News

A quick update on last week’s events.

Both Talk on the Tyne 2 and the Art of Computing 2016 were organised superbly by Martin Bailey of Animate 2 Educate. The Thursday night ‘TeachMeet’ style event was completely fully booked. Every table was full of educators and people who wanted to share their ideas on teaching and learning, particularly with technology.There were some brilliant apps mentioned, a game of ‘Buzzword Bingo’ from Nina Jackson @musicmind and lots of applause. 

It must be said that whilst everyone did really well, one of the most engaging ‘presentations’ of the night did not involve one piece of technology, just a frisbee! Lisa Jane Ashes @lisajaneashes used her five minutes to explain how a frisbee can have a mesmerising effect on getting students’ full attention and minimising distraction/talking over others.

The event was action-packed with presenters sharing their ideas. Natalie was up around 10pm to talk about Thinking Kit (www.thinking-kit.com).

Friday’s event was fantastic. The whole line up of speakers created a brilliant atmosphere and the air was buzzing with new ideas for educators to go back to school and try. Rhi Kavok @RhiKavok ‘disrupt and do different’ was one of our favourites and really opened the eyes of the crowd into the world of cyber security and online safety.

All of the speakers were fantastic and Rachel Orr @Rachel Orr wowed the audience by singing ‘Social media for schools’.

It was great to meet people in the intervals who came to our stand. We talked about how students (and teachers) begin to have different ways of presenting what they have learned. Rather than passive presentations or a poster that may only be glanced at a few times, we introduced the idea of students creating a digital activity: for their peers or those of a different age group. This could be in their school, another school in their country or even students across the other side of the world. The creation side can be done on any device, and the user needs an iPad. To have a 30 day free trial of the Thinking Kit Creator, please visit www.thinking-kit.com.

For more news on the events, visit the hashtag #TalkontheTyne for the Thursday night event or #a2econf for the conference.