I am sure there has been at least one occasion where your headteacher has decided to send you on some course or other that they think you need. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes it is waste of your time and the school's finances.
Since becoming active on Twitter, I have received lots of CPD which has been exactly what I need, delivered by people who are 'walking the walk' every day. If there is something I wish to know more about, I can ask someone who I have connected with on Twitter and I can get responses very quickly. This is much better than spending a whole day out of class (having to deal with a range of issues when I get back) and only finding about 10 minutes of it useful. This is not the case for all all-day courses, I have been on some excellent ones. The best ones, like the responses I get on Twitter, are those where I leave with ideas I can do the next day in class. Using Twitter to access instant, targeted CPD is a very efficient model.
Tonight I was lucky enough to attend a teachmeet in Stockport organised by @mediashaw and hosted by @IctMrP. This was my first experience of such an event. What a great idea. It involved a range of teachers, yes everyday teachers, sharing ideas and projects that had worked for them. I am sure that everyone in the room tonight will have left with lots of ideas to try tomorrow. The credibility of the ideas shared tonight was increased by the fact that they have all been tried out in class and are not the brainchild of a distant academic. In the US, there are whole day (or even longer) Teachmeets called Edcamps. Maybe this is something that would work here. I would attend and it wouldn't cost our school a thing as all the presenters share their ideas willingly and for free. Like somebody said about tonight's event, it's great to see so many teachers giving up their time to get better.
Us teachers have got a lot to offer and between us we have a wealth of expertise and buckets of creativity. Let's share it with each other.
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