glenn Strong, and Lisa Hegarty, presented the work of the CTwins project, a year long Google funded computational thinking (CT) collaboration between Irish teachers working on Scratch in cross border pairs (‘Twins’). Our project aimed to increase teacher confidence through blended paired programming practice, leveraging the remix facility in Scratch to build in cooperative learning principles. It isn’t easy to fit a year’s work into a 5 minute space, so we just sped thru the headlines, doing out best to make the central threads clear.

Ignite is a rollercoaster format like Pecha Kucha, with 20 slides each auto advancing after 15 seconds – hence our use of PowerPoint (does anyone know how to autoadvance in Google slides?) for the slide deck, which is here. The questions from the audience were insightful – the time was too short for in-depth discussion so we pointed folk to the CTwins work-in-progress webspace here.

Thanks for John Hegarty and Claude Terosier for catching and sharing some of the lighter moments:

Many thanks to all who made this the happiest conference hour of #ScratchMIT2018 – those who attended, Lisa our convenor, and co-presenters Chris, Claude, Ingrid, Janet, Natalie, Leanna, Bernat, Jens, John, Rina, Angela, Lucia, and Richard.