Picture the scene. It’s late Spring 2009 and my boss, Margaret Alcorn, comes back from an event with Ewan McIntosh (“weel-kent” member of this getideas.org parish) and suggested I develop a continuing professional development (CPD) event. As I recall, the conversation went something like this:
Me: “A CPD event? Oh aye, boss, what will the topic be?”
Boss: “Leadership”
Me: “What will the budget be?”
Boss: “Er, we don’t have one”
Me: “Who will be the speakers?”
Boss: “Er, we don’t have any yet”
Me: “OK, what’s the venue?”
Boss: “Nope, not got that either”
Me: “So, who’s coming?”
Boss: “Whoever wants to, but no-one as yet”
Me: “When is this happening?”
Boss: “In the middle of the summer holidays”
Me: “Oh, good luck with that! Who’s going to lead it?”
Boss: “Ewan and I thought you would be best”
Me: “What were you and Ewan drinking at that meeting?” …
That should have been my reply, but it wasn’t, she is the boss after all! Instead, I said “I would love to!”And so LeadMeet was born and it turned out to be a real privilege to be involved in “leading” such a CPD event. It was based on the TeachMeet model so leading doesn’t really describe the process. It was more like firing a starter pistol! The nature and history of TeachMeets are well described in Iain Hallahan’s blog post TeachMeet.
Only a few weeks before the event a page, containing no more than a date, was posted on the TeachMeet website. Participants were urged to sign up to deliver a micro-presentation (no more than 7 minutes), a nano-presentation (no more than 2 minutes) or just to ‘lurk’ and, to my surprise colleagues did all three. Word of the event spread through e-mail, blogs, and a Twitter hashtag: #lm09. The online conversation also included suggestions of topics for debate. Suffice to say that by the evening of the event, we had a venue, a capacity crowd (more than 60), generous sponsors, and more speakers than we could fit in.The evening evolved into a mixture of group activity, learning conversations and short thought-pieces. Group activities included:
- Describe your ideal leader through the medium of … Legos
- Randomly generated activities using this tool from @johndavitt
- An opportunity to contribute your favourite leadership characteristic for the Leadmeet09 Wordle
(thanks to Kattie Barrowman @katiebarrowman).
On the night, the speakers were randomly selected using a tool from classtools.net. Sadly, many were willing but only a few were chosen! We ended up with an admirable range of contributors from newly qualified teacher to chief inspector!The online aspect continued throughout the event. Some people attended remotely using webconferencing technology set up by David Noble (@parslad). In addition, many attendees tweeted their comments, asked questions and posted pictures.The last part of the event was the “show and tell” from the group activities. The discussion and building of the Lego leaders probably generated the richest conversations about leadership. You can see a selection of these Lego Leaders here (thanks Anne Mcghee @annemcghee). Other creative, collaborative works, such as the “Leadership Blues” and “The French Revolution in a 20-second movie clip” are still awaiting permissions and legal advice! So what was the legacy of LeadMeet09? The pictures above tell you how much colleagues involved and enjoyed themselves. I have had a number of participants tell me how it gave them a different and creative view of CPD sessions as opposed to “being talked at by so-called experts.” I still keep in touch with many friends whom I met for the first time that evening. I use the model of “setting the scene” online in almost of all my CPD opportunities now. The National CPD Team continues to recognise the value of TeachMeets throughout Scotland and have sponsored many since summer 2009.And of the future for TeachMeets? I look forward to them becoming a more frequent antidote to certain existing CPD staples (notably the ‘sheep-dip’ and the ‘drive-by’ models of professional learning) but these might be the topics for a future blog post!Con Morris, CPD TeamLearning and Teaching Scotland
