If you are looking for excellent professional development and you want to be inspired by actual fellow classroom practitioners and take many examples of innovative practice back into your own classroom then look no further make sure you get yourself to the 7th UK Innovative Education Forum. In such tough financial times there is increasing pressure on schools to pull up their drawbridge and chain teachers to their desks, however because of this I think it is even more important that schools put more emphasis and more resources into CPD.
The 7th Microsoft UK Innovative Education Forum is a one-day conference, free of charge – (YES IT IS FREE!) to all teachers and educators who wish to attend and will look to address the theme of ‘Connecting Learners, Connecting Teachers.’
This year the Forum is being held at the Hilton Deansgate Hotel in Manchester on the 30th November which is an awesome venue! So if you are anywhere near the Manchester area especially within a few hours drive or train ride then I urge you to read more about the event below and sign up as soon as possible for your free place. The only cost to your school will be supply and travel but this little cost will outweigh the benefits that you could get from attending. I have blogged about these events before and by attending these events personally and also other teachers in my school there have been some fantastic results to learning and teaching in our school – feel free to print out this blog post or show it to the person responsible for CPD in your school!
You can read about last year’s UK event here where four teachers from Saltash.net won UK awards and Amy Lewis one of our History teachers progressed to the European finals in Berlin. http://www.danjjroberts.co.uk/2009/11/30/would-you-call-yourself-an-innovative-teacher/
I also won a Worldwide Award at the worldwide event and you can read about the famous Recharge the Battery project that won a Worldwide Innovative Education Award in Hong Kong here: http://www.danjjroberts.co.uk/2009/06/07/recharge-the-battery/
So what will you get for FREE this year?
The first thing is there are a couple of absolutely fantastic key note speakers there which if you haven’t heard them talk before you will certainly be inspired! Professor Sugata Mitra famous for his ‘Hole in the wall’ project and Michael Furdyk Co-founder of the young person’s online community , Taking IT 
Global will both be there!
The second thing is a great opportunity to hear from some other teachers who are doing some great and innovative things in the classroom, these sessions will focus on what you can take away and use in your own classroom. The fantastic line up can be seen below but you can see them in more details here: http://itndownloads.com/itfreg/workshops.htm
Workshop 1 – TakingITGlobal – Mandeep Atwal, TIGed UK
Workshop 2 – Outdoor learning & technology – David Rogers, The Geography Collective
Workshop 3 – From the cloud to the classroom, making innovation stick! – Guy Shearer, Head Teacher, Lodge Park Technology College
Workshop 4 – Creative use of technology in the classroom – Dan Roberts, saltash.net community school
Workshop 5 – Office 2010 in the Classroom – Stuart Ball – Microsoft Partners in Learning
Workshop 6 – Kodu Games based learning – Nicki Maddam, Hartsdown Technology College, Margate
And finally if this wasn’t enough there will also be the first ever Innovative Teacher Meet at 7:30pm on the 29th November in the awesome cloud 29 bar at the top of the Hilton which has some fabulous views, free canapes – I hope they have Pies well we are in Manchester, and drinks. If you want to do more than stare at the view and eat pies then there will also be lots of like minded teachers there sharing ideas and practice in 3 minute presentations.
Don’t miss out, register today http://uk.partnersinlearningnetwork.com – Show this blog post to your headteacher and hopefully you will be there in November.