Teachmeet NW took place on Friday night at the 21stCC Classroom in Salford. The 21stCC Classroom is a great space to take your class to undertake a wide range of free multimedia activities. The only problem is it's wildly popular and booking can be an issue. They also do some excellent teacher workshops, again all free. The only issue with the venue was its location halfway up the East Lancs Road which left people struggling with traffic to get there. It also meant that there was nowhere local for refreshments afterwards.
I'm not going to blog at length about Teachmeet as Dan Stucke has done that admirably already and has instituted quite a conversation on his blog. I instead I will point you at some of the excellent resources that were showcased.
Etherpad: a document editor that allows multiple people to edit the same document in real time. Great for collaborative writing. Test it on your school network first.
Boolify: A really simple and graphical explanation of Boolean logic for search engines. Blog posts here.
Mapwing: A great virtual tour tool upon which I have blogged.
Writerhymes: Write a line of poetry, hold down the alt key and click on a word, Writerhymes will suggest rhyming words
Spezify: A visual search tool that's great for open ended explorations of a theme: health warning, test the theme words you are going to search for in advance.
And there were many more: for a growing list of links go to the growing TeachmeetNW wiki.
Thanks to Steve Kirkpatrick of Charlestown primary school for doing the donkeywork and getting the whole thing off the ground. Maybe next year we can double the audience?