Kidsmeet

On Thursday 16th of June 2011 the first ever Kidsmeet took place at Hawes Sides Primary School, Blackpool. The brain child of @tomsale and @mister_jim, Kidsmeet is a spin of event from Teachmeet. It is still a ground up-teacher organised event but is child driven with children taking the place of teachers, presenting on what they have been learning about or something worth sharing with everyone else.

If you would like to read more about the Kidsmeet structure or find out how to set up your own, visit the wiki here or website here.

Onto the event!

My parallel class teacher and I took four Year 1 children to meet up with a dozen other schools participating, not forgetting a school in Birmingham who were going to use Skype to connect virtually. We hadn’t practiced our presentation much before the day so there was a lot of hard work during the morning by the children, with a little direction from me, to get them ready to present to over 100 other children and teachers. The car journey was an excitable affair, as was our arrival but luckily @joga5 who had driven over 300 miles to compare the event had thought of every eventuality and brought along a superb selection of picture books to read. We arrived early in case any help was needed with setting up but the school’s Head teacher, @smichael920 and the aforementioned @tomsale and @mister_jim had everything well under control. The event itself kicked off with a presentation by children from Hawes Side and what stuck out to me was the impeccable behaviour of all the children in the audience, showing respect and a great attitude when listening to every presentations. I think this was due to the diverse range and style of presentations, the marvellous comparing by @joga5 and the intrigue for the children not knowing what was coming next.

In the first half school after school came and went giving good accounts of themselves with presentations ranging from Powerpoints written, created and read out by the children to singing and drama games to the virtual presentation from @oliverquinlan‘s class in Birmingham. Indeed after that virtual presentation it was our turn. We had decided to keep things geeky and simply go through how to use Aviary Education to edit images and create music, which we had used for our Cinderella and Pirate themes as well as for our school’s art exhibition. As the children were only Year 1 it was too much to ask them to do all this and explain how we used the package in our themes so we stuck to the geeky side of things. This allowed each of them chance to take control of the computer projecting to the room whilst the others explained the process using the provided microphone (a must have). After they had finished their presentation and received a very warm round of applause they strode off to receive goody bag items such as a t-shirt each from the ever awesome Zondle. The children were buzzing after this and when asked later about their favourite part they unanimously said ‘doing our presentation’, an experience which at 5 and 6 years old will stand them in good stead in further years. You can read and see more about our presentation on our class blog, here.

During the break there was a great selection of food an xbox stand to play on and a brief opportunity for teachers as well as children to chat before the second half began. a special mention has to go out to @chrismayoh’s class who had come all the way from Bradford to take part. Around about the same point, time had unfortunately progressed and so in true Teachmeet style the last few presentations were carried out with a smaller audience, which was a shame as they were 3 of the best. Luckily all the participating schools will be uploading their presentations and then having them available for viewing on the Kidsmeet website.

After closing comments including from two Australian Head teachers it was time to depart and return home. The next day I spoke to all the parents of the children involved and it was clear the impact the event had had on their child and the ability to give out the website containing pictures and a replay of the streamed event furthered the opportunity for parents to share in the children’s fantastic efforts.

So, in conclusion was the event a success? Yes. Definitely.
Will it need tweaking? Yes. Definitely.
Will it live long in the memory of everyone involved? Yes. Definitely.

A couple of stand out moments for me were Claremont’s braveness at getting up and singing individually in front of everyone (or year 1′s favourite of the first half), Chris Mayoh’s class’ ability when demonstrating Kodu and the last 3 presentations which were Tom Sale and @enomilies Mereside children talking about their digital pencil cases, @cjs76′s Flakefleet children who demonstrated pivot stick figures for animation and last but certainly not least, James Maloney’s (mister_jim) Staining children who had created a fantastic mixture of live interaction coupled with a clearly child driven video recording involving Brainpop’s Moby.

I was glad I could play a small part in organising the event, but huge credit in particular should go to @mister_jim as well as @tomsale and @smichael920 who were fantastic organisers and hosts.