Agreeing to do a TeachMeetNZ is one thing, putting it together is a whole other level. When I first heard about Sonya Vanschaijik’s TeachMeetNZ Sessions I was keen to get involved but at the same time worried I didn’t have much to contribute. As I followed other people's journeys I realised a TeachMeetNZ session is much like a blog post, you just talk about what you know, what you’re doing or what you’ve done. The hard part is getting it to fit into 3mins!
I approached Sonya and said I was keen to get involved, she said there weren't many teachers sharing about gaming who actually game on a regular basis, and there is plenty people want to know. The trouble with gaming is that it’s like any other subject, it’s so broad there is no way to cover what everyone wants to hear in a short time. The reality is if you haven’t spent 20 hours playing a game you will never understand how it works or the benefits that exist. An hour will show you basic game play and you can make assumptions based on that, but 20 hours will give you a decent idea of how it plays and the types of skills you are using.
The TeachMeetNZ template that is provided via the TeachMeetNZ website is fantastic. It really helps you to organise your ideas and work out what ideas you want to present. Sonya also suggested creating a keyword image/definition diagram using a SOLO Describe Map (shout out to Pam Hook) to help me break down my ideas. She shared the one she created to help her define TeachMeetNZ, you can check it out on her blog. I found that as I added words and sentences it changed and evolved as I tried to align my thoughts and ideas. Even now I’m not entirely satisfied with it, I’m sure I will continue to refine it, as we all do and encourage our students to do with their work.
Once you have all your ideas in sync your next step is to condense condense condense. Its so hard to erase entire sentences from explanations because you feel like you are cutting out valuable information. But, at the end of the day that’s what is fantastic about TeachMeetNZ presentations, they are smorgosboard of bite sized education tidbits designed to make you hungry for more so you will seek out more information for yourself. After speaking to sonya I decided the best option was just to talk about how I got into ‘gaming’ and some of the impacts it had on me as a teacher/learner and how it affected my students as learners. Using the TeachMeetNZ template helped me iron out thoughts and ideas in a quick way and because I was talking about personal experience it was easy and quick to pull the presentation together. My router died on the night of practice so that left me feeling a little uneasy about the content but Sonya made some time for me the next day so I could have a practice and sort out any kinks.
We had an initial practice so everyone knew how to use Google Hangouts and check out the light at presentation time. Then mid week we had an evening session to check we knew how to share our presentations. A week later we had the dress rehearsal and then the TeachMeetNZ on the Saturday. The session ran smoothly on the day, with a timekeeper and twitter broadcaster on board as well as Sonya to run the show. Basically TeachMeetNZ runs like a well oiled machine and it is a fantastic thing to be a part of.
We had a fantastic line up of presenters who all had fascinating topics to talk about. I enjoyed my time spent listening to each of their sessions and learned something valuable from each. I had some interesting feedback from some teachers on a few of the points I made which was fantastic and I’m looking forward to talking more to teachers about what their students are participating in. I would like to see more of the positive sides of gaming being looked at (shout out to @peggysheehy) rather than the negatives that we see/hear about so often. I’m so pleased I took the leap and participated, thanks so much to the whole TeachMeetNZ team, and to my fellow presenters who all did amazing jobs.
I highly recommend you head over to the TeachMeetNZ wiki and see when the next session is: http://teachmeetnz.wikispaces.com/home. It’s rare that you can get professional learning development while sitting in your PJs at home. If you missed our session you can check it out on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivMvWr5-c5o. There is a fantastic playlist on youtube available of all the previous TeachMeetNZs that have happened as well. If you’re feeling brave you could also get in contact with Sonya+/@vanschaijik and sign up to participate in a session.
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