What a welcome we got from organisers Hassan Dabbbagh, Caroline Harrison, and Vivian Cuddy in Mayo Education Centre on Friday evening March 4th, for TeachMeet Mayo! Thanks also to Director Paul Butler and Caretaker Kevin Kerrigan for their genial hospitality all evening.
Almost 50 educators – who travelled from all four provinces, which doesn’t often happen at regional TMs – piled into the lovely oval room for a terrific evening. Hassan was a fab Fear a’Tí, and the flow of the evening was smooth and comfortable. And to cap it all, we had TeachMeet royalty present – yes, John Davitt brought to original flying camel.
This is what the evening’s lottery gave us…
- Opening presentation from John Davitt (pictured below), on the Learning Event Generator (LEG), and Learning Score – soon to be renamed Timel.ie (you heard it here first, everyone).
- Chris Reina on updating your PC without too much pain
- Pam O Brien on the work of the Youth Media Team
- Seán Gallagher (PDST Tech in Ed team leader) on leveraging the image enhancing power of your mobile phone
- Caroline Harrison on Plickers, which she demonstrated with great panache
- Mary Jo Bell on the monster matching project, and we all had a go, crayons and all – see here
- Helen Clarke on learning styles
- Mags Amond on classtools.net, see exhibit A, the Breaking News generator, above
- James Cunningham on the Key Words keyring he uses with his students – an ingenious idea which caught everyone’s attention
- Iseult Mangan and the senior students of Cloghans Hill NS hosted “KidsMeet”, showcasing a variety of activities presented by the students. I especially liked the QR code PE activity – how else would I have ended up doing 10 jumping jacks with @pamelaaobrien on a Friday night?
(( That last is the latest step in the great Irish TeachMeet suite evolution – from the original CESImeet we have branched to TeachMeet, PrincipalMeet, ResearchMeet, and now KidsMeet. What’s next, I wonder? )).
The TeachEat in the Connaught Inn afterwards was very pleasant – we had food, fun, song, magic tricks and the chats until home time (don’t ask, we won’t tell).
There is often talk of the ‘Mayo curse’ in GAA circles and in the media. Well, there’s only blessings and no curse in Mayo education circles. Thank you Hassan (and ALL the Mayo Dabbaghs), Caroline, Vivian and Paul for a fab TeachMeet in Castlebar, and to all the teaching colleagues who turned out to share. [Share and Care. Again!].
More details, and the reactions of the attendees, can be read in the Twitter feeds at
https://twitter.com/teachmeetmayo
https://twitter.com/hashtag/tmmayo
and see Hassan’s picture stream on Flickr
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